Rethinking European Jewish History

Europe has changed greatly in the last century—culturally, ideologically, and socially, as well as politically. These changes have generated widespread reassessment of European history in terms of its presuppositions, its methodologies, its directions, its emphases, and its scope. The political boundaries between nations and states have been redefined, and even the concepts of ‘nation’ and ‘boundary’ have changed significantly. The self-consciousness of ethnic minorities has likewise developed in new directions. All these developments have affected how the Jews of Europe perceive themselves, and likewise shape the prism through which historians of the Jewish world view the past.

This volume looks at the Jewish past in the spirit of this reassessment. Part 1 reconsiders basic parameters of the subject as well as some of its fundamental concepts, suggesting new assumptions and perspectives from which to conduct  future study of European Jewish history. Topics covered here include periodization and the definition of geographic borders, antisemitism, gender and the history of Jewish women, and notions of assimilation. Part 2 is devoted to articulating the meaning of ‘modernity’ in the history of European Jewry and demarcating key stages in its crystallization. Papers reflect on the defining characteristics of a distinct early modern period in European Jewish history, the Reformation and the Jews, and the essence of the Jewish experience in modern times. Framing the chronological period of concern in the collection, Parts 3 and 4 facilitate two scholarly conversations as case studies for the application of critical and programmatic categories considered thus far: the complex web of relationships between Jews, Christians, and Jewish converts to Christianity (conversos, New Christians, ‘Marranos’) in fifteenth-century Spain; and the impact of American Jewry on Jewish life in Europe in different periods of the twentieth century, even as the dominant trend has been one of migration from Europe to the Americas.

This timely volume suggests a new framework for the study of Jewish history and helps to contextualize it within the mainstream of historical scholarship.

Ram Ben-Shalom, Senior Lecturer, Department of History, Philosophy, and Judaic Studies, Open University of Israel
Miriam Bodian, Professor of Jewish History, Graduate School of Jewish Studies, Touro College, New York
Jeremy Cohen, Abraham and Edita Spiegel Family Foundation Professor of European Jewish History, University of Tel Aviv
Judah M. Cohen, Lou and Sybil Mervis Professor of Jewish Culture and Assistant Professor of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, Indiana University
David Engel, Greenberg Professor of Holocaust Studies, Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, and Professor of History; New York University; Fellow, Goldstein-Goren Diaspora Research Center, University of Tel Aviv
Gershon David Hundert, Professor of History and Leanor Segal Professor of Jewish Studies, McGill University.
Paula Hyman, Lucy G. Moses Professor of Modern Jewish History, Yale University
Maud Mandel, Associate Professor of History and Judaic Studies, Brown University
David Nirenberg, Professor, Committee on Social Thought and Department of History, University of Chicago
Moshe Rosman, Professor of Jewish History, Bar-Ilan University
David B. Ruderman, Joseph Meyerhoff Professor of Modern Jewish History and Ella Darivoff Director, Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania
Daniel Soyer, Associate Professor of History, Fordham University, New York

Note on Transliteration
Jeremy Cohen: Introduction

Part I   Reorienting The Narrative
1    Moshe Rosman: Jewish History Across Borders
2    David Engel: Away from a Definition of Antisemitism: An Essay in the Semantics of Historical Description
3    Paula Hyman: Does Gender Matter?  Locating Women in European Jewish History
4    Maud Mandel: Assimilation and Cultural Exchange in Modern Jewish History

Part II   From the Middle Ages to Modernity
5    David B. Ruderman: Jewish Culture in Early Modern Europe: An Agenda for Future Study
6    Miriam Bodian: The Reformation and the Jews 
7    Gershon David Hundert: Re(de)fining Modernity in Jewish History

Part III   On the Eve of the Spanish Expulsion
8    David Nirenberg: Spanish ‘Judaism’ and ‘Christianity’ in an Age of Mass Conversion
9    Ram Ben-Shalom: The Social Context of Apostasy in Fifteenth-Century Spanish Jewry: Dynamics of a New Religious Borderland

PART IV
FROM EUROPE TO AMERICA AND BACK
10   Daniel Soyer: Transnationalism and Mutual Influence: American and East European Jewries in the 1920s and 1930s
11   Judah M. Cohen: Transplanting the Heart Back East: Returning Jewish Musical Culture from the United States to Europe

Notes on Contributors
Index

'Many of the studies in this volume will surely serve as points of departure for future research.'
Gil Ribak, H-Judaic