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

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910819714603321
• Autore: Hundert Gershon David <1946->
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: Berkeley, : University of California Press, c2004
• ISBN: 1-282-35877-4; 9786612358777; 0-520-94032-6; 1-59734-693-4
• Edizione: [1st ed.]
• 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.