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This intriguing broadside is a Hebrew “emblem-riddle,” a kind of literary riddle in poetic form that was greatly in vogue among the Jews of Amsterdam and Italy during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. With sophisticated encoding devices such as anagrams, puns, textual allusions to classic Hebrew sources, and the “emblem” itself—the kind of pictogram featured here (known in Hebrew as צורת החידה)—these emblem-riddles were especially popular at Jewish weddings, where scholars would match wits for the solution. Winners of these riddling-contests were greatly admired, as they not only had to explain all of the clues but also present their solution in proper poetic form. The solution to this riddle? As yet unknown—but one and all are invited to try.
This intriguing broadside is a Hebrew “emblem-riddle,” a kind of literary riddle in poetic form that was greatly in vogue among the Jews of Amsterdam and Italy during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. With sophisticated encoding devices such as anagrams, puns, textual allusions to classic Hebrew sources, and the “emblem” itself—the kind of pictogram featured here (known in Hebrew as החידה צורת)—these emblem-riddles were especially popular at Jewish weddings, where scholars would match wits for the solution. Winners of these riddling-contests were greatly admired, as they not only had to explain all of the clues but also present their solution in proper poetic form. The solution to this riddle? As yet unknown—but one and all are invited to try.