Early Modern Jewish History

Connecting Histories: Jews and Their Others in Early Modern Europe
edited by Francesca Bregoli and David B. Ruderman

Whether forced by governmental decree, driven by persecution and economic distress, or seeking financial opportunity, the Jews of early modern Europe were extraordinarily mobile, experiencing both displacement and integration into new cultural, legal, and political settings. This, in turn, led to unprecedented modes of social mixing for Jews, especially for those living in urban areas, who frequently encountered Jews from different ethnic backgrounds and cultural orientations. Additionally, Jews formed social, economic, and intellectual bonds with mixed populations of Christians. While not necessarily effacing Jewish loyalties to local places, authorities, and customs, these connections and exposures to novel cultural settings created new allegiances as well as new challenges, resulting in constructive relations in some cases and provoking strife and controversy in others.

The essays collected by Francesca Bregoli and David B. Ruderman in Connecting Histories show that while it is not possible to speak of a single, cohesive transregional Jewish culture in the early modern period, Jews experienced pockets of supra-local connections between West and East—for example, between Italy and Poland, Poland and the Holy Land, and western and eastern Ashkenaz—as well as increased exchanges between high and low culture. Special attention is devoted to the impact of the printing press and the strategies of representation and self-representation through which Jews forged connections in a world where their status as a tolerated minority was ambiguous and in constant need of renegotiation.

Exploring the ways in which early modern Jews related to Jews from different backgrounds and to the non-Jews around them, Connecting Histories emphasizes not only the challenging nature and impact of these encounters but also the ambivalence experienced by Jews as they met their others.

Contributors: Michela Andreatta, Francesca Bregoli, Joseph Davis, Jesús de Prado Plumed, Andrea Gondos, Rachel L. Greenblatt, Gershon David Hundert, Fabrizio Lelli, Moshe Idel, Debra Kaplan, Lucia Raspe, David B. Ruderman, Pavel Sládek, Claude B. Stuczynski, Rebekka Voß.

Jews in a number of disparate possessions at the end of the 17th century came in the course of the 18th century to form a loose Habsburg Jewry due to annexations and increasing state intervention. Covers the demographic, socio-economic, political and religious history of Jews in Bohemia, Moravia, Vienna, Hungary and Galicia-Bukowina during the long 18th century.

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R. Nahman's sermons, like classical midrash, are comprised of texts reading texts. Theological speculation is always contextual, emerging via imaginative interpretation rather than via pure philosophical argumentation. Yet, while it may be true that R. Nahman's use of Scripture in Likkutei MoHaRan resembles earlier models of classical midrash and Kabbala, these models serve quite a different purpose in his Hasidic imagination. 23 Unlike midrash, R. Nahman is not focused on opening the text for purposes of reading (or rereading) Scripture. Unlike classical Kabbala, R. Nahman does not exegetically construct his homilies in order to facilitate a mystical experience, reenact the historical event of Sinai, or convey esoteric knowledge. 24 He is interested in accomplishing at least three basic objectives: (1) to create a textual representation of his own inner life, the life of the zaddik of the generation, 25 disclosing and enveloping his imagination in the garments of midrashic reading and kabbalistic imagery (his is accomplished through the complex hermeneutical scheme of his homilies in Likkutei MoHaRan); (2) to transmit his advice regarding the ways of worship, both existentially and practically, in order to enable his disciples to embody his innovative understanding of devotion, enacted within the confines of the halakhic system but not identical to it 26 (this is accomplished in Sefer Kizur Likkutei MoHaRan, 27 Likkutei Ezot, Shivhei Ha-Ran, and other advice literature including R. Nathan Sternherz of Bratslav's multivolume Likkutei Halakhot); and (3) to transcend normative modes of Torah discourse by conveying its essential messages in the garments of fable narratives. This third objective serves three distinct functions all of which have messianic implications: (a) to perfect the imaginative faculty as a prerequisite of prophecy and the necessary precursor to the messianic era; 28 (b) to "awaken the masses from slumber," an allusion to the depth of exile where the exiled lose consciousness of their exilic state; and (c) to universalize Torah by transcending its external (rabbinic) framework, i.e., text and exegesis, making way for a return to the institution of prophecy. 29 This is accomplished in his interpretations of the Raba Bar bar Hana agadot in Likkutei MoHaRan and later in his thirteen tales. 30

This essay interrogates the legal discourse of Shulḥan ha-Tahor, a curious-and curiously understudied-work of Hasidic halakhah written by Rabbi Yitzḥak Ayzik Yehudah Yehiel Safrin of Komarno. The book is, at heart, a systematic reformulation of Jewish law in light of Kabbalah, Hasidism, and the quest for personal mystical experience. Shulḥan ha-Tahor offers a rare case study for the interface of mystical experience , Hasidic devotional values, and kabbalistic doctrine as they explicitly shape the codified forms-and norms-of halakhah. The essay reveals a different side of Jewish modernity through a close reading of an exceptional nineteenth-century legal code.

sided over the "Wolfson in the Harvard Faculty Club, which included many outstanding university professors. Numerous honors were showered upon him, but no more than were his due. Throughout his life, Wolfson found security in his Hypothetico-Deductive Method of Text Study developed by him in his twenties, when he wrote his doctoral dissertation at Harvard.

The polemic surrounding the 1753 Jewish Naturalization Bill was one of the major public opinion campaigns in Britain in the eighteenth century, as well as the most significant event in the history of Britain's Jews between their seventeenth-century admission and nineteenth-century emancipation. The bill proposed to offer Jews a private act of naturalization without the sacramental test. A costly and cumbersome process, the measure could have had only minor practical impact. Due to its symbolic significance, however, the bill ignited public clamor in hundreds of newspaper columns, pamphlets, and prints. What made it so resonant, and why was the opposition so successful in propagating opposition to the motion? It has been commonly argued that the entire affair was an instance of partisan conflict in which the Jews themselves played an incidental role. This paper throws light on the episode from an alternative perspective, arguing that a central reason for its resonance was that the discussion on the Jews evoked concerns with the expanding financial market and its sociopolitical implications. As Jews had by that time become emblematic of modern finance, they embodied contemporary anxieties about the economy, national identity, and their interrelations.

When one knows a number of things and understands how they are categorized and systematically interrelated, then he has a great advantage over one who has the same knowledge without such a distinction. It is very much like the difference between looking at a well-arranged garden planted in rows and patterns, and seeing a wild thicket or forest growing in confusion. (Derech HaShem, paragraph 1) 1 The human mind is not capable of grasping the universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceilings with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written these books. He does not know who or how. He does not understand the languages in which they are written. But the child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books-a mysterious order which he does not comprehend but only dimly suspects. (Albert Einstein)

Après une brève présentation du corpus des écrits de controverse judéo-chrétienne, nous nous intéresserons ici à la place qu’y occupent les événements, réels ou fictifs, présentés comme des « disputes ». Dans quelle mesure peuvent-ils être dissociés de l’ensemble qu’ils contribuent à constituer ? Leurs caractéristiques correspondent-elles aux éléments de définition retenus, dans l’argumentaire de notre colloque, pour les « disputes religieuses » ? Les termes les plus couramment utilisés dans l’analyse des controverses/disputes religieuses sont-ils bien adaptés à cet objet particulier ? Les réponses à ces différentes questions ne valent-elles que dans ce cas précis, ou peuvent-elles être étendues à d’autres corpus analogues ?