"An acknowledged classic. Katz has transformed our conception of Jewish history from the 16th to the 18th century. Because of his work, we now understand that the ghetto was no longer sealed off at that time from outside opinions and that the movement towards modernity had begun long before the Jews were actually legally emancipated. Making this work available again in the revised edition is a service to scholarship and to public enlightenment."
--Arthur Hertzberg

"Since it first appeared in Hebrew in 1958, "Tradition and Crisis" has had a tremendous impact on generations of students and scholars. Katz's innovative use of sources has introduced scholars to new methodologies and opened new vistas for research. This new, unabridged translation is therefore highly welcome. It will ensure its continued use in the English-speaking world."
--Jehuda Reinharz, Richard Koret Professor of Modern Jewish History, Brandeis University

"Like a lovingly restored painting, Bernard Cooperman's new, annotated translation of Jacob Katz's classic portrait of early Jewish modernity can now be fully appreciated for the first time. An admirable achievement."
--Ivan G. Marcus

When it first appeared in Hebrew in 1958 and in English in 1961, Tradition and Crisis, Jacob Katz's groundbreaking study of Jewish society at the end of the Middle Ages, dramatically changed our perceptions of the Jewish community prior to the era of modernity. This new, unabridged translation by Bernard Dov Cooperman makes this classic available to new generations of students and scholars, together with Katz's original source notes, and an afterword and an updating bibliographic appendix by Professor Cooperman.

Katz revolutionized the field by tapping into a rich and hitherto unexplored source for reconstructing the sociology of a previous era: the responsa literature of the Rabbinic establishment during the Middle Ages. The self-governing communities of Jews in Europe dealt with issues both civil and religious. The questions and answers addressed to the rabbinic authorities and courts provide an incomparable wealth of insights into life as it was lived in this period and into the social, historical, cultural, and economic issues of the day.

How did European Jewry progress from a socially and culturally segregated society to become a component of European society at large? What were Jewish attitudes toward the Gentile world from which Jewry had been secluded for centuries? What were the bridges from the old to the new era?

Tradition and Crisis traces the roots of modernity to internal developments within the communities themselves. Katz traces the modern movements of the Haskalah (Enlightenment) in the West and Hasidism in the East, to an internal breakdown in the structure of these communities and the emergence of an alternative leadership in the wake of the Sabbatian challenge.
A dynamic work that has radically changed our view of this history, Tradition and Crisis remains the pivotal text for understanding the revolution in the entire conception of Jewish identity in the modern era.

The contributors to this volume throw light on one of the central problems of modern Jewish historiography: How has Jewry and Judaism survived the crisis of the breakup of Jewish traditional society, the transition from the dosed, ghetto existence into a more or less open environment? The process of development, starting in eighteenth-century Germany, gradually encompassed the entire world of European Jewish experience.Toward Modernity compares modernization in Germany with its counterparts in other countries to see if the German-Jewish development had any influence on what transpired elsewhere. The authors explore the history of Jewish modernization in Russia, Galicia, Vienna, Prague, Hungary, Holland, France, England, Italy, and the United States. Topics covered include: the political and social authority of Jewish community institutions; external impediments and internal inhibitions for Jews to be absorbed by the dominant culture; the relationship of the state to the Jewish community; educational and religious reform; the influence of the rational scientific worldview; and the possibility of inclusion in the emerging middle classes.Contents: Jacob Katz, "Introduction"; Emanuel Etkes, "Immanent Factors and External Influences in the Development of the Haskala Movement in Russia"; Israel Bartal, '"The Heavenly City of Germany' and Absolutism a la Mode D'Autriche: The Rise of the Haskala in Galicia"; Robert S. Wistrich, "The Modernization of Viennese Jewry: The Impact of German Culture in a Multiethnic State"; Hillel J. Kieval, "Caution's Progress: The Modernization of Jewish Life in Prague, 1780-1830"; Michael Silber, "The German Jewish Experience and Its Impact on Hungarian Jewry, 1780-1870"; Michael Graetz, "The History of an Estrangement between Two Jewish Communities: German and French Jewry during the Nineteenth Century"; Joseph Michman, "The Impact of German-Jewish Modernization on Dutch Jewry"; Lois C. Dubin, "Trieste and Berlin: The Italian Role in the Cultural Politics of the Haskalah"; Todd M. Endelman, "The Englishness of Jewish Modernity in England"; Michael A. Meyer, "German Jewish Identity in Nineteenth Century America."

The contributors to this volume throw light on one of the central problems of modern Jewish historiography: How has Jewry and Judaism survived the crisis of the breakup of Jewish traditional society, the transition from the dosed, ghetto existence into a more or less open environment? The process of development, starting in eighteenth-century Germany, gradually encompassed the entire world of European Jewish experience.

"Toward Modernity "compares modernization in Germany with its counterparts in other countries to see if the German-Jewish development had any influence on what transpired elsewhere. The authors explore the history of Jewish modernization in Russia, Galicia, Vienna, Prague, Hungary, Holland, France, England, Italy, and the United States. Topics covered include: the political and social authority of Jewish community institutions; external impediments and internal inhibitions for Jews to be absorbed by the dominant culture; the relationship of the state to the Jewish community; educational and religious reform; the influence of the rational scientific worldview; and the possibility of inclusion in the emerging middle classes.

Contents: Jacob Katz, "Introduction"; Emanuel Etkes, "Immanent Factors and External Influences in the Development of the Haskala Movement in Russia"; Israel Bartal, '"The Heavenly City of Germany' and Absolutism a la Mode D'Autriche: The Rise of the Haskala in Galicia"; Robert S. Wistrich, "The Modernization of Viennese Jewry: The Impact of German Culture in a Multiethnic State"; Hillel J. Kieval, "Caution's Progress: The Modernization of Jewish Life in Prague, 1780-1830"; Michael Silber, "The German Jewish Experience and Its Impact on Hungarian Jewry, 1780-1870"; Michael Graetz, "The History of an Estrangement between Two Jewish Communities: German and French Jewry during the Nineteenth Century"; Joseph Michman, "The Impact of German-Jewish Modernization on Dutch Jewry"; Lois C. Dubin, "Trieste and Berlin: The Italian Role in the Cultural Politics of the Haskalah"; Todd M. Endelman, "The Englishness of Jewish Modernity in England"; Michael A. Meyer, "German Jewish Identity in Nineteenth Century America."

Jacob Katz here presents a major reinterpretation of modern anti-Semitism, which blends history of ideas about the Jews gradually became transformed and then, around 1879, picked up so much social force as to result in the premeditated and systematic destruction of the Jewish people of Europe.

Mr. Katz revises the prevalent thesis that medieval and modern animosities against Jews were fundamentally different. He also rejects the scapegoat theory, according to which the Jews were merely a lightning rod for underlying economic and social tensions. On the contrary, he argues, there were very real tensions between Jews and non-Jews, because the Jews were a highly visible and cohesive group and so came into conflict with non-Jews in competing for social and economic rewards.

In the late 19th century, Mr. Katz argues, hatred of the Jews shifted from their religion to more essential aspects of their character and behavior. The term "anti-Semitism," he explains, which first came into use around 1870, was meant to describe this change. Thus, ironically, just as Jews were being integrated into the political state, skillfull propagandists such as Theodore Fritzche and Houston Stewart Chamberlain were extraordinarily successful in spreading notions of Jewish racial inferority and its threat to the pure Aryan stock. And so when Hitler came on the scene, the seeds of Jewish race hatred were widely sown.

Virtually every important question of public policy today involves an international organization. From trade to intellectual property to health policy and beyond, governments interact with international organizations in almost everything they do. Increasingly, individual citizens are directly affected by the work of international organizations. Aimed at academics, students, practitioners, and lawyers, this book gives a comprehensive overview of the world of international organizations today. It emphasizes both the practical aspects of their organization and operation, and the conceptual issues that arise at the junctures between nation-states and international authority, and between law and politics. While the focus is on inter-governmental organizations, the book also encompasses non-governmental organizations and public policy networks. With essays by the leading scholars and practitioners, the book first considers the main international organizations and the kinds of problems they address. This includes chapters on the organizations that relate to trade, humanitarian aid, peace operations, and more, as well as chapters on the history of international organizations. The book then looks at the constituent parts and internal functioning of international organizations. This addresses the internal management of the organization, and includes chapters on the distribution of decision-making power within the organizations, the structure of their assemblies, the role of Secretaries-General and other heads, budgets and finance, and other elements of complex bureaucracies at the international level. This book is essential reading for scholars, practitioners, and students alike.

Three Volumes In One. Volume 1, Authors And Titles; Volume 2, Author Index And Title Index; Volume 3, Abstracts.

Eminent social historian Jacob Katz examines the rise and transformation of Jewish communal leadership in Central Europe. It is a story of fragmentation and polarization that sheds light on the tensions within the 19th-century Jewish community in Central Europe as it struggled to respond to the promises and perils of modernization.

For some, Richard Wagner is infamous as the favorite composer of Hitler, who seems to have admired Wagner as an early exponent of his own racist ideology and worldview. Impressed by this assumption victims of Hitler have also associated Wagner and his music with Nazism to such an extent that in Israel a ban on public performance of that music is upheld to this day. Jacob Katz, a scholar of international repute, approaches the highly charged issue of Richard Wagner's anti-Semitism with the tools of a critical historian, asking two central questions: What role did anti-Semitism play in the life and work of Richard Wagner? And how did his anti-Jewish thoughts and sentiments contribute to the development of political anti-Semitism and Nazism?
In this first comprehensive and judicious treatment of Wagner's anti-Semitism, Katz analyzes the composer's attitudes in their own time and place and in the context of Wagner's life and aspirations. He traces Wagner's feelings toward Jews chronologically, showing that the composer was ultimately obsessed by a deep-seated Judeophobia generated by conflict with his Jewish mentors and competitors. But he argues against reading the later emergence of Nazism back into Wagner's life and work. While not absolving Wagner from responsibility for his views, Katz contends that contemporary Jews have paradoxically and uncritically adopted the Nazis' assumptions about Wagner. Katz argues that Wagner's music is untainted by his anti-Semitism, that there is, in fact, very little in Wagner's art that, without forced speculation, can be related to his racist views.

Out of the Ghetto is an account of the developing interrelationship between the Jews and their Gentile environment unique in its breadth and objectivity. He presents the story of Jewish emancipation as a whole, from both Jewish and non-Jewish points of view. If the results of the Jewish emancipation process differed from country to country, the forces effecting the changes were identical--the upheaval of the French Revolution, the loosening of bonds between church and state, and the ideas of the Enlightenment. It was those humanistic ideas which made possible the Jew's transition from the ghetto to partial inclusion in society at large and which attracted Jewish intellectuals to the "secular knowledge" of languages, mathematics, philosophy, and the wider world beyond their ancient learning.

From the Babylonian period to the twentieth century, strictly observant Jews have depended on a non-Jew, or "shabbes goy" to perform work that was forbidden on the Sabbath. The author traces the role of the "shabbes goy" through the centuries. Katz affords the "shabbes goy" the central role in this fascinating case study on the larger question of the adapatability of halakhah to the ever-changing circumstances of life.