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Contrary to commonly accepted belief, the 16th and 17th centuries marked a radically new phase in Jewish history. Far more than a mere extension of the Jewish Middle Ages, this was an era in which European Jewry was partially set free from the stifling restraints and restrictions of the past. This historical survey focuses on the rapidly expanding Jewish role in the political, economic, and cultural realms that began in the 1570s, when the tide of mercantilism, politique attitudes, and raison d'Etat political theory swept Jews back into the mainstream of western life. The book highlights the interaction between Jewry and the European states, seeing the golden age of the "Court Jews" from 1650 to 1713 as the peak period of Jewish impact on European culture and affairs, and concludes with the decline of Jewish influence on European society in the 18th century.
This survey history of Jewish life and culture in early modern Europe is the first to focus on the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as a radically new phase in Jewish history. The volume lays particular emphasis on the reversal of trends in western and central Europe in the late sixteenth century, which was followed by a rapid increase in Jewish numbers and activity, and far-reaching reorganization of Jewish society and institutions. A major consequence of these changes was a much expanded and more varied Jewish role in European civilization as a whole. The first edition of this book was the joint winner of the Wolfson Literary Prize for History in 1986. For this third edition, the text has been updated and includes a new introduction.
‘A beautiful work of scholarship and synthesis that should immediately become a standard text . . . For the first time, the history of early modern European Jewry is presented as a coherent whole and in a form recognizable to non-Jewish scholars, adhering to all of the standards of scholarship . . . [a] sparkling book.’ David S. Katz, English Historical Review ‘An ambitious and much needed study of Jewish life and culture in the context of Europe’s intellectual and religious history . . . To this he has brought his own sharply critical judgement and a highly original interpretative theory . . . highly stimulating.’ Henry Roseveare, Economic History Review The first edition of this book was the joint winner of the Wolfson Literary Prize for History in 1986. For this third edition, the book has been updated and includes a new introduction.
Joint winner of the Wolfson Literary Award for History. ... an important book ... will be of extreme value of to all students of early modern Europe...' Lionel Kochan in British Book News.
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.
Vol. 4 covers the late Roman period to the rise of Islam. Focuses especially on the growth and development of rabbinic Judaism and of the major classical rabbinic sources such as the Mishnah, Jerusalem Talmud, Babylonian Talmud and various Midrashic collections.
How an antisemitic legend gave voice to widespread fears surrounding the expansion of private credit in Western capitalism The Promise and Peril of Credit takes an incisive look at pivotal episodes in the West’s centuries-long struggle to define the place of private finance in the social and political order. It does so through the lens of a persistent legend about Jews and money that reflected the anxieties surrounding the rise of impersonal credit markets. By the close of the Middle Ages, new and sophisticated credit instruments made it easier for European merchants to move funds across the globe. Bills of exchange were by far the most arcane of these financial innovations. Intangible and written in a cryptic language, they fueled world trade but also lured naive investors into risky businesses. Francesca Trivellato recounts how the invention of these abstruse credit contracts was falsely attributed to Jews, and how this story gave voice to deep-seated fears about the unseen perils of the new paper economy. She locates the legend’s earliest version in a seventeenth-century handbook on maritime law and traces its legacy all the way to the work of the founders of modern social theory—from Marx to Weber and Sombart. Deftly weaving together economic, legal, social, cultural, and intellectual history, Trivellato vividly describes how Christian writers drew on the story to define and redefine what constituted the proper boundaries of credit in a modern world increasingly dominated by finance.
1. Amsterdam: a center of credit -- 2. Frankfurt an der Oder: Central European middlemen -- 3. Border lands: legal restrictions, army supplying, and economic success -- 4. Praga: a stepping stone -- 5. Warsaw: the rise of a Jewish economic elite