Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century : A Genealogy of Modernity (S. Mark Taper Foundation Imprint in Jewish Studies)

Book 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.

From the Back Cover
"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

FROM THE PUBLISHER

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. In doing so, he focuses on the relations of Jews with the state and their role in the economy, and on the more "internal" developments, such as the popularization of 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 these Jews shows that modernization is characterized more by continuity than change. Taking such a view, Hundert offers a nuanced, sophisticated, and refreshing challenge to the now conventional notion that identifies modernity exclusively with changes in Jewish culture and society that came in response to an overwhelmingly Gentile culture and society.

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