Jews in Europe

The twentieth century has seen both the greatest triumph of Jewish history and its greatest tragedy: the birth of the nation of Israel, and 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. 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. He examines the clash within the Jewish community 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. Controversially, Professor Vital concludes that the history of the Jewish people was indeed in crucial respects although certainly not all of their own making; 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.

Since 1648, Eastern Jews have moved west in large numbers. They brought with them skills learned in ghettos that could be adapted to fit social problems and commercial niches in the industrialized societies of the west. Jews from Eastern Europe played a particularly strong role in the fields of social work, the fur trade, textiles, and entertainment. They have also played a major part in the ideologies of Zionism and Marxism. This book examines the migration of Jews from the east and describes the roles they have taken in the west.

"I find myself unable to praise it too highly. It is quite as if a whole culture had been rescued from the dust, and all of its inner qualities, its half-forgotten voices and passions, have been brought to hidden life.... All persons who care about the possibilities of human exaltation and suffering will find this an endlessly absorbing and endlessly tragic book". -- Irving Howe

This book studies the Jewish community of Champagne from the fifth century to the expulsion of 1306. It documents the growth and decline of the community, examines its interrelationship with the larger Christian culture, and presents a model for the study of other communities. The economic and political consolidation of the county, coupled with the development of Jewish self-government and a system of education in Talmudic law, were important factors in the growth of Champagne's Jewish community. The subsequent decline of the community in the mid-13th century was also attributable to economic and political factors, as well as a growing Church influence.

Leonard B. Glick recounts the history of the Ashkenazic Jewish experience in medieval western Europe from the fifth to fifteenth centuries, focusing on interaction between Jews and Christians during this vital formative period.

He demonstrates that Ashkenazic Jewish culture was profoundly shaped and conditioned by life in an overwhelmingly Christian society. Drawing on diverse Christian documents, he portrays Christian beliefs about medieval Jews and Judaism with a degree of detail seldom found in Jewish histories.

Emphasizing social, political, and economic history, but also discussing religious topics, Glick describes the evolution of a complex, inherently unequal relationship.

Because the Ashkenazic Jews of medieval Europe were ancestral to almost the entire Jewish population of eastern Europe, their historical experience played a major role in the heritage of most Jewish Americans.

Regarded as the standard work on the subject, remarkable for its broad historical outlook, accuracy in detail and scholarly synthesis.

Most Jews who now live in Germany have lived elsewhere. They are neither the remnant of those who survived the Holocaust nor those who are in transit to Israel or the United States. They are a disparate but vibrant and growing community of over 80,000 people. Forty thousand of them are members of official Jewish communities in today's Germany. Because of the Nazi past, this proportionately small number of individuals plays an out-of-scale role in German politics and world consciousness. As a study in the formation of minority communities within European national matrices, Cohn's work has interest for sociologists, political scientists, and anthropologists as well. It is the only published work on the Jewish community in Germany today.