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Boundaries - physical, political, social, religious, and cultural -
were a key feature of life in medieval and early modern Poland, and
this volume focuses on the ways in which these boundaries were
respected, crossed, or otherwise negotiated. It throws new light on
the contacts between Jews and Poles, including the vexed question
of conversion and the tensions it aroused. The collected articles
also discuss relations between the various elements of Jewish
society - the wealthy and the poor, the educated and the
uneducated, and the religious and the lay elites, considering too
contacts between Jews in Poland and those in Germany and elsewhere.
Classic studies by such eminent scholars as Meir Balaban, Jacob
Goldberg, and Moshe Rosman provide a foil for new research by Hanna
Zaremska and David Frick, as well as Adam Teller, Magda Teter,
Elisheva Carlebach, Jurgen Heyde, and Adam Kazmierczyk. Taken
together, the contributions on this central theme help redefine the
Jewish history of pre-modern Poland. As ever, the New Views section
examines a wide variety of other topics. These include accusations
of ritual murder in nineteenth-century Poland; the Russian Jewish
integrationist politician Mikhail Morgulis; the attitude of
Boleslaw Prus towards Jewish assimilation and his relationship with
the Jewish journalist Nahum Sokolow; women in the Mizrahi movement
in Poland; Polish patriotism among Jews; the impact of the first
Soviet occupation of 1939-41 on Polish-Jewish relations; how the
war affected the views of Julian Tuwim and Antoni Slonimski; the
shtetl in the work of American Jewish writers Allen Hoffman and
Jonathan Safran Foer; and the initial Polish response to Jan
Gross's "Fear."
It has often been claimed that Jews have a penchant for capitalism
and capitalist economic activity. With this book, Adam Teller
challenges that assumption. Examining how Jews achieved their
extraordinary success within the late feudal economy of the
eighteenth-century Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, he shows that
economic success did not necessarily come through any innate
entrepreneurial skills, but through identifying and exploiting
economic niches in the pre-modern economy-in particular, the
monopoly on the sale of grain alcohol. Jewish economic activity was
a key factor in the development of the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth, and it greatly enhanced the incomes, and thereby the
social and political status, of the noble magnates, including the
powerful Radziwill family. In turn, with the magnate's backing,
Jews were able to leverage their own economic success into high
status in estate society. Over time, relations within Jewish
society began to change, putting less value on learning and
pedigree and more on wealth and connections with the estate owners.
This groundbreaking book exemplifies how the study of Jewish
economic history can shed light on a crucial mechanism of Jewish
social integration. In the Polish-Lithuanian setting, Jews were
simultaneously a despised religious minority and key economic
players, with a consequent standing that few could afford to
ignore.
A groundbreaking examination of a little-known but defining episode
in early modern Jewish history A refugee crisis of huge proportions
erupted as a result of the mid-seventeenth-century wars in the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Tens of thousands of Jews fled
their homes, or were captured and trafficked across Europe, the
Middle East, and North Africa. Rescue the Surviving Souls is the
first book to examine this horrific moment of displacement and
flight, and to assess its social, economic, religious, cultural,
and psychological consequences. Drawing on a wealth of primary
sources in twelve languages, Adam Teller traces the entire course
of the crisis, shedding fresh light on the refugee experience and
the various relief strategies developed by the major Jewish centers
of the day. Teller pays particular attention to those thousands of
Jews sent for sale on the slave markets of Istanbul and the
extensive transregional Jewish economic network that coalesced to
ransom them. He also explores how Jewish communities rallied to
support the refugees in central and western Europe, as well as in
Poland-Lithuania, doing everything possible to help them overcome
their traumatic experiences and rebuild their lives. Rescue the
Surviving Souls offers an intimate study of an international
refugee crisis, from outbreak to resolution, that is profoundly
relevant today.
How has the ability of Jews to amass and wield power, within both
Jewish and non-Jewish society, influenced and been influenced by
their economic activity? Purchasing Power answers this question by
examining the nexus between money and power in modern Jewish
history. It does so, in its first section, by presenting a series
of case studies of the ways in which the economic choices made by
Jewish businessmen could bring them wealth and influence. The
second section focuses on transnational Jewish philanthropic and
economic networks. The discussions there reveal how the wielding of
power by Jewish organizations on the world stage could shape not
only Jewish society but also the international arena. In this way,
the contributors to this volume reposition economics as central to
our understanding of the Jewish experience from early modern Rome
to contemporary America. Its importance for the creation of the
State of Israel is also examined. As the editors write: "The study
of culture and identity has proved valuable and enlightening (and,
in some senses, also comfortable) in understanding the complexities
of Jewish history. Perhaps we should now return to the issues of
the material bases for Jewish life, and the ways in which Jews have
exploited them in their search for wealth and power. Our
understanding of the Jewish past will be immeasurably enriched in
the effort." Contributors: Cornelia Aust, Bernard Cooperman, Veerle
Vanden Daelen, Jonathan Dekel-Chen, Glenn Dynner, Abigail Green,
Jonathan Karp, Rebecca Kobrin, Adam D. Mendelsohn, Derek Penslar,
Adam Sutcliffe, Adam Teller, Carsten L. Wilke.
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