Abstrakt
In this chapter, I examine Sefer ha-Nizạhọn (The Book of Victory or The Book of Polemic), perhaps the most popular late-medieval Ashkenazic polemical work. Its author, Yom Ṭov Lipman Mühlhausen (d. 1421), was one of the most original and versatile Ashkenazic thinkers of the late Middle Ages.
He served as a rabbinic judge in Prague and Erfurt, where he also led a rabbinic academy (yeshiva). In addition to being a respected authority in Jewish law, Lipman displayed a wide range of intellectual interests.
His works reveal the ability to juxtapose reflections on contemporary religious practice and popular piety with discussions based on philosophical and Kabbalistic traditions. My aim is to explore this text, and in particular the passages dealing with image worship, in relation to contemporary Christian debates.
By contextualising Lipman's anti-Christian rhetoric in this way, I demonstrate how literary polemics can demarcate boundaries and reinforce communal identity while being at the same time rooted in discourses shared with the majority culture.