An Impostor's Diary: Sipur David Ha-Reuveni 's Novel Literary Genre and Complex Relationship with Truth

Abstract: David Ha-Reuveni, a sixteenth-century Jewish man of unknown origin claiming to be a prince of the Lost Tribes of Israel, was the author of one of the earliest—and most puzzling—of extant autobiographical documents of early modern Jewish culture. This work, a diary of an impostor, the literary aspects of which have received little scholarly attention to date, is a fascinating case study in self-fashioning. Employing the category of genre, and carefully analyzing this composition's layered truth claim, this paper mines Ha-Reuveni's scrappy, inventive employment of existing literary models. It examines this new kind of literary creation for a new perspective into the construction of identity, sincerity, and deceit—reflective of one extraordinary man, and of the culture and discourse within which he operated.