Full Description
Designed for both students and seasoned scholars, this volume provides an innovative guide to the study of the Jewish past from the late Middle Ages to the Enlightenment. It makes available seventeen contributions, published between 1904 and 1984, which are veritable landmarks in the scholarship on Jewish history in early modern Europe but have so far remained little accessible. Many are here translated into English for the first time, while all but one are not currently available in English online. The editors' introduction situates these classic essays in relation to the growing perception that the early modern period in Jewish history possesses its own distinctive features and identity. Accompanied by a rich bibliography, the volume highlights the many changes that the academic study of this vital phase of the Jewish past has undergone during the last hundred and twenty years.
Contents
Series Introduction: Classic Essays in Jewish History - Kenneth Stow
Volume Introduction: A Jewish 'Early Modern Period' Avant la Lettre? - Jonathan Karp and Francesca Trivellato
Chapter 1: "European and Jewish History: Do Their Epochs Coincide?" - Cecil Roth
Chapter 2: "Ghetto and Emancipation: Shall We Revise the Traditional View?" - Salo W. Baron
Chapter 3: "Marriage and Sexual Life at the Close of the Middle Ages" - Jacob Katz
Chapter 4: "The Woman of the Ghetto: Part I" - Selma Stern
Chapter 5: "The Marranos" - I.S. Révah
Chapter 6: "The Shebet Yehudah and Sixteenth Century Historiography" - Abraham A. Neuman
Chapter 7: "The Amazing Abraham Colorni" - Cecil Roth
Chapter 8: "Baptisms of the Jews of Rome from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries" - Attilio Milano
Chapter 9: "Why Was Spinoza Banned?" - Jacob L. Teicher
Chapter 10: "Poland's Council of the Four Lands and its Relations with Local Jewish Community Governments" - Simon Dubnow
Chapter 11: "'De Non Tolerandis Judaeis': On the Introduction of the Anti-Jewish Laws into Polish Towns and the Struggle Against Them" - Jacob Goldberg
Chapter 12: "The Court Jews: Prelude to Emancipation" - Francis L. Carsten
Chapter 13: "The Emergence of General Education among German Jews before Mendelssohn" - Joseph Eschelbacher
Chapter 14: "German Pietism and the Jews" - Koppel S. Pinson
Chapter 15: "The Attitude of the Enlightenment Toward the Jew" - Paul H. Meyer
Chapter 16: "The Economic Activities of the Jews" - Shmuel Ettinger
Chapter 17: "Modern Capitalism and Jewish Fate" - Salo W. Baron
Index
