1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910782945403321

Autore

Hundert Gershon David <1946-2023.>

Titolo

Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the eighteenth century [[electronic resource] ] : a genealogy of modernity / / Gershon David Hundert

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Berkeley, : University of California Press, c2004

ISBN

1-282-35877-4

9786612358777

0-520-94032-6

1-59734-693-4

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (307 p.)

Collana

S. Mark Taper Foundation imprint in Jewish studies Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the eighteenth century

Disciplina

943.8/004924

Soggetti

Jews - Poland - History - 18th century

Jews - Poland - Economic conditions - 18th century

Jews - Poland - Social conditions - 18th century

Jews - Lithuania - History - 18th century

Jews - Lithuania - Economic conditions - 18th century

Jews - Lithuania - Social conditions - 18th century

Mysticism - Judaism - History - 18th century

Hasidism - Europe, Eastern - History - 18th century

Poland Ethnic relations

Lithuania Ethnic relations

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

The largest Jewish community in the world -- Economic integration -- The Polish church and Jews, Polish Jews and the Church -- The community -- Was there a communal "crisis" in the eighteenth century? -- The popularization of kabbalah -- Mystic ascetics and religious radicals -- The contexts of Hasidism -- Hasidism, a new path -- Jews and the Sejm.

Sommario/riassunto

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.