The study of Jewish converts to Christianity in the modern era has
long been marginalized in Jewish historiography. Labeled
disparagingly in the Jewish tradition as meshumadim (apostates),
many earlier Jewish scholars treated these individuals in a
negative light or generally ignored them as not properly belonging
any longer to the community and its historical legacy. This
situation has radically changed in recent years with an outpouring
of new studies on converts in variegated times and places,
culminating perhaps in the most recent synthesis of modern Jewish
converts by Todd Endelman in 2015. While Endelman argues that most
modern converts left the Jewish fold for economic, social, or
political reasons, he does acknowledge the presence of those who
chose to convert for ideological and spiritual motives. The purpose
of this volume is to consider more fully the latter group, perhaps
the most interesting from the perspective of Jewish intellectual
history: those who moved from Judaism to Christianity out of a
conviction that they were choosing a superior religion, and out of
doubt or lack of confidence in the religious principles and
practices of their former one. Their spiritual journeys often led
them to suspect their newly adopted beliefs as well, and some even
returned to Judaism or adopted a hybrid faith consisting of
elements of both religions. Their intellectual itineraries between
Judaism and Christianity offer a unique perspective on the
formation of modern Jewish identities, Jewish-Christian relations,
and the history of Jewish skeptical postures. The approach of the
authors of this book is to avoid broad generalizations about the
modern convert in favor of detailed case studies of specific
converts in four distinct localities: Germany, Russia, Poland, and
England, all living in the nineteenth- century. In so doing, it
underscores the individuality of each convert's life experience and
self-reflection and the need to examine more intensely this
relatively neglected dimension of Jewish and Christian cultural and
intellectual history.
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