Reassessing Jewish Life In Medieval Europe

Author : Robert Chazan
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1139493043
Total Pages : 291 pages
Book Rating : 4.48/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Reassessing Jewish Life in Medieval Europe written by Robert Chazan and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-09-27 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book re-evaluates the prevailing notion that Jews in medieval Christian Europe lived under an appalling regime of ecclesiastical limitation, governmental exploitation and expropriation, and unceasing popular violence. Robert Chazan argues that, while Jewish life in medieval Western Christendom was indeed beset with grave difficulties, it was nevertheless an environment rich in opportunities; the Jews of medieval Europe overcame obstacles, grew in number, explored innovative economic options, and fashioned enduring new forms of Jewish living. His research also provides a reconsideration of the legacy of medieval Jewish life, which is often depicted as equally destructive and projected as the underpinning of the twentieth-century catastrophes of antisemitism and the Holocaust. Dr Chazan's research proves that, although Jewish life in the medieval West laid the foundation for much Jewish suffering in the post-medieval world, it also stimulated considerable Jewish ingenuity, which lies at the root of impressive Jewish successes in the modern West.

Author : Robert Chazan
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780511860706
Total Pages : 292 pages
Book Rating : 4.06/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Reassessing Jewish Life in Medieval Europe. Robert Chazan written by Robert Chazan and published by . This book was released on 2014-05-14 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chazan argues that the challenges of life for Jews in medieval Western Christendom stimulated ingenuity, leading to later Jewish successes.

Author : Robert Chazan
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108340199
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.99/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Cambridge History of Judaism: Volume 6, The Middle Ages: The Christian World written by Robert Chazan and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-31 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Volume 6 examines the history of Judaism during the second half of the Middle Ages. Through the first half of the Middle Ages, the Jewish communities of western Christendom lagged well behind those of eastern Christendom and the even more impressive Jewries of the Islamic world. As Western Christendom began its remarkable surge forward in the eleventh century, this progress had an impact on the Jewish minority as well. The older Jewries of southern Europe grew and became more productive in every sense. Even more strikingly, a new set of Jewries were created across northern Europe, when this undeveloped area was strengthened demographically, economically, militarily, and culturally. From the smallest and weakest of the world's Jewish centers in the year 1000, the Jewish communities of western Christendom emerged - despite considerable obstacles - as the world's dominant Jewish center by the end of the Middle Ages. This demographic, economic, cultural, and spiritual dominance was maintained down into modernity.

Author : Robert Chazan
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1316982742
Total Pages : 271 pages
Book Rating : 4.47/5 ( download)

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Download or read book From Anti-Judaism to Anti-Semitism written by Robert Chazan and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-12-24 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From its earliest days, Christianity has viewed Judaism and Jews ambiguously. Given its roots within the Jewish community of first-century Palestine, there was much in Judaism that demanded Church admiration and praise; however, as Jews continued to resist Christian truth, there was also much that had to be condemned. Major Christian thinkers of antiquity - while disparaging their Jewish contemporaries for rejecting Christian truth - depicted the Jewish past and future in balanced terms, identifying both positives and negatives. Beginning at the end of the first millennium, an increasingly large Jewish community started to coalesce across rapidly developing northern Europe, becoming the object of intense popular animosity and radically negative popular imagery. The portrayals of the broad trajectory of Jewish history offered by major medieval European intellectual leaders became increasingly negative as well. The popular animosity and the negative intellectual formulations were bequeathed to the modern West, which had tragic consequences in the twentieth century. In this book, Robert Chazan traces the path that began as anti-Judaism, evolved into heightened medieval hatred and fear of Jews, and culminated in modern anti-Semitism.

Author : Israel Abrahams
Publisher : Jewish Publication Society
ISBN 13 : 0827605420
Total Pages : 479 pages
Book Rating : 4.28/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Jewish Life in the Middle Ages written by Israel Abrahams and published by Jewish Publication Society. This book was released on 1993 with total page 479 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This classic work of scholarship illustrates the richness, complexity, and fullness of medieval Jewish life. Readers will discover how much was hidden from the inquisitive and often hostile gaze of Christian Europe. Israel Abrahams vividly details the customs, manners, and mores, and delves into the social culture of Jewish life at this time.

Author : Israel Abrahams
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 494 pages
Book Rating : 4.33/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Jewish Life in the Middle Ages written by Israel Abrahams and published by . This book was released on 1896 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Kenneth Stow
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780674044050
Total Pages : 364 pages
Book Rating : 4.53/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Alienated Minority written by Kenneth Stow and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-01 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This narrative history surveying one thousand years of Jewish life integrates the Jewish experience into the context of the overall culture and society of medieval Europe. It presents a new picture of the interaction between Christians and Jews in this tumultuous era. Alienated Minority shows us what it meant to be a Jew in Europe in the Middle Ages. The story begins in the fifth century, when autonomous Jewish rule in Palestine came to a close, and when the papacy, led by Gregory the Great, established enduring principles regarding Christian policy toward Jews. Kenneth Stow examines the structures of self-government in the European Jewish community and the centrality of emerging concepts of representation. He studies economic enterprise, especially banking; constructs a clear image of the medieval Jewish family; and portrays in detail the very rich Jewish intellectual life. Analyzing policies of Church and State in the Middle Ages, Stow argues that a firmly defined legal and constitutional position of the Jewish minority in the earlier period gave way to a legal status created expressly for Jews, who in the later period were seen as inimical to the common good. It was this special status that paved the way for the royal expulsions of Jews that began at the end of the thirteenth century.

Author : Ephraim Shoham-Steiner
Publisher : Wayne State University Press
ISBN 13 : 0814345603
Total Pages : 488 pages
Book Rating : 4.03/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Jews and Crime in Medieval Europe written by Ephraim Shoham-Steiner and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 2020-11-10 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jews and Crime in Medieval Europe is a topic laced by prejudice on one hand and apologetics on the other. Beginning in the Middle Ages, Jews were often portrayed as criminals driven by greed. While these accusations were, for the most part, unfounded, in other cases criminal accusations against Jews were not altogether baseless. Drawing on a variety of legal, liturgical, literary, and archival sources, Ephraim Shoham-Steiner examines the reasons for the involvement in crime, the social profile of Jews who performed crimes, and the ways and mechanisms employed by the legal and communal body to deal with Jewish criminals and with crimes committed by Jews. A society’s attitude toward individuals identified as criminals—by others or themselves—can serve as a window into that society’s mores and provide insight into how transgressors understood themselves and society’s attitudes toward them. The book is divided into three main sections. In the first section, Shoham-Steiner examines theft and crimes of a financial nature. In the second section, he discusses physical violence and murder, most importantly among Jews but also incidents when Jews attacked others and cases in which Jews asked non-Jews to commit violence against fellow Jews. In the third section, Shoham-Steiner approaches the role of women in crime and explores the gender differences, surveying the nature of the crimes involving women both as perpetrators and as victims, as well as the reaction to their involvement in criminal activities among medieval European Jews. While the study of crime and social attitudes toward criminals is firmly established in the social sciences, the history of crime and of social attitudes toward crime and criminals is relatively new, especially in the field of medieval studies and all the more so in medieval Jewish studies. Jews and Crime in Medieval Europe blazes a new path for unearthing daily life history from extremely recalcitrant sources. The intended readership goes beyond scholars and students of medieval Jewish studies, medieval European history, and crime in pre-modern society.

Author : David Engel
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004222332
Total Pages : 343 pages
Book Rating : 4.35/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Studies in Medieval Jewish Intellectual and Social History written by David Engel and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2012-01-20 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thirteen leading scholars offer a fresh look at four key topics in medieval Jewish studies: the history of Jewish communities in Western Christendom, Jewish-Christian interactions in medieval Europe, medieval Jewish Biblical exegesis and religious literature, and historical representations of medieval Jewry.

Author : Jonathan Elukin
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400827698
Total Pages : 204 pages
Book Rating : 4.95/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Living Together, Living Apart written by Jonathan Elukin and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-01-10 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book challenges the standard conception of the Middle Ages as a time of persecution for Jews. Jonathan Elukin traces the experience of Jews in Europe from late antiquity through the Renaissance and Reformation, revealing how the pluralism of medieval society allowed Jews to feel part of their local communities despite recurrent expressions of hatred against them. Elukin shows that Jews and Christians coexisted more or less peacefully for much of the Middle Ages, and that the violence directed at Jews was largely isolated and did not undermine their participation in the daily rhythms of European society. The extraordinary picture that emerges is one of Jews living comfortably among their Christian neighbors, working with Christians, and occasionally cultivating lasting friendships even as Christian culture often demonized Jews. As Elukin makes clear, the expulsions of Jews from England, France, Spain, and elsewhere were not the inevitable culmination of persecution, but arose from the religious and political expediencies of particular rulers. He demonstrates that the history of successful Jewish-Christian interaction in the Middle Ages in fact laid the social foundations that gave rise to the Jewish communities of modern Europe. Elukin compels us to rethink our assumptions about this fascinating period in history, offering us a new lens through which to appreciate the rich complexities of the Jewish experience in medieval Christendom.