Early Modern Jewish Civilization

Unity and Diversity in a Diasporic Society. An Introduction

David Graizbord

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2024
• eBook ISBN: 9781040004791
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

This collection is an introductory historical survey and selective cultural analysis of the development, coalescence, and eventual waning of a diasporic civilization—that of the Jews of the early modern period (ca. 1391–1789) in Europe, the Ottoman Empire, and key nodes of the Iberian Empires in the Americas.

Each chapter explores key factors that shaped both distinctive early modern Jewish communities and a remarkably coalescent and far broader community-of-communities. The contributors engage and answer the following questions: What do historians mean by "early modernity," and to what extent does the concept illuminate the history and culture(s) of Jews from the end of the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment? What were the general demographic contours of the Jewish diaspora over this period and how did they change? How did culture, politics, technology, economics, and gender shape diasporic Jewish communities across eastern and western Europe and the New World over the course of some 400 years? Ultimately, the work renders a portrait of coherence and diversity, continuity and discontinuity, in early modern Jewish life within and across temporal and geographic boundaries.

Early Modern Jewish Civilization is essential reading for all students of Jewish history and civilization and early modern history more broadly.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction: Continuities and Discontinuities in the Formation of a Transoceanic Diaspora, 1391–1789
• 2 Who Were the Jews of the Pre-modern Diaspora?
• 3 Ḥayei ha-Torah (The Life of Torah): Rabbinic Culture and the Premodern Jewish Heritage Preserved and Adapted
• 4 Erets Iśra’el (The Land of Israel): The Homeland, Its Jews, and Their Orienting Influence
• 5 ‘Umot ha-‘Olam (The Nations of the World): Relations with the Other(s)
• 6 Kol Iśra’el ‘Arevim Zeh la-Zeh (“All Israel Are Mutually Responsible”): Self-Government, Economy, and the Rise of New Diasporic Centers
• 7 Tsenah u-Re’enah (Go Out and See): The World of Jewish Books
• 8 Ḳabalah (Tradition): Early Modern Jewish Mysticism as a Devotional Matrix of Jewish Life
• 9 Minhagim (Customs): A Window on Popular Culture
• 10 ‘Erev Rav (A Mixed Multitude): Class, Gender, and Ideological Cleavages
• 11 Ḥasidut and Haśkalah (Pietism and Enlightenment): Toward the Watershed of Modernity
• Contributors
• Index