New Chapters in the History of Early Modern Ashkenaz

Abstract

Shlomo Berger. Producing Redemption in Amsterdam: Early Modern Yiddish Books in Paratextual Perspective. Studies in Jewish History and Culture 37. Boston and Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2013. Pp. xx + 234.Elisheva Carlebach. Palaces of Time: Jewish Calendar and Culture in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge, Mass, and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011. Pp. xii + 304.Edward Fram. A Window on Their World: The Court Diaries of Rabbi Hayyim Gundersheim, Frankfurt am Main, 1773-1794. Cincinnati, Ohio: Hebrew Union College Press, 2012. Pp. 653.Debra Kaplan. Beyond Expub ion: Jews, Chrbtians, and Reformation Strasbourg. Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2011. Pp. xviii + 254.Robert Liberies. Jews Webome Coffee: Tradition and Innovation in Early Modern Germany. The Tauber Institute Series for Study of European Jewiy. Waltham, Mass.: Brandeis University Press, 2012. Pp. xx + 169.Among cultural turns of second half of twentieth century, translational turn has shaped Jewish studies most profoundly. Analyses of cross-cultural translation and emerging concepts of cultural transfer and entangled histories have led to a new Jewish history, told in relationship to that of surrounding majority.1 While earlier studies that marked emerging historiographic trend in mid-1990s studied Jewish and Christian perceptions of each and JewishChristian interaction expressif verbis? in postmodern age, a notion of cultural embeddedness has become a presumed factor in telling of Jewish history; rather than being an end in itself, cultural entanglement between Jews and the other has become a key to opening yet broader questions. A similar shift now treats Jews as active participants of history, and not its passive objects: Jews were not merely influenced by events or cultural developments in Christian or Muslim worlds but were major historical actors in towns, villages, and lands where they lived, making active use of and forming conditions of life they encountered (Kaplan, p. 6). They were agents of cultural change, partners in cultural encounter (even if politically weak vis-a-vis a dominant other).2 3This review essay discusses a number of recent works on history of early modem Ashkenaz that exemplify this shift. Thrs is not meant to be an exhaustive survey but rather a selection of five works from scholars from United States, Israel, and Europe that I believe are exemplary for their holistic approach to Ashkenazi culture in sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. Each honors a fundamental principal of new cultural history, namely, inclusion of voices of ordinary people and everyday culture. Based on understanding that history of Ashkenazrc Jewry is not limrted to extraordinary moments (Kaplan, p. 7) and texts written by for elite (Fram, p. 70), works under review draw on sources that have hitherto been overlooked: Jewish calendars, Yiddish paratexts, and coffee.The strategy of accessing nonelite through an unexpected source is vrsible in Shlomo Berger's Producing Redemption in Amsterdam: Early Modern Yiddish Books in Paratextual Perspective. Berger analyzes paratexts-texts subsidiary to a book's main text-of Yiddish books produced in Amsterdam, main center of Hebrew book production in seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and distributed throughout Ashkenazi diaspora. Extending new field of paratextology, a subfield of book history, for first time to Jewish books, Berger treats paratexts as a key to understanding Yiddish book production, early modem Yiddish literary corpus, cultural meaning of these books, and their roles in Ashkenazi culture and society. He demonstrates that how books in Ashkenazi vernacular are presented for public consumption tells us something about world of their authors, producers, and readers. …