Written in her native tongue of Western Yiddish over the course of thirty years, her memoirs were originally intended to be an ethical will for her children and future descendants.
[2] The Memoirs of Glückel of Hameln provide an intimate portrait of German-Jewish life between the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries and have become an important source for historians, philologists, sociologists, literary critics, and linguists.
"[6] The ending "el" is a diminutive which indicates "little" or "little one" and was used in the Yiddish and German variations of Glückel, Glukel, Glukil, Glickel, and Glikel.
[10] Although she was unable to study the Torah, Glückel received a formal education in a Cheder, the traditional Jewish primary school, where she learned Hebrew and the basics of Judaism.
[14] A year after their marriage, the couple moved in with Glückel's parents in Hamburg, where Hayyim began dealing in gold and became an affluent businessman.
[15] In addition to her business dealings, Glückel also maintained an extremely active social life which often required extensive travel.
Her memoirs tell of travels to cities as varied as Amsterdam, Bamberg, Danzig, Hanover, Hildesheim, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Leipzig, Berlin, Vienna, Metz, and Paris.
[16] Glückel and Hayyim had a total of fourteen children, thirteen of whom survived to adulthood: Zipporah (c. 1661), Nathan (c. 1663), Mata (c. 1666), Mordechai (c. 1670), Hannah (c. 1672), Loeb (c. 1673), Esther (c. 1677), Joseph (c. 1677), Hendelchen (c. 1678), Samuel (c. 1680), Freudchen (c. 1684), Moses (c. 1685), and Miriam (c.
[22] She initially stopped writing the diaries in 1699, shortly before her second marriage to Cerf Levy, but resumed in 1715 while she was living with her daughter following her second husband's death.
[28] Glückel's stories reveal much about the often frightening and precarious situation under which the Jews of northern Germany lived during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.
[29] Glückel's diaries, a rare account of an ordinary woman, provide a glimpse into day-to-day life among the Jewish inhabitants of northern Germany in the 17th century.
[30] Glückel tells of how she guided the financial and personal destinies of her children through marriage arrangements, engaged in business travel and trade, and generally spent her life promoting the welfare of her large family.
"[32][33] The opening pages of Glückel's book include details of her reasons for writing, as well as the underlying beliefs that will come to define her entire narrative.
She explicitly states that she does not wish to write a book of morals for her children to follow; she believes that the Torah provides all of the necessary instructions and thus should be studied diligently.
Though the second chapter begins with her birth, there is almost no reference to her childhood and upbringing except to mention that her father ensured that all of his children, male and female, received both secular and religious education.
[38] Glückel illustrates her family's importance in the community by noting that her father was the first German Jew allowed to resettle in Hamburg.
[39] She has memories of the so-called "Swedish Winter" when the Swedes went to war with the King of Denmark, a monarch who she remembered as great man and friend to the Jews.
This book begins with Glückel's betrothal to Hayyim of Hameln at age twelve and their marriage two years later; the relationship was arranged by her father.
[45] Joseph's second son, Abraham, was a brilliant Talmud scholar who faced many hardships in his life, including difficulties conceiving without what was rumored to be mystical intervention.
[46] Hayyim had a sister named Yenta, who experienced great personal turmoil after marrying the son of the wealthy Sussmann Gans of Minden-on-the-Weser.
[51] Glückel knew that if Hayyim had died in Leipzig, it would have been difficult to recover his body for a proper Jewish burial and that all of his possessions would be forfeited, resulting in major personal as well as financial damages.
[26] As the plague continues, Glückel explains of the difficulty of conducting trade[52] and receiving mail,[53] as well as the strange illness and remarkable recovery of her daughter Zipporah, to whom she refers as the "Virgin of Peinholz.
[63] In a stroke of bittersweet luck, Glückel's father dies after suffering from gout and she gives birth to her son, Loeb, after sitting shiva.
"[76] Glückel offers her body to console or comfort her dying husband, but he refuses her because she is "unclean" due to menstruation[77] and had not visited the mikveh.
[85] Glückel recalls the murders of Abraham Metz and Aaron ben Moses, a story which illustrates the complicated relationships that existed between Jews and Gentiles in Hamburg.
[88] She relates the story of King Jedijah from Araby to illustrate how even good intentions, such as her desire to protect her children by remarrying, can sometimes go terribly wrong.
[89] Although Glückel agrees to the marriage with the assurance that her new husband was a wise businessman who would offer her "nothing but abundance,"[90] she recalls her extreme hesitation.
[92] Glückel ends Book Six expresses her fears for her family with a desperate plea for God's forgiveness: "May the Almighty God spare us and Israel from further evil, and in His great mercy and grace forgive us sinners all our debts, and lead us back to the Holy Land, that our eyes may see the rebuilding of Thy holy house and our glory restored!
[96] She recalls the dissatisfaction of living in the home of Jacob Marburg, an otherwise unidentified Metz resident who provided her with a room which featured "neither hearth nor chimney.
Adrienne Cooper and Frank London of the Great Small Works theater troupe brought the memoirs to the stage in the early 2000s.