Author: Elissa Bemporad
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253008271
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 293
Book Description
An “endlessly rewarding” contribution to the study of Jewish life in the Soviet Union: “Fascinating . . . nuanced and respectful of human limitations” (Slavic Review). Minsk, the present capital of Belarus, was a heavily Jewish city in the decades between the world wars. Recasting our understanding of Soviet Jewish history, Becoming Soviet Jews demonstrates that pre-revolutionary forms of Jewish life in Minsk maintained continuity through the often violent social changes enforced by the communist project. Using Minsk as a case study of the Sovietization of Jews in the former Pale of Settlement, Elissa Bemporad reveals the ways in which many Jews acculturated to Soviet society in the 1920s and 1930s while remaining committed to older patterns of Jewish identity, such as Yiddish culture and education, attachment to the traditions of the Jewish workers’ Bund, circumcision, and kosher slaughter. This pioneering study also illuminates the reshaping of gender relations on the Jewish street and explores Jewish everyday life and identity during the years of the Great Terror. “Highly readable and brimming with novel facts and insights . . . [A] rich and engaging portrayal of a previously overlooked period and place.” —H-Judaic
Becoming Soviet Jews
Author: Elissa Bemporad
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253008271
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 293
Book Description
An “endlessly rewarding” contribution to the study of Jewish life in the Soviet Union: “Fascinating . . . nuanced and respectful of human limitations” (Slavic Review). Minsk, the present capital of Belarus, was a heavily Jewish city in the decades between the world wars. Recasting our understanding of Soviet Jewish history, Becoming Soviet Jews demonstrates that pre-revolutionary forms of Jewish life in Minsk maintained continuity through the often violent social changes enforced by the communist project. Using Minsk as a case study of the Sovietization of Jews in the former Pale of Settlement, Elissa Bemporad reveals the ways in which many Jews acculturated to Soviet society in the 1920s and 1930s while remaining committed to older patterns of Jewish identity, such as Yiddish culture and education, attachment to the traditions of the Jewish workers’ Bund, circumcision, and kosher slaughter. This pioneering study also illuminates the reshaping of gender relations on the Jewish street and explores Jewish everyday life and identity during the years of the Great Terror. “Highly readable and brimming with novel facts and insights . . . [A] rich and engaging portrayal of a previously overlooked period and place.” —H-Judaic
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253008271
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 293
Book Description
An “endlessly rewarding” contribution to the study of Jewish life in the Soviet Union: “Fascinating . . . nuanced and respectful of human limitations” (Slavic Review). Minsk, the present capital of Belarus, was a heavily Jewish city in the decades between the world wars. Recasting our understanding of Soviet Jewish history, Becoming Soviet Jews demonstrates that pre-revolutionary forms of Jewish life in Minsk maintained continuity through the often violent social changes enforced by the communist project. Using Minsk as a case study of the Sovietization of Jews in the former Pale of Settlement, Elissa Bemporad reveals the ways in which many Jews acculturated to Soviet society in the 1920s and 1930s while remaining committed to older patterns of Jewish identity, such as Yiddish culture and education, attachment to the traditions of the Jewish workers’ Bund, circumcision, and kosher slaughter. This pioneering study also illuminates the reshaping of gender relations on the Jewish street and explores Jewish everyday life and identity during the years of the Great Terror. “Highly readable and brimming with novel facts and insights . . . [A] rich and engaging portrayal of a previously overlooked period and place.” —H-Judaic
The Long Life and Swift Death of Jewish Rechitsa
Author: Albert Kaganovich
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Pres
ISBN: 0299289834
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 418
Book Description
Located on the Dnieper River at the crossroads of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine, the town of Rechitsa had one of the oldest Jewish communities in Belarus, dating back to medieval times. By the late nineteenth century, Jews constituted more than half of the town’s population. Rich in tradition, Jewish Rechitsa was part of a distinctive Lithuanian-Belorussian culture full of stories, vibrant personalities, achievement, and epic struggle that was gradually lost through migration, pogroms, and the Holocaust. Now, in Albert Kaganovitch’s meticulously researched history, this forgotten Jewish world is brought to life. Based on extensive use of Soviet and Israeli archives, interviews, memoirs, and secondary sources, Kaganovitch’s acclaimed work, originally published in Russian, is presented here in a significantly revised English translation by the author. Details of demographic, social, economic, and cultural changes in Rechitsa’s evolution, presented over the sweep of centuries, reveal a microcosm of daily Jewish life in Rechitsa and similar communities. Kaganovitch looks closely at such critical developments as the spread of Chabad Hasidism, the impact of multiple political transformations and global changes, and the mass murder of Rechitsa’s remaining Jews by the German army in November to December 1941. Kaganovitch also documents the evolving status of Jews in the postwar era, starting with the reconstitution of a Jewish community in Rechitsa not long after liberation in 1943 and continuing with economic, social, and political trends under Stalin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev, and finally emigration from post-Soviet Belarus. The Long Life and Swift Death of Jewish Rechitsa is a major achievement. Winner, Helen and Stan Vine Canadian Jewish Book Award for Scholarship, Koffler Centre of the Arts
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Pres
ISBN: 0299289834
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 418
Book Description
Located on the Dnieper River at the crossroads of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine, the town of Rechitsa had one of the oldest Jewish communities in Belarus, dating back to medieval times. By the late nineteenth century, Jews constituted more than half of the town’s population. Rich in tradition, Jewish Rechitsa was part of a distinctive Lithuanian-Belorussian culture full of stories, vibrant personalities, achievement, and epic struggle that was gradually lost through migration, pogroms, and the Holocaust. Now, in Albert Kaganovitch’s meticulously researched history, this forgotten Jewish world is brought to life. Based on extensive use of Soviet and Israeli archives, interviews, memoirs, and secondary sources, Kaganovitch’s acclaimed work, originally published in Russian, is presented here in a significantly revised English translation by the author. Details of demographic, social, economic, and cultural changes in Rechitsa’s evolution, presented over the sweep of centuries, reveal a microcosm of daily Jewish life in Rechitsa and similar communities. Kaganovitch looks closely at such critical developments as the spread of Chabad Hasidism, the impact of multiple political transformations and global changes, and the mass murder of Rechitsa’s remaining Jews by the German army in November to December 1941. Kaganovitch also documents the evolving status of Jews in the postwar era, starting with the reconstitution of a Jewish community in Rechitsa not long after liberation in 1943 and continuing with economic, social, and political trends under Stalin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev, and finally emigration from post-Soviet Belarus. The Long Life and Swift Death of Jewish Rechitsa is a major achievement. Winner, Helen and Stan Vine Canadian Jewish Book Award for Scholarship, Koffler Centre of the Arts
The Jews of Pinsk, 1881 to 1941
Author: Azriel Shohet
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804785023
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 794
Book Description
The Jews of Pinsk is the most detailed and comprehensive history of a single Jewish community in any language. This second portion of this study focuses on Pinsk's turbulent final sixty years, showing the reality of life in this important, and in many ways representative, Eastern European Jewish community. From the 1905 Russian revolution through World War One and the long prologue to the Holocaust, the sweep of world history and the fate of this dynamic center of Jewish life were intertwined. Pinsk's role in the bloody aftermath of World War One is still the subject of scholarly debates: the murder of 35 Jewish men from Pinsk, many from its educated elite, provoked the American and British leaders to send emissaries to Pinsk. Shohet argues that the executions were a deliberate ploy by the Polish military and government to intimidate the Jewish population of the new Poland. Despite an increasingly hostile Polish state, Pinsk's Jews managed to maintain their community through the 1920s and 30s—until World War Two brought a grim Soviet interregnum succeeded by the entry of the Nazis on July 4th, 1941. For the first volume of this two-volume collection, see The Jews of Pinsk, 1506-1880 at www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=1442.
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804785023
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 794
Book Description
The Jews of Pinsk is the most detailed and comprehensive history of a single Jewish community in any language. This second portion of this study focuses on Pinsk's turbulent final sixty years, showing the reality of life in this important, and in many ways representative, Eastern European Jewish community. From the 1905 Russian revolution through World War One and the long prologue to the Holocaust, the sweep of world history and the fate of this dynamic center of Jewish life were intertwined. Pinsk's role in the bloody aftermath of World War One is still the subject of scholarly debates: the murder of 35 Jewish men from Pinsk, many from its educated elite, provoked the American and British leaders to send emissaries to Pinsk. Shohet argues that the executions were a deliberate ploy by the Polish military and government to intimidate the Jewish population of the new Poland. Despite an increasingly hostile Polish state, Pinsk's Jews managed to maintain their community through the 1920s and 30s—until World War Two brought a grim Soviet interregnum succeeded by the entry of the Nazis on July 4th, 1941. For the first volume of this two-volume collection, see The Jews of Pinsk, 1506-1880 at www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=1442.
The Jewish Revolution in Belorussia
Author: Andrew Sloin
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253024633
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 346
Book Description
A Dorothy Rosenberg Prize–winner: "A remarkable social history that investigates the process of Sovietization among Jews in Belorussia” (Jeffrey Veidlinger, author of In the Shadow of the Shtetl). This insightful history demonstrates how Jewish life in Belorussia fundamentally changed when Jews started joining the Bolshevik movement and populating the front lines of the revolutionary struggle. While Andrew Sloin’s story follows the arc of Bolshevik history, it also shows how the broader movement was enacted in factories and workshops, workers’ clubs and union meetings, and on the Jewish streets of White Russia. In the eyes of the Bolshevik leadership, the project of transforming Jews into integrated Soviet citizens was bound inextricably to labor. The protagonists here are shoemakers, speculators, glassmakers, peddlers, leatherworkers, needleworkers, soldiers, students, and local party operatives who were swept up, willingly or otherwise, under the banner of Marxist socialism. With extensive research and keen insight, Sloin stresses the fundamental relationship between economy and identity formation as party officials grappled with the Jewish Question in the wake of the revolution.
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253024633
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 346
Book Description
A Dorothy Rosenberg Prize–winner: "A remarkable social history that investigates the process of Sovietization among Jews in Belorussia” (Jeffrey Veidlinger, author of In the Shadow of the Shtetl). This insightful history demonstrates how Jewish life in Belorussia fundamentally changed when Jews started joining the Bolshevik movement and populating the front lines of the revolutionary struggle. While Andrew Sloin’s story follows the arc of Bolshevik history, it also shows how the broader movement was enacted in factories and workshops, workers’ clubs and union meetings, and on the Jewish streets of White Russia. In the eyes of the Bolshevik leadership, the project of transforming Jews into integrated Soviet citizens was bound inextricably to labor. The protagonists here are shoemakers, speculators, glassmakers, peddlers, leatherworkers, needleworkers, soldiers, students, and local party operatives who were swept up, willingly or otherwise, under the banner of Marxist socialism. With extensive research and keen insight, Sloin stresses the fundamental relationship between economy and identity formation as party officials grappled with the Jewish Question in the wake of the revolution.
Drohitchin Memorial (Yizkor) Book - 500 Years of Jewish Life (Drohiczyn, Belarus) Translation of Drohitchin - Finf Hundert Yor Yidish Lebn
Author: David Goldman
Publisher: Jewishgen.Incorporated
ISBN: 9781939561169
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 738
Book Description
This is the translation of the Memorial (Yizkor) Book of Jewish community of Drohichin, Belarus. This history of Drohitchin/Drahichyn --in Belarus -- covers the nearly 500-year old Jewish community that had almost 5,000 Jewish residents at the start of World War II. This book is both history and memoir, and it includes poetry, tributes, and many photos. Also contained is a necrology of the Shoah victims from Drohitchin and nearby towns murdered in the two Drohitchin massacres ( July 25 and October 15, 1942). Former Drohitchin residents and descendants contributed first-hand accounts to this book so that future generations could learn about the long history of this once vibrant Jewish community. Read and treasure this heart-wrenching account of a Jewish world that no longer exists. Drohitchin is located 40 miles W of Pinsk, 33 miles East of Kobryn, 16 miles East of Antopol. [Not to be confused with the smaller town of Drohiczyn, Poland, 49 miles WNW of Brest]. Alternate names for the town: Drahichyn [Belarussian], Drogichin [Russsian], Drohiczyn [Polish], Drohitchin [Yiddish], Drahitschyn [German], Drogi inas [Lithuanian], Drohichin, Drohiczyn Poleski, Drahi yn, Dorohiczyn. Published by the Yizkor Books in Print Project, part of Yizkor Books Project of JewishGen, Inc. 736 pages, 8.5" by 11," hard cover, including all photos and other images and new lists of residents compiled recently
Publisher: Jewishgen.Incorporated
ISBN: 9781939561169
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 738
Book Description
This is the translation of the Memorial (Yizkor) Book of Jewish community of Drohichin, Belarus. This history of Drohitchin/Drahichyn --in Belarus -- covers the nearly 500-year old Jewish community that had almost 5,000 Jewish residents at the start of World War II. This book is both history and memoir, and it includes poetry, tributes, and many photos. Also contained is a necrology of the Shoah victims from Drohitchin and nearby towns murdered in the two Drohitchin massacres ( July 25 and October 15, 1942). Former Drohitchin residents and descendants contributed first-hand accounts to this book so that future generations could learn about the long history of this once vibrant Jewish community. Read and treasure this heart-wrenching account of a Jewish world that no longer exists. Drohitchin is located 40 miles W of Pinsk, 33 miles East of Kobryn, 16 miles East of Antopol. [Not to be confused with the smaller town of Drohiczyn, Poland, 49 miles WNW of Brest]. Alternate names for the town: Drahichyn [Belarussian], Drogichin [Russsian], Drohiczyn [Polish], Drohitchin [Yiddish], Drahitschyn [German], Drogi inas [Lithuanian], Drohichin, Drohiczyn Poleski, Drahi yn, Dorohiczyn. Published by the Yizkor Books in Print Project, part of Yizkor Books Project of JewishGen, Inc. 736 pages, 8.5" by 11," hard cover, including all photos and other images and new lists of residents compiled recently
How the Soviet Jew Was Made
Author: Sasha Senderovich
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674238192
Category : HISTORY
Languages : en
Pages : 369
Book Description
In post-1917 Russian and Yiddish literature, films, and reportage, Sasha Senderovich finds a new cultural figure: the Soviet Jew. Suddenly mobile after more than a century of restrictions under the tsars, Jewish authors created characters who traversed space and history, carrying with them the dislodged practices and archetypes of a lost world.
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674238192
Category : HISTORY
Languages : en
Pages : 369
Book Description
In post-1917 Russian and Yiddish literature, films, and reportage, Sasha Senderovich finds a new cultural figure: the Soviet Jew. Suddenly mobile after more than a century of restrictions under the tsars, Jewish authors created characters who traversed space and history, carrying with them the dislodged practices and archetypes of a lost world.
Jewish Life in Belarus
Author: Leonid Smilovitsky
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 9633860261
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 346
Book Description
Jewish life in Belarus in the years after World War II was long an enigma. Officially it was held to be as being non-existent, and in the ideological atmosphere of the time research on the matter was impossible. Jewish community life had been wiped out by the Nazis, and information on its revival was suppressed by the communists. For more than half a century the truth about Jewish life during this period was sealed in inaccessible archives. The Jews of Belarus preferred to keep silent rather than expose themselves to the animosity of the authorities. Although the fate of Belarusian Jews before and during the war has now been amply studied, this book is one of the first attempts to study Jewish life in Belarus during the last decade of Stalin's rule. In addition to archival materials, the present research is based on a questionnaire submitted to former residents of Belarus in Israel, as well as information from periodicals, collections of documents, statistical reports and monographs.
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 9633860261
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 346
Book Description
Jewish life in Belarus in the years after World War II was long an enigma. Officially it was held to be as being non-existent, and in the ideological atmosphere of the time research on the matter was impossible. Jewish community life had been wiped out by the Nazis, and information on its revival was suppressed by the communists. For more than half a century the truth about Jewish life during this period was sealed in inaccessible archives. The Jews of Belarus preferred to keep silent rather than expose themselves to the animosity of the authorities. Although the fate of Belarusian Jews before and during the war has now been amply studied, this book is one of the first attempts to study Jewish life in Belarus during the last decade of Stalin's rule. In addition to archival materials, the present research is based on a questionnaire submitted to former residents of Belarus in Israel, as well as information from periodicals, collections of documents, statistical reports and monographs.
Jewish Life After the USSR
Author: Zvi Y. Gitelman
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253341624
Category : Jews
Languages : en
Pages : 302
Book Description
Since the late 1980s, one of the world's largest Jewish populations has faced a unique dilemma: at the very time it has gained unprecedented freedoms, Soviet and post-Soviet Jewry has encountered political uncertainty, economic instability, and resurgent antisemitism. A population teetering simultaneously on the edge of decline and revival, Jews in the former Soviet Union have had to decide whether to take advantage of the new opportunity to revive Jewish life and rebuild Jewish communities, live in the newly established states but disappear as Jews, or abandon their former homes and emigrate to Israel or elsewhere. Jewish Life after the USSR is the first book to study post-Soviet Jewry in depth. Its careful analyses of demographic, cultural, political, and ethnic processes affecting an important post-Soviet population also give insights into larger developments in the post-Soviet states. A fine-grained snapshot of one of the world's great Jewish centers, the volume is essential reading for those seeking to understand the past, present, and future of post-Soviet Jewry. Contributors: Robert J. Brym, Valery Chervyakov, Alanna Cooper, Theodore H. Friedgut, Zvi Gitelman, Musya Glants, Marshall I. Goldman, Martin Horwitz, Judith Deutsch Kornblatt, Mikhail Krutikov, Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, Yaacov Ro'i, Vladimir Shapiro, Sarai Brachman Shoup, and Mark Tolts.
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253341624
Category : Jews
Languages : en
Pages : 302
Book Description
Since the late 1980s, one of the world's largest Jewish populations has faced a unique dilemma: at the very time it has gained unprecedented freedoms, Soviet and post-Soviet Jewry has encountered political uncertainty, economic instability, and resurgent antisemitism. A population teetering simultaneously on the edge of decline and revival, Jews in the former Soviet Union have had to decide whether to take advantage of the new opportunity to revive Jewish life and rebuild Jewish communities, live in the newly established states but disappear as Jews, or abandon their former homes and emigrate to Israel or elsewhere. Jewish Life after the USSR is the first book to study post-Soviet Jewry in depth. Its careful analyses of demographic, cultural, political, and ethnic processes affecting an important post-Soviet population also give insights into larger developments in the post-Soviet states. A fine-grained snapshot of one of the world's great Jewish centers, the volume is essential reading for those seeking to understand the past, present, and future of post-Soviet Jewry. Contributors: Robert J. Brym, Valery Chervyakov, Alanna Cooper, Theodore H. Friedgut, Zvi Gitelman, Musya Glants, Marshall I. Goldman, Martin Horwitz, Judith Deutsch Kornblatt, Mikhail Krutikov, Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, Yaacov Ro'i, Vladimir Shapiro, Sarai Brachman Shoup, and Mark Tolts.
A Memorial to the Jewish Community of Zhetl (Dzyatlava, Belarus)
Author: Baruch Kaplinski
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781954176294
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 690
Book Description
If you're reading this it's because you want to learn about the now extinct Jewish village of Zhetl, known today as Dyatlovo, Belarus. Unfortunately, you can't read it in Yiddish. Sixty-Five years after this Zhetl Yizkor book was originally published, I am honored to make it available to the English-speaking world. Why do you care about Zhetl? If you're like me, it's probably because your parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, uncles, aunts or cousins were born and lived in Zhetl. A few of them survived, all of them tried to, but most of them were savagely murdered during humanity's lowest point in modern history: the Holocaust of World War II. If you're like me, you've heard bits and pieces of your family's Zhetl's stories over the years. Some of them get repeated to the point where you no longer hear them. Then one day you wake up and want to know more. You want to ask the questions which your youthful self didn't have the time, nor interest, to ask. But alas, our Zhetl is gone. Therein lies the wisdom of our dear Zhetl relatives. They knew this day would come. We all owe a debt of gratitude to all the authors who made the time to tell their stories, as painful as it was. To Baruch Kaplinski (z"l) for editing the original 1957 version and to Mordecai (Motl) Dunetz (z"l), for passionately gathering and editing materials from former Zhetl residents and survivors the world over for nearly a decade in order to drive the project through to its completion.
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781954176294
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 690
Book Description
If you're reading this it's because you want to learn about the now extinct Jewish village of Zhetl, known today as Dyatlovo, Belarus. Unfortunately, you can't read it in Yiddish. Sixty-Five years after this Zhetl Yizkor book was originally published, I am honored to make it available to the English-speaking world. Why do you care about Zhetl? If you're like me, it's probably because your parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, uncles, aunts or cousins were born and lived in Zhetl. A few of them survived, all of them tried to, but most of them were savagely murdered during humanity's lowest point in modern history: the Holocaust of World War II. If you're like me, you've heard bits and pieces of your family's Zhetl's stories over the years. Some of them get repeated to the point where you no longer hear them. Then one day you wake up and want to know more. You want to ask the questions which your youthful self didn't have the time, nor interest, to ask. But alas, our Zhetl is gone. Therein lies the wisdom of our dear Zhetl relatives. They knew this day would come. We all owe a debt of gratitude to all the authors who made the time to tell their stories, as painful as it was. To Baruch Kaplinski (z"l) for editing the original 1957 version and to Mordecai (Motl) Dunetz (z"l), for passionately gathering and editing materials from former Zhetl residents and survivors the world over for nearly a decade in order to drive the project through to its completion.
The Jewish Enlightenment
Author: Shmuel Feiner
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812200942
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 456
Book Description
At the beginning of the eighteenth century most European Jews lived in restricted settlements and urban ghettos, isolated from the surrounding dominant Christian cultures not only by law but also by language, custom, and dress. By the end of the century urban, upwardly mobile Jews had shaved their beards and abandoned Yiddish in favor of the languages of the countries in which they lived. They began to participate in secular culture and they embraced rationalism and non-Jewish education as supplements to traditional Talmudic studies. The full participation of Jews in modern Europe and America would be unthinkable without the intellectual and social revolution that was the Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment. Unparalleled in scale and comprehensiveness, The Jewish Enlightenment reconstructs the intellectual and social revolution of the Haskalah as it gradually gathered momentum throughout the eighteenth century. Relying on a huge range of previously unexplored sources, Shmuel Feiner fully views the Haskalah as the Jewish version of the European Enlightenment and, as such, a movement that cannot be isolated from broader eighteenth-century European traditions. Critically, he views the Haskalah as a truly European phenomenon and not one simply centered in Germany. He also shows how the republic of letters in European Jewry provided an avenue of secularization for Jewish society and culture, sowing the seeds of Jewish liberalism and modern ideology and sparking the Orthodox counterreaction that culminated in a clash of cultures within the Jewish community. The Haskalah's confrontations with its opponents within Jewry constitute one of the most fascinating chapters in the history of the dramatic and traumatic encounter between the Jews and modernity. The Haskalah is one of the central topics in modern Jewish historiography. With its scope, erudition, and new analysis, The Jewish Enlightenment now provides the most comprehensive treatment of this major cultural movement.
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812200942
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 456
Book Description
At the beginning of the eighteenth century most European Jews lived in restricted settlements and urban ghettos, isolated from the surrounding dominant Christian cultures not only by law but also by language, custom, and dress. By the end of the century urban, upwardly mobile Jews had shaved their beards and abandoned Yiddish in favor of the languages of the countries in which they lived. They began to participate in secular culture and they embraced rationalism and non-Jewish education as supplements to traditional Talmudic studies. The full participation of Jews in modern Europe and America would be unthinkable without the intellectual and social revolution that was the Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment. Unparalleled in scale and comprehensiveness, The Jewish Enlightenment reconstructs the intellectual and social revolution of the Haskalah as it gradually gathered momentum throughout the eighteenth century. Relying on a huge range of previously unexplored sources, Shmuel Feiner fully views the Haskalah as the Jewish version of the European Enlightenment and, as such, a movement that cannot be isolated from broader eighteenth-century European traditions. Critically, he views the Haskalah as a truly European phenomenon and not one simply centered in Germany. He also shows how the republic of letters in European Jewry provided an avenue of secularization for Jewish society and culture, sowing the seeds of Jewish liberalism and modern ideology and sparking the Orthodox counterreaction that culminated in a clash of cultures within the Jewish community. The Haskalah's confrontations with its opponents within Jewry constitute one of the most fascinating chapters in the history of the dramatic and traumatic encounter between the Jews and modernity. The Haskalah is one of the central topics in modern Jewish historiography. With its scope, erudition, and new analysis, The Jewish Enlightenment now provides the most comprehensive treatment of this major cultural movement.