Abstract
At least seven ‘Jewish translations’ (in Hebrew, Yiddish and German in Hebrew characters) of Robinson Crusoe were published between 1784 and 1900. However, the Robinson story did not reach Jewish audiences in continental Europe in this period through Defoe’s original work or even close translations thereof, but rather through the reworking of the story as a didactic tractate by the German writer and pedagogue Joachim Heinrich Campe (1746–1818). This article examines the roundabout journey taken by Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe to reach the Jews of Europe and the reasons for the popularity of the Robinson story (according to Campe) among maskilim (Jewish enlighteners). It analyses the different translations published in the period, thereby following the development of the Robinson story as largely a tool by which the maskilim communicated moral and practical education to literary works which emphasized aesthetic quality.
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