Modernity and the Jews in Western Social Thought

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, prominent social thinkers in France, Germany, and the United States sought to understand the modern world taking shape around them. Although they worked in different national traditions and emphasized different features of modern society, they repeatedly invoked Jews as a touchstone for defining modernity and national identity in a context of rapid social change.

In Modernity and the Jews in Western Social Thought, Chad Alan Goldberg br...