Early Modern Jewry

A New Cultural History

David B. Ruderman

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780691152882, 9780691144641
• eBook ISBN: 9781400834693
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

A compelling history of the early modern Jewish experience

Early Modern Jewry boldly offers a new history of the early modern Jewish experience. From Krakow and Venice to Amsterdam and Smyrna, David Ruderman examines the historical and cultural factors unique to Jewish communities throughout Europe, and how these distinctions played out amidst the rest of society. Looking at how Jewish settlements in the early modern period were linked to one another in fascinating ways, he shows how Jews were communicating with each other and were more aware of their economic, social, and religious connections than ever before.

Ruderman explores five crucial and powerful characteristics uniting Jewish communities: a mobility leading to enhanced contacts between Jews of differing backgrounds, traditions, and languages, as well as between Jews and non-Jews; a heightened sense of communal cohesion throughout all Jewish settlements that revealed the rising power of lay oligarchies; a knowledge explosion brought about by the printing press, the growing interest in Jewish books by Christian readers, an expanded curriculum of Jewish learning, and the entrance of Jewish elites into universities; a crisis of rabbinic authority expressed through active messianism, mystical prophecy, radical enthusiasm, and heresy; and the blurring of religious identities, impacting such groups as conversos, Sabbateans, individual converts to Christianity, and Christian Hebraists.

In describing an early modern Jewish culture, Early Modern Jewry reconstructs a distinct epoch in history and provides essential background for understanding the modern Jewish experience.

Notes

Introduction

1. On Modena, see Robert Davis and Benjamin Ravid, eds., The Jews of Early Modem Venice (Baltimore, 2001); Talya Fishman, Shaking the Pillars of Exile: “Voice of a Fool,” an Early Modern Jewish Critique of Rabbinic Culture (Stanford, CA, 1997); David Malkiel, ed., The Lion Shall Roar: Leon Modena and His World (Jerusalem, 2003); and Leon Modena, The Autobiography of a Seventeenth-Century Venetian Rabbi: Leon Modena’s Life of Judah, ed. and trans. Mark R. Cohen (Princeton, NJ, 1988).

2. On Luzzatto, see especially Benjamin Ravid, Economics and Toleration in Seventeenth Century Venice (New York, 1978), and David Ruderman, Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe (Detroit, 2001), index.

3. On Delmedigo, see especially Isaac Barzilay, Yoseph Shlomo Delmedigo, Yashar of Candia: His Life, Works and Times (Leiden, Netherlands, 1974); Ruderman, Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe, index.

4. Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing (Chicago, 1988). See also Perez Zagorin, Ways of Lying: Dissimulation, Persecution, and Conformity in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA, 1990).

5. I offer only a sampling of the work of these authors in their first or early editions. For central and eastern Europe, see Israel Halperin, Yehudim ve-Yahadut be-Mizra

Eropah (Jerusalem, 1968);

ayyim Hillel Ben Sasson, Hagut ve-Hanhagah: Hashkefoteihem ha

evratiyot shel Yehudei Polin be-Shalhei Yemei ha-Beinayim (Jerusalem, 1959); and Jacob Katz, Masoret u-Mashber: Ha-

evra ha-Yehudit be-Mo

ei Yemei ha-Beinayim (Jerusalem, 1963). For Spain, see Yi

ak Baer, A History of the Jews of Christian Spain, 2. vols. (Philadelphia, 1961–66); and

aim Beinart, Anusim be-Din ha-Inquisi

iah (Tel Aviv, 1965). For Italy, see Shlomo Simonsohn, History of the Jews in the Duchy of Mantua (Jerusalem, 1977); Moses Avigdor Shulvass,

ayyei ha-Yehudim be-Italyah bi-Tekufat ha-Renesans (New York, 1955); and Cecil Roth, The History of the Jews of Italy (Philadelphia, 1946). On Lurianic kabbalah and Sabbateanism, see Gershom Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah 1626–1676 (Princeton, NJ, 1973); and Isaiah Tishbi, Netivei Emunah ve-Minut (Ramat Gan, Israel, 1964).

6. On the conversos, see Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, From Spanish Court to Italian Ghetto: Isaac Cardoso: A Study in Seventeenth-Century Marranism and Jewish Apologetics (New York, 1971); and Yosef Kaplan, Mi-Na

rut le-Yahadut:

ayyav u-Fo’olo shel ha-Anus Yi

ak Orobio de Castro (Jerusalem, 1982). On the revision of Scholem’s work, see Moshe Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives (New Haven, 1988); and Yehudah Liebes, Sod ha-Emunah ha-Shabta’it (Jerusalem, 1995); On eastern European Jewry, see Murray Rosman, The Lord’s Jews: Magnate-Jewish Relations in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth during the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, MA, 1990); Gershon Hundert, The Jews in a Polish Private Town: The Case of Opatów in the Eighteenth Century (Baltimore, 1992.); and Israel Bartal, Me-Umah le-Le’om: Yehudei Mizra

Eropah 1772–1881 (Jerusalem, 2002). On Anglo-Jewry, see Todd Endelman, The Jews of Georgian England 1714–1830: Tradition and Change in a Liberal Society (Ann Arbor, 1999). On Italian Jewry, see David B. Ruderman, The World of a Renaissance Jew: The Life and Thought of Abraham B. Mordecai Farissol (Cincinnati, 1981); and Reuven [Robert] Bonfil, Ha-Rabbanut be-Italyah bi-Tekufat ha-Renesans (Jerusalem, 1979). On Ottoman Jewry, see Joseph Hacker, Megorashei Sefarad (Jerusalem, 1966); and Amnon Cohen, Jewish Life under Islam: Jerusalem in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge, MA, 1984). On the work of Richard Popkin, see, for example, his The Third Force in Seventeenth-Century Thought (Leiden, Netherlands, 1992).

7. See, for example, on eastern Europe, Elhanan Reiner, “Transformations in the Polish and Ashkenazic Yeshivot during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries and the Dispute over Pilpul” (in Hebrew), In Ke-Minhag Ashkenaz ve-Polin: Sefer Yovel le-Chone Shmeruk, ed. Israel Bartal, Chava Turniansky, and Ezra Mendelsohn (Jerusalem, 1989): 9–80; and Adam Teller,

ayyim be-

avta: Ha-Rova ha-Yehudi shel Poznan ba-Ma

a

it ha-Rishonah shel ha-Meah ha-17 (Jerusalem, 2003). On Italy, see Elliott Horowitz, “The Eve of the Circumcision: A Chapter in the History of Jewish Nightlife,” Journal of Social History 23 (1989): 45–69; Azariah de’ Rossi, The Light of the Eyes, ed. and trans. Joanna Weinberg (New Haven, CT, 2001); and Ariel Toaff, Love, Work, and Death: Jewish Life in Medieval Umbria (London, 1996). On Amsterdam, see Yosef Kaplan, An Alternative Path to Modernity: The Sephardi Diaspora in Western Europe (Leiden, Netherlands, 2000); Miriam Bodian, Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation: Conversos and Community in Early Modern Amsterdam (Bloomington, IN, 1997); and Daniel Swetschinski, Reluctant Cosmopolitans: The Portuguese Jews of Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam (London, 2000). On Lurianic kabbalah and Sabbateanism, see Ronit Meroz, “Geulah Be-Torat ha-Ari,” PhD diss., Hebrew University, 1988; Abraham Elkayam, “Sod ha-Emunah be-Kitvei Natan ha-Azati,” PhD diss., Hebrew University, 1993; Matt Goldish, The Sabbatean Prophets (Cambridge, MA, 2004); Jacob Barnai, Shabta’ut: Hebetim

evrati’im (Jerusalem, 2000); and Ada Rappaport-Albert, “On the Position of Women in Sabbateanism” (in Hebrew), in Ha-

alom ve-Shivro, ed. Rachel Elior(Jerusalem, 2001), 1:143–328.

8. On print, see Elhanan Reiner, “The Ashkenazic Elite at the Beginning of the Modern Era: Manuscript versus Printed Text,” Jews in Early Modern Poland-Polin 10 (1997): 85–98: Zeev Gries, Sifrut ha-Hanhagot:Toledoteha u-Mekoma be-

ayyei

asidov shel ha-Besht (Jerusalem, 1989); and Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin. The Censor, the Editor, and the Text: The Catholic Church and the Shaping of the Jewish Canon in the Sixteenth Century (Philadelphia, 2007). On Christian Hebraism, see Stephen Burnett, From Christian Hebraism to Jewish Studies: Johannes Buxtorf (1564–1629) and Hebrew Teaming in the Seventeenth Century (Leiden, Netherlands, 1996); Dean Phillip Bell and Stephen Burnett, eds., Jews, Judaism, and the Reformation in Sixteenth-Century Germany (Leiden, Netherlands, 2006); Chaim Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola’s Encounter with Jewish Mysticism (Cambridge, MA, 1989); Matt Goldish, Judaism in the Theology of Sir Isaac Newton (Dordrecht, Netherlands, 1998); and Allison Coudert and Jeffrey Shoulson, eds., Hebraica Veritas? Christian Hebraists, Jews, and the Study of Judaism in Early Modern Europe (Philadelphia, 2004); On antiquarianism and scholarship, see Azariah de’ Rossi, The Tight of the Eyes. On women and gender, see Moshe Rosman, “To Be a Jewish Woman in Poland-Lithuania at the Beginning of the Modern Era” (in Hebrew), in Kiyyum ve-Shever: Yehudei Polin Le-Dorotehem, ed. Israel Bartal and Israel Gutmann (Jerusalem, 2001), 2:415–34; Chava Weissler, Voices of the Matriarchs (Boston, 1998); and Renée Levine Melammed, Heretics or Daughters of Israel? The Crypto-Jewish Women of Castille (New York, 1998).

9. I have offered an extended treatment of Israel’s book in the appendix to the present volume. Besides addressing the challenge offered by Israel’s work, I also present there a more detailed discussion of the regional studies of other historians of the Jewish experience in early modern Europe as well as that of European and world historians on early modernity in general.

10. While my understanding of cultural history includes a consideration of social and political life, ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Maps
• Introduction
• One: Jews on the Move
• Two: Communal Cohesion
• Three: Knowledge Explosion
• Four: Crisis of Rabbinic Authority
• Five: Mingled Identities
• Six: Toward Modernity: Some Final Thoughts
• Appendix: Historiographical Reflections
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Bibliography of Secondary Works
• Index