Rethinking European Jewish History

Abstract

Europe has changed greatly in the last century. The political boundaries between nations and states, along with the very concepts of 'nation' and 'boundary', have changed significantly, and the self-consciousness of ethnic minorities has likewise evolved in new directions. All these developments have affected how the Jews of Europe perceive themselves, and they help to shape the prism through which historians view the Jewish past. This volume looks at the Jewish past in the spirit of this reassessment. Part I reconsiders the basic parameters of the subject as well as some of its fundamental concepts, suggesting new assumptions and perspectives from which to conduct future studies of European Jewish history. Topics covered here include periodization and the definition of geographical borders, antisemitism, gender and the history of Jewish women, and notions of assimilation. Part II is devoted to articulating the meaning of 'modernity' in the history of European Jewry and demarcating key stages in its crystallization. Chapters reflect on the defining characteristics of a distinct early modern period in European Jewish history, the Reformation and the Jews, and the fundamental features of the Jewish experience in modern times. Parts III and IV present two scholarly conversations as case studies for the application of the critical and programmatic categories considered thus far: the complex web of relationships between Jews, Christians, and Jewish converts to Christianity in fifteenth-century Spain; and the impact of American Jewry on Jewish life in Europe in the twentieth-century, at a time when the dominant trend was one of migration from Europe to the Americas.