Customer Reviews

Divided Souls: Converts from Judaism in Germany, 1500-1750

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The author provides a realistic account of Christian treatment of Jews living in Germany during the 1500 - 1750 time period. The focus is what happened to many individual Jews when confronted by demands for religious conversion. Some background is provided to place this in German history within the context of the Spanish iniquisition and before that the 1st crusade both of which specialized in issuing Jewish 'conversion or death' ultimatums.

The narrative is very straightforward and powerful as he unfolds situation after situation in how the Jews were mistreated by Christians. Christian baptism was largely unhelpful even hurtful for thos who chose conversion. Their choices were mostly forced by others who did little to follow through with charity or personal interest in converts welfare.

Martin Luther wasn't alone in his anti-semitic preaching, he followed this same medieval Christian "logic" for the eternal salvation of Jewish souls. It's a very disheartening aspect of thought and resultant very bad behavior that still hasn't been learned by many modern Christians. Catholics and evangelicals appear today with their hands still in the spiritual cookie jar.

Read this book to understand why contemporary Jewish leaders are so strongly opposing Christian missionary efforts. The makeup on today's missionary efforts may look more attractive but they're driven by the same superiority complex as described in this book.

Along with this book I recommend those of Jeremy Cohen, especially his books titled "Santifying the Name" and "Christ Killers". Also the book by B Netanhayu is excellent "Origins of the Inquisition."

After reading PURSUIT OF HERESY and referencing it many times, I looked forward to reading this. It is a great disappointment. How she thought she was contributing to this vital subject totally escapes me. Her personal cultural biases shine through, her research and sources are minimal or poor, and she has absolutely no understanding of the nature and role of the mendicant orders, or what specifically their view was toward Jews and Jewish conversion, and how it developed. And this has been done very well, yet she is blind to it: hopefully unintentionally.

I thought that PURSUIT was one of the finest monographs produced by American Jewish historians - at least the current generation. But DIVIDED SOULS is just the opposite. If she's too busy to delve further into the areas covered by PURSUIT, and juggle the demands and outrages of academia, all I can say is, welcome to the club.

Some of the information is very interesting (and rare), but without informed context, I wonder about their real utility. Dr. E.S. picks and chooses, with an obvious preference for crooks or sociopaths. I'm glad she didn't write this in the 1920s. It would have provided some real fodder for those persons who viewed kol-bays-yisrael as hopelessly sociopathic, incapable of positive social integration. Guess I am angry, because I anticipated something with the sublime erudition of PURSUIT.