Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century: A Genealogy of Modernity [Paperback]

Gershon David Hundert (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 16, 2006 | ISBN-10: 0520249941 | ISBN-13: 978-0520249943 | Edition: 1

Missing from most accounts of the modern history of Jews in Europe is the experience of what was once the largest Jewish community in the world--an oversight that Gershon David Hundert corrects in this history of Eastern European Jews in the eighteenth century.
The experience of eighteenth-century Jews in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth did not fit the pattern of integration and universalization--in short, of westernization--that historians tend to place at the origins of Jewish modernity. Hundert puts this experience, that of the majority of the Jewish people, at the center of his history. He focuses on the relations of Jews with the state and their role in the economy, and on more "internal" developments such as the popularization of the Kabbalah and the rise of Hasidism. Thus he describes the elements of Jewish experience that became the basis for a "core Jewish identity"--an identity that accompanied the majority of Jews into modernity.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century provides a wide-ranging synthesis of the current scholarship on Polish-Lithuanian Jewry. Gershon David Hundert's control of the secondary literature is magnificent: he incorporates the findings of over a century of research up to and including the most recent works in every relevant language. Only a handful of scholars in the world today could approach this level of mastery." - Benjamin Nathans, author of Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia "Gershon David Hundert's Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century is likely to be viewed as the standard scholarly survey of the topic of 'classic' Polish Jewry for years to come." - Moshe Rosman, author of Founder of Hasidism: A Quest for the Historical Ba'al Shem Tov"

From the Inside Flap

"Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century provides a wide-ranging synthesis of the current scholarship on Polish-Lithuanian Jewry. Gershon David Hundert's control of the secondary literature is magnificent: he incorporates the findings of over a century of research up to and including the most recent works in every relevant language. Only a handful of scholars in the world today could approach this level of mastery."--Benjamin Nathans, author of Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia

"Gershon David Hundert's Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century is likely to be viewed as the standard scholarly survey of the topic of 'classic' Polish Jewry for years to come."--Moshe Rosman, author of Founder of Hasidism: A Quest for the Historical Ba'al Shem Tov

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 307 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press; 1 edition (August 16, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520249941
• ISBN-13: 978-0520249943
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #459,711 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #17 in Books > History > Europe > Lithuania

More About the Author

Professor of History and Segal Professor of Jewish Studies at McGill University. The website version of the YIVO Encyclopedia is up!
www.yivoencyclopedia.org

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Standard Work With Depth & Breadth, March 29, 2009

By 

A Reader - See all my reviews

This review is from: Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century: A Genealogy of Modernity (Paperback)

Please don't be put off by uninformed reviewers- I find these last critiques quite unhelpful. Hundert's work is the consummation of a career dedicated to bringing our understanding of the East European Jewish past out of a conceptual ghetto by taking the Polish context seriously and tracing the development of a Jewish social and economic niche in Polish towns and cities. At the same time, Hundert details inner Jewish life, covering every conceivable dimension of Polish-Jewish civilization during the 18th century- religious, communal, economic, cultural (especially print culture), social, etc. It provides an interesting description of the spread of kabbalah, the rise of Hasidism, and the emergence of a Polish Jewish bourgeoisie. Most importantly, Hundert draws attention to the demographic significance of Polish Jewry, which constituted about 3/4 of the world Jewish population by the 18th century! Admittedly, it can be dense at times; but would you prefer a sleek but superficial account? The persistent reader is rewarded with a rich exposition of East European Jewish life, which was decimated during WWII.

5 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A great book for European Jewish history, September 17, 2006

By 

E. Silverstone (Toronto, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century: A Genealogy of Modernity (Paperback)

It is well worth reading but I wish it was longer and more detailed. And, would it be so terrible if it were discovered that changes to Jewish religious practice in 18th Century Poland were borrowed or influenced from sources outside the Jewish religion? Maybe one day we will know more.

2 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars dense all too dense, January 27, 2009

By 

N. Ravitch (Savannah, GA United States) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century: A Genealogy of Modernity (Paperback)

The subtitle is misleading: this thorough discussion of the non-integration of Jews in the Polish Republic for several centuries does not reveal the genealogy of modernity at all. It reveals why a modernized and nationalized Poland in the later nineteenth and twentieth century would not be able to tolerate such a large undigestible blob in its midst.