The Jews of Eastern Europe, 1772-1881

by Bartal, Israel; Naor, Chaya

• ISBN13: 9780812219074
• ISBN10: 0812219074
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-09-01
• Publisher: Univ of Pennsylvania Pr

Summary

In the nineteenth century, the largest Jewish community the modern world had known lived in hundreds of towns and shtetls in the territory between the Prussian border of Poland and the Ukrainian coast of the Black Sea. The period had started with the partition of Poland and the absorption of its territories into the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires; it would end with the first large-scale outbreaks of anti-Semitic violence and the imposition in Russia of strong anti-Semitic legislation. In the years between, a traditional society accustomed to an autonomous way of life would be transformed into one much more open to its surrounding cultures, yet much more confident of its own nationalist identity. In The Jews of Eastern Europe, Israel Bartal traces this transformation and finds in it the roots of Jewish modernity. Book jacket.

Author Biography

Israel Bartal is Avraham Harman Chair in Jewish History at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Among his books are The Records of the Council of the Four Lands, Volume 1: 1580-1792, Exile in the Homeland, and Poles and Jews: A Failed Brotherhood (with Magdalena Opalski).

Table of Contents

Introduction	1	(111)
1. The Jews of the Kingdom	14	(9)
2. The Partitions of Poland: The End of the Old Order, 1772-1795	23	(15)
3. Towns and Cities: Society and Economy, 1795-1863	38	(9)
4. Hasidim, Mitnagdim, and Maskilim	47	(11)
5. Russia and the Jews	58	(12)
6. Austria and the Jews of Galicia, 1772-1848	70	(12)
7. "Brotherhood" and Disillusionment: Jews and Poles in the Nineteenth Century	82	(8)
8. "My Heart Is in the West": The Haskalah Movement in Eastern Europe	90	(12)
9. "The Days of Springtime": Czar Alexander II and the Era of Reform	102	(10)
10. Between Two Extremes: Radicalism and Orthodoxy	112	(12)
11. The Conservative Alliance: Galicia under Emperor Franz Josef	124	(10)
12. "The Jew Is Coming!" Anti-Semitism from Right and from Left	134	(9)
13. "Storms in the South," 1881-1882	143	(14)
Conclusion: Jews as an Ethnic Minority in Eastern Europe	157	(12)
Notes	169	(16)
Bibliography	185	(10)
Index	195	(6)
Acknowledgments	201