Tradition and Crisis: Jewish Society at the End of the Middle Ages / Edition 1

by Jacob Katz, Bernard Dov Cooperman

Overview

A new edition of Katz's study of European Jewish society at end of the Middle Ages. It taps into a rich source, the responsa literature of the Rabbinic establishment of the time, a time when self-governing communities of Jews dealt with their own civil and religious issues.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780815628279
Publisher:	Syracuse University Press
Publication date:	02/01/2000
Series:	Medieval Studies Series
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	410
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.04(d)

About the Author

Jacob Katz ( 1904-1998) is the author of From Prejudice to Destruction: Anti-Semitism, 1700-1933 and Out of the Ghetto: The Social Background of Jewish Emancipation, 1770-1870.

Table of Contents

	Translator's Foreword	ix
	Preface	xi
	Preface to the First Edition	xiii
	A Note on Transliteration	xvii
Part I	The Basis of Existence	1
1	Definition of Our Subject	3
2	Jewish Society and Its Environment	10
3	Barriers against the Outside	17
4	Contact with the Surrounding Society	26
5	The Attitude toward the Environment	31
6	Economic Structures	38
7	Sociological Aspects of Jewish Capitalism	44
8	Religion and Economic Activity	52
Part II	Communal Institutions and Structure	63
9	The Form and Structure of the Kehila	65
10	The Kehila's Range of Activities	76
11	The Composition of the Kehila	88
12	Inter-communal Relations	95
13	Supra-Kehila Organizations	103
14	The Family	113
15	The Extended Family	125
16	Confraternities and Social Life	132
17	Religious Institutions	141
18	Educational Institutions	156
19	Stratification and Mobility	170
Part III	The Beginnings of Breakdown	181
20	The Impact of Historical Events	183
21	Historic Turning Points	195
22	The Transition to Hasidism	202
23	The Emergence of the Neutral Society	214
24	The Haskala's Vision of the Future	226
	Afterword: Tradition and Crisis and the Study of Early Modern Jewish History	237
	Notes	255
	Bibliography	361
	Index	383

Editorial Reviews

An insightful study into the structure of the Jewish 'traditional society' in the Europe of Ashkenazic Jewery, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, and the Germanic lands including Bohemia, Moravia, and Alsace from the 16th to the latter half of the 18th century.

Review of Religious Research