How private were Jewish letters in the early modern period? This article discusses Jewish epistolary culture and notions of privacy by examining an extraordinary cache of Jewish letters that were mostly written on a single day—22 November 1619—in a single city, Prague, and sent to a single destination, Vienna. The letters never arrived and ended up in the archives where they were preserved for posteriority. The culture of writing and receiving of letters underwent significant changes in this time and the social function of letter-writing shifted from the public to a more personal sphere. However, family letters can be considered semi-public documents that were written collaboratively and whose contents were shared among relatives. The letters allow us a glimpse into the lives of ordinary Jews in politically tumultuous times in which privacy and confidentiality could never be taken for granted. Situating the letters within the context of Habsburg postal history and the increasingly effective interception, surveillance and censorship of postal communication, the article discusses privacy in an early modern epistolary culture that was heavily shaped by formal and stylistic conventions. Jewish ordinances aimed to protect confidentiality of communication but the awareness that letters might be intercepted led to the use of secret codes and coded language, and Jewish communication networks. This article pays particular attention to gendered communication and privacy. It has been argued that in epistolary culture women are afforded a voice and speak for themselves. The evidence suggests that collaborative forms of writing that involved more than one writer were still common in early seventeenth-century Jewish correspondence, indicating zones of “privileged confidentiality” within larger family networks
