- Paperback: 307 pages
- Publisher: University of California Press; 1 edition (Aug 16 2006)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0520249941
- ISBN-13: 978-0520249943
- Product Dimensions: 22.9 x 15.5 x 2.1 cm
- Shipping Weight: 204 g
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #646,920 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Details |
Product Description
Review
"Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century provides a wide-ranging synthesis of the current scholarship on Polish-Lithuanian Jewry. Gershon David Hundert's control of the secondary literature is magnificent: he incorporates the findings of over a century of research up to and including the most recent works in every relevant language. Only a handful of scholars in the world today could approach this level of mastery." - Benjamin Nathans, author of Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia "Gershon David Hundert's Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century is likely to be viewed as the standard scholarly survey of the topic of 'classic' Polish Jewry for years to come." - Moshe Rosman, author of Founder of Hasidism: A Quest for the Historical Ba'al Shem Tov"
Product Description
Missing from most accounts of the modern history of Jews in Europe is the experience of what was once the largest Jewish community in the world--an oversight that Gershon David Hundert corrects in this history of Eastern European Jews in the eighteenth century.
The experience of eighteenth-century Jews in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth did not fit the pattern of integration and universalization--in short, of westernization--that historians tend to place at the origins of Jewish modernity. Hundert puts this experience, that of the majority of the Jewish people, at the center of his history. He focuses on the relations of Jews with the state and their role in the economy, and on more "internal" developments such as the popularization of the Kabbalah and the rise of Hasidism. Thus he describes the elements of Jewish experience that became the basis for a "core Jewish identity"--an identity that accompanied the majority of Jews into modernity.
The experience of eighteenth-century Jews in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth did not fit the pattern of integration and universalization--in short, of westernization--that historians tend to place at the origins of Jewish modernity. Hundert puts this experience, that of the majority of the Jewish people, at the center of his history. He focuses on the relations of Jews with the state and their role in the economy, and on more "internal" developments such as the popularization of the Kabbalah and the rise of Hasidism. Thus he describes the elements of Jewish experience that became the basis for a "core Jewish identity"--an identity that accompanied the majority of Jews into modernity.
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Amazon.com:
3.3 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Standard Work With Depth & Breadth, Mar 29 2009
By A Reader - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century: A Genealogy of Modernity (Paperback)
Please don't be put off by uninformed reviewers- I find these last critiques quite unhelpful. Hundert's work is the consummation of a career dedicated to bringing our understanding of the East European Jewish past out of a conceptual ghetto by taking the Polish context seriously and tracing the development of a Jewish social and economic niche in Polish towns and cities. At the same time, Hundert details inner Jewish life, covering every conceivable dimension of Polish-Jewish civilization during the 18th century- religious, communal, economic, cultural (especially print culture), social, etc. It provides an interesting description of the spread of kabbalah, the rise of Hasidism, and the emergence of a Polish Jewish bourgeoisie. Most importantly, Hundert draws attention to the demographic significance of Polish Jewry, which constituted about 3/4 of the world Jewish population by the 18th century! Admittedly, it can be dense at times; but would you prefer a sleek but superficial account? The persistent reader is rewarded with a rich exposition of East European Jewish life, which was decimated during WWII.
5 of 12 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
A great book for European Jewish history, Sep 17 2006
By E. Silverstone - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century: A Genealogy of Modernity (Paperback)
It is well worth reading but I wish it was longer and more detailed. And, would it be so terrible if it were discovered that changes to Jewish religious practice in 18th Century Poland were borrowed or influenced from sources outside the Jewish religion? Maybe one day we will know more.
2 of 15 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars
dense all too dense, Jan 27 2009
By N. Ravitch - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century: A Genealogy of Modernity (Paperback)
The subtitle is misleading: this thorough discussion of the non-integration of Jews in the Polish Republic for several centuries does not reveal the genealogy of modernity at all. It reveals why a modernized and nationalized Poland in the later nineteenth and twentieth century would not be able to tolerate such a large undigestible blob in its midst.
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