This rare fifteenth-century woodcut illustrates five Jewish men explicating a text. Each figure is shown, prominently, wearing a Jew's hat ( Judenhut), one of the most distinctive features of Jewish costume in the medieval period. The funnel-shaped headgear was originally worn voluntarily by Jews but by the thirteenth century it had fallen into disuse. Consequently, in Germany, beginning in 1267, laws were promulgated that obligated Jews to wear these hats, usually yellow in color, so that they would be marked off from the Christians. It was not until 1434 that the Jews of Germany were ordered to begin wearing the Jewish badge in the form of a round yellow circle. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Jewish badge, already in use in many other countries of Europe, generally supplanted the Jewish hat as the distinguishing mark of a Jew.

This woodcut was one of seventeen produced for the Seelen Wurzgarten (Herb Garden of the Soul), a work of moral instruction intended for a middle class audience. The first portion of the book is devoted to an essay describing the errors of the Jews. The volume also features a depiction of a debate between Jewish and Christian scholars and another woodcut portraying a Jew and a Christian arguing over a text.