Jekutiel Blitz

Jekutiel ben Isaac Blitz, from Witmund in northern Germany, worked at the Hebrew press of Uri Fayvush in Amsterdam. Fayvush commissioned him to translate the Bible into Yiddish, the first Yiddish translation of the entire biblical text (previous translations were only partial). Blitz was not a Hebraist—he relied on other Germanic translations when he encountered difficulties, including Luther’s German translation and the Dutch Statenvertaling—and often broke with the existing Yiddish translation tradition. He had an inclination for polemics and frequently attacked Christianity in his text. Blitz’s work also contains many Dutch and Low German words, which may have made it difficult for the intended Polish Jewish readership to understand. One financer of the project, Joseph Athias, was not satisfied with Blitz’s translation and so commissioned another. Consequently, Joseph Witzenhausen’s translation, which often pokes fun at Blitz’s work, appeared shortly afterward.