A People Apart: The Jews in Europe, 1789-1939 (Oxford History of Modern Europe) [Hardcover]

David Vital (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0198219806 | ISBN-13: 978-0198219804 | Publication Date: September 9, 1999 | Edition: 1St Edition

The twentieth century has seen both the greatest triumph of Jewish history (the birth of the nation of Israel) and its greatest tragedy (the state sponsored genocide of the Holocaust). A People Apart is the first study to examine the role played by the Jews themselves, across the whole of Europe, during the century and a half leading up to these events.
In this monumental work of history, David Vital explores the Jews' troubled relationship with Europe, documenting the struggles of this "nation without a territory" to establish a place for itself within an increasingly polarized and nationalist continent. The book ranges across the whole of the continent during this crucial period, examining Jewish communities in all the major countries, describing everything from incrementalism in England to the impenetrable hostility to be found in Germany. The author describes pogroms, poverty, and migration, the image of the Jew as revolutionary, the rise of Zionism and the "Palestinian idea," and much more. Vital is particularly interested in the dynamics within the Jewish community, examining the clash between politically neutral traditionalists and a new group of activists, whose unprecedented demands for national and political self-determination were stimulated both by increasing civil emancipation and the mounting effort to drive the Jews out of Europe altogether. The book ends on a controversial note, with Vital suggesting that the fate of the Jewish people was to some degree their own doing; at times, by their own autonomous action and choice; at others, by inaction and default.
This powerful and stimulating new analysis represents a watershed in our understanding of the history of the Jews in Europe.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In 1744, at the height of the War of the Austrian Succession, Empress Maria Therese came to believe that the Jews of Prague were plotting against her, in league with Austria's Prussian enemies. She decided accordingly to expel every member of the city's long-established Jewish community--"a brutal sanction," Anglo-Israeli historian David Vital notes, that "would have put an entire population on to the roads of Europe to march through lands in which they were highly unlikely to be allowed to settle in search of one in which they might." Maria Therese relented eventually, but the Jews of her empire were reminded once again of their precarious position, always potential victims of a ruler's whim.

Half a century later, for the first time in European history, the Jews of France were accorded equal rights of citizenship in the wake of the revolution. From that time on, Vital writes in his encyclopedic history of Jews in early-modern Europe, secularism replaced the former hierarchy of ghetto leaders and rabbinical authority. Able to move more or less freely in the larger society, Jews no longer had to band together for protection, and in short order many of them played important roles in finance, government, and industry. Reaction to their rise was swift: with it came an increase in anti-Semitism and militant nationalism throughout Europe, opposition from both right and left. Their communities now weakened, Jews were ever more vulnerable to attacks by their enemies. These tendencies would culminate in Holocaust, a nightmare of history that, Vital shows, was decades in the making. --Gregory McNamee

From Publishers Weekly

In an ambitious and comprehensive text, Vital (The Future of the Jews, etc.) tells the history of European Jewry from 1789, the year France became the first European nation to grant full citizenship to its Jews, to 1939, when Hitler sought brutally to answer the still unresolved question of how Jews were to live in Europe. Vital details all the upheavals experienced by Europe's different Jewish communities: the promises and perils of assimilation; the Jewish Enlightenment, or Haskalah, during which the previously insular Jewish world opened itself to the influence of the larger European culture; the mass emigration of Eastern European Jews to Western Europe and the United States; the formation of the Zionist movement. He rightly devotes much space to how Jews were attracted to radical ideologies, particularly socialism and Zionism, and to how Jewish leaders interacted with European decision makers. While Vital, who worked in the Israeli government before pursuing a distinguished academic career, is sympathetic toward his subjects, he doesn't shrink from unflattering portrayalsAsuch as his description of the embarrassed snobbery that cosmopolitan French, German and British Jews displayed toward Eastern European Jewish immigrants. With barely restrained anger, he details how an emerging Jewish leadership was unable to combat growing anti-Semitism in the 1930s: Zionist leaders, he writes, "formed a wasting asset in German Jewry's hour of greatest need." This is a huge book, and Vital's prose is not likely to make a reader's passage through it any easier. Yet it is a distinguished work of history, notable for its determination to show how both Jews and non-Jews coped with the many issues that arose as a previously isolated people strove to joinAor, in some communities, to remain separate fromAthe emerging continental society of Europe. Photos not seen by PW. (Aug.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 968 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; 1St Edition edition (September 9, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0198219806
• ISBN-13: 978-0198219804
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.4 x 2.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,305,389 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Seminal Work, August 23, 2000

By 

Adam_H "haskela" - See all my reviews

This review is from: A People Apart: The Jews in Europe, 1789-1939 (Oxford History of Modern Europe) (Hardcover)

A fantastic book, full of ideas, that will be rewarding even for readers who know quite a bit about Jewish History. Most histories of the Jews in Europe, even those written by Jews, are written from a Eurocentric (Christian) viewpoint, looking at the Jews from the outside. This book is from a Jewish point of view, and makes no apologies. Does anyone remember what happened to the Jews in Europe, and not just during the Third Reich?

This is a demanding book, Vital likes long sentences, but doesn't waste words. Anyone who reads this book will be in a position to think more clearly about the position of the Jews in history and of minorities in the Western world. I wish every intelligent person would read this book.

11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very Readable, December 5, 1999

By 

Bruce Bloom - See all my reviews

This review is from: A People Apart: The Jews in Europe, 1789-1939 (Oxford History of Modern Europe) (Hardcover)

I enjoyed this book in spite of the above review. In fact I was so enthralled I read it in a very short time. The reader should be warned that it is far from a complete history of the Jews in that time period. The author focuses almost entirely on political Jewish nationalism, Jewish socialism, and Zionism. I think that although most European Jews at the time were traditional or orthodox, those that assimilated were a very diverse lot politically, culturally, and socially. Really the book touches on only a small minority of Jews. Mr. Vital's focus and the book's title would have one think otherwise. With those caveats in mind I highly recommend this book.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very Readable, December 5, 1999

By 

Bruce Bloom - See all my reviews

This review is from: A People Apart: The Jews in Europe, 1789-1939 (Oxford History of Modern Europe) (Hardcover)

I enjoyed this book in spite of the above review. In fact I was so enthralled I read it in a very short time. The reader should be warned that it is far from a complete history of the Jews in that time period. The author focuses almost entirely on political Jewish nationalism, Jewish socialism, and Zionism. I think that although most European Jews at the time were traditional or orthodox, those that assimilated were a very diverse lot politically, culturally, and socially. Really the book touches on only a small minority of Jews. Mr. Vital's focus and the book's title would have one think otherwise. With those caveats in mind I highly recommend this book.