Description
Book SynopsisThe eighteenth century was the Jews' first modern century. The deep changes that took place during its course shaped the following generations, and its most prominent voices still reverberate today. In this first volume of his magisterial work, Shmuel Feiner charts the twisting and fascinating world of the first half of the 18th century from the viewpoint of the Jews of Europe. Paying careful attention to life stories, to bright and dark experiences, to voices of protest, to aspirations of reform, and to strivings for personal and general happiness, Feiner identifies the tectonic changes that were taking place in Europe and their unprecedented effects on and among Jews. From the religious and cultural revolution of the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) to the question of whether Jews could be citizens of any nation, Feiner presents a broad view of how this century of upheaval altered the map of Europe and the Jews who called it home.
Trade Review"Shmuel Feiner gives us a capacious and methodologically innovative volume on the "modernity" of the Jewish eighteenth century by juxtaposing myriad events across disparate regions recounted through a captivating panoply of personalities."—David Sorkin, Lucy G. Moses professor of Jewish history at Yale University
"Shmuel Feiner has synthesized the work of the best modern scholars of a half-century of European Jewish history and combined it with his own, original research, to tell the story of a period little known to non-specialists. The result is a narrative that is as authoritative as it is entrancing."—Allan Arkush, Jewish Review of Books
"Extraordinarily erudite and compulsively readable, this book transforms everything we thought we knew about the Jewish eighteenth century. A remarkable achievement."—Yair Mintzker, Princeton University
Table of ContentsPreface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Happy Times? The First Century in the Modern Age
I. 1700
1. Pictures from Married Life: Glikl the daughter of Leib between Hamburg and Metz
2. "Rise up and Succeed": Absolutism and Court Jews in Baroque Culture
3. Jews in the News: The Angry Masses, a Holy Society, and "Judaism Unmasked"
4. Between Enlightened Thought and an Imaginary Universe
II. 1701–1725
5. "Everyone Wants to be Happy: Dangers and Amusements
6. "Our Miserable Brethren": Jews in Time of War
7. Melancholy, Career, and Travels: Five Life Stories
8. Christians versus Jews: Bitter and Violent Relations
9. From London to Jerusalem: Confrontations and Disputes
10. The Challenge of Sabbateanism: The Storm over the "Hypocritical Serpent"
11. Competition over the Picture of the World: Witches and Human Knowledge
III. 1725-1750
12. To Silence the "Fellow from Padua": Moses Haim Luzzatto and the Great Awakening
13. Criticism and Ambition: From Gulliver to the Baal Shem Tov and Jew Süss
14. Contradictory Tendencies: Hostility, Violence, and "True Happiness"
15. "An Indelible Stain": War and Expulsion
16. A Vision of the Future: Ascent of the Soul, a Path for the Just, and a Teacher of the Perplexed
17. Toward Mid-Century: The Awakening of Shame
Index
