Ruderman David B. Early Modern Jewry: A New Cultural History
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214 A P P e N d i x
with the rise of industrialization and the consolidation
of national economies they declined economically and
in other respects. Karp perspicuously points out that
israel’
s Jewish early modern epoch is unconnected to
either the
medieval Jewish economic life that preceded it
or with the modern Jewish economic life that followed.
israel’
s early modernity is less a true beginning of Jew-
ish modernity and more “a false dawn.”
for
Karp,
israel
writes
about early modern Jews not within the perspec-
tive of Jewish historiography but primarily within the
history of
european economic thought.
14
in acknowledging Jonathan israel’s profound and
pioneering effort,
i
have offered also a corrective and
a challenge to his notion of how early modern Jewish
culture might be described.
it
should be obvious to any
reader of this intellectual exercise in periodization to
what degree
i
have departed from
israel
but also to what
degree
i have remained indebted to him.
Jewish Historians on the
early Modern Period
Although
no historian of Jewish society and culture has
yet to undertake a synthetic overview of early modern
Jewish history in the manner of
israel’
s book, several
have offered some important guideposts or markers use-
ful in conceptualizing the larger period.
15
But for the
most part, their focus has been on specic Jewish sub-
cultures or regional identities, emphasizing the unique
conditions and characteristics of the latter and less those
that transcended or bridged these local differences on a
more global scale.
one
of the most important historians of this era is
robert
Bonl, who in several books and critical articles
H i s t o r i o G r A P H i C A L r e f L e C t i o N s 215
has focused on the structural transformation of medieval
Jewish society especially from the late sixteenth century
on—roughly the same period on which
israel
has fo-
cused. Although Bonl’s comments emanate primarily
from the
italian
Jewish context that he knows so well,
his reections undoubtedly resonate beyond
italy
and
apply in varying degree to other communities within the
Jewish world.
for
Bonl, the sixteenth century ushers in
an era of the restructuring of Jewish-Christian relations
and new perceptions of the “other” in both societies.
this
is reected especially in the creation of the ghetto,
rst in
venice, and then throughout the italian Peninsula,
a paradoxical creation signifying both a distancing from
Christian society on the part of its Jewish minority and,
simultaneously, a greater sense of participation and enti-
tlement through the new urban spaces Jews now viewed
as their own.
it
is also reected even more dramatically
by conversos eeing
spain
and Portugal and receiving
special political and economic privileges in
italian
cities
such as Leghorn, Pisa, and Ancona.
the
conversos are a
novum in Jewish history because they received a form of
citizenship unprecedented even among
italian
Jews.
the
ambiguity
of their Jewish identity, their status as Jews
dening themselves as they wished instead of accept-
ing a traditional denition imposed by either Christian
or Jewish society, surely implies a radical break from
the past. When Bonl adds to these two phenomena
the impact of print and censorship on Jewish culture,
as well as the inception of the secular sphere in Jewish
life and its separation from the sacred (a theme he es-
pecially develops in his reconstruction of ghetto space),
he clearly points to the
italian
genesis of several major
components of early modern Jewish culture in general.
216 A P P e N d i x
in thus describing the transformation of early modern
Jewry from an
italianate
perspective, he underscores the
central role of
italian
Jewry in the shaping of Jewish cul-
ture beyond its borders and despite its relatively small
numbers.
16
the insights Bonl proposes from the perspective of
italy
to some extent mirror but also diverge from
yosef
Ka
plan’s masterful reconstruction of seventeenth-century
Western
sephardic
Jewry—especially in Amsterdam, the
heartland of the seventeenth-century intellectual crisis
of Paul Hazard and Jonathan
israel.
in
Kaplan’s books
and essays, this historian meticulously examines the in-
tellectual life and social makeup of this unique Jewish
community poised precariously between tradition and
modernity, at the crossroads of the oft-competing de-
mands of religious authority, multilingualism, and ethnic
loyalty, and between Christianity and Judaism. He un-
covers the complex levels of cultural ambiguity implicit
in the denition of Jewish identity among converso in-
tellectuals.
their
invented tradition attempts to grapple
with the new economic, social, and intellectual realities
of western
european
culture in an age of economic and
intellectual revival.
in
tacitly acknowledging the emerg-
ing divide between the secular and religious lives of their
constituencies, Amsterdam’s Jewish elites revealed their
conservative bent and their timid and insecure posture
before governmental authorities.
despite
the novelty of
this singular community and its cultural ambiance, to
which
spinoza
himself is intimately connected, Kaplan
remains unwilling to associate it with the later Haskalah,
the Jewish enlightenment, since the intellectual elites of
Amsterdam Jewry, in contrast to the later maskilim gen-
erally proposed no conscious ideology as an alternative
H i s t o r i o G r A P H i C A L r e f L e C t i o N s 217
to that of the tradition. in this respect, the experience of
the Western
sephardic
Jews of Amsterdam, as well as of
Hamburg, London, and the New World, was unlike that
of contemporary Ashkenazic Jews in central and eastern
europe
and was also dissimilar to that of the ideologues
of the Jewish enlightenment in the next century. Am-
sterdam represents for Kaplan a unique moment within
early modern Jewish culture; its singularity offers a sig-
nicant challenge to any attempt to dene early modern
Jewish culture overall.
17
Gershon Hundert presents a similar challenge to the
notion of a unied Jewish culture in early modern
eu-
rope
in his provocative comments about the character
of eastern
european
Jewry in this period. He insists that
Jewish modernity needs to be viewed in its proper per-
spective by considering the largest concentration of Jews
living neither in Amsterdam nor
italy
but in Poland and
Lithuania.
in
this community, the historian can detect a
more positive sense of Jewish identity, an urban popula-
tion living in a state of multiple nationalities, along with
a greater sense of Jewish insularity and apartness from
the surrounding cultures.
the absence of what Hundert
calls a “beckoning bourgeoisie” creates a different cul-
tural dynamic in the
east
in contrast to the West, one
characterized by a stronger sense of Jewish cultural su-
periority.
in
highlighting the different psychological at-
titude that characterized the bulk of Ashkenazic Jewry,
Hundert’s observations provide an obvious contrast to
the cultural styles of their
dutch
and
italian
coreligion-
ists. As in the case of Kaplan’s remarks on Amsterdam,
they underscore the difculty of speaking about an early
modern Jewish culture given the obvious idiosyncrasies
of each of its constituent parts.
18
218 A P P e N d i x
Hundert’s exclusive focus on the history of the east-
ern
european
Jewish community, treated in isolation
from other Jewish communities and given primacy of
importance because it held the largest Jewish popula-
tion, leads him to an even more radical formulation.
the
eastern
european
Jewish experience should be consid-
ered paradigmatic, he claims, of the Jewish pattern of
modernization as a whole.
since
it hardly exhibits any
of the characteristics of other Jewish communities ex-
periencing modernization, the term modernity, when
applied to the Jewish experience, should be emptied of
its usual associations and should simply designate the
period of roughly the last two centuries.
19
Moshe rosman, in several recent essays on Jewish
cultural history in eastern
europe,
emphasizes less the
incongruity of Ashkenazic culture from both its imme-
diate cultural surroundings and from
european
society
in general.
for rosman,
the alleged distinction between
authentically traditional attitudes and practices and
so-called alien inuences represents a false dichotomy.
despite
the sense of cultural superiority and aloofness
Hundert has underscored, Polish Jews also profoundly
identied with Polish culture. Jews represented an inte-
gral part of what
rosman
calls the “Polish polysystem.”
such facets of their culture as their oligarchic communal
institutions, their belief in demons, their protectionist
policies against competition, and their attitudes toward
gender are simultaneously Jewish but also inherently
Polish and
european.
rosman
also refers to the revolu-
tion in print that undermined dramatically the insular-
ity of rabbinic culture.
drawing
heavily from the recent
work of
elhanan reiner
, which is discussed in chapter
3
of
the present volume, he singles out the remarkable
H i s t o r i o G r A P H i C A L r e f L e C t i o N s 219
production of Joseph Karo’s code of Jewish law, a se-
phar dic creation,
molded together with the Ashkenazic
commentary of Moses
isserles.
in
a blatant effort to
reduce to writing the Ashkenazic oral tradition in or-
der to save it from oblivion,
rosman
concludes,
isserles
had
surrendered to the inevitability of the power of the
printed book.
20
david sorkin and shmuel feiner, among others, have
both written interpretations of the Haskalah period, fo-
cusing primarily but not exclusively on developments in
central
europe
at the end of the eighteenth century. Both
contrast the dramatic rise of a so-called Jewish republic
of letters with the relatively insulated traditional societ-
ies of early modern
europe
that preceded it.
sorkin
calls
the latter period a Jewish baroque while
feiner
contrasts
it with the Haskalah proper, which he considers to be
a real cultural revolution. He apparently understands
the maskilim as they viewed themselves, as radical in-
novators, actually “creating” the notion of a modern
age for Jews. Both
sorkin
and
feiner
subsequently take
cognizance of an earlier period during the rst half of
the eighteenth century, that they designate as an “early
Haskalah,” but they generally ignore the seventeenth
century in seeing the roots of a cultural transformation
only in this later period.
this
view stands in contrast to
several earlier Jewish historians, such as
salo
W. Baron,
yosef H.
yerushalmi, samuel ettinger
, and Gershom
scholem,
who—each in his own way—had underscored
the importance of the seventeenth century as a decisive
moment in Jewish cultural development.
21
one nal scholarly perspective is worth noting among
recent approaches to early modern Jewish history. As a
kind of alternative trajectory of modernization,
david
220 A P P e N d i x
sorkin, following Lois dubin in her book on the Jews
of
trieste,
has also introduced the notion of the “port
Jew” into modern historiography.
22
Port Jews were
Jewish merchants who lived in dynamic port cities and
engaged in international maritime trade.
sorkin
primar-
ily focused on
sephardim
in western
european
ports,
contrasting them with the Ashkenazic “court Jews” of
northern and central
europe
whose path toward mod-
ernization was thoroughly distinctive due to their inter-
national trading networks as well as the acculturation
and cosmopolitanism these engendered.
We might conclude that the challenge presented by
each of these historians in attempting to reconstruct a
transregional early modern Jewish culture is twofold.
in
the
rst place, most of those surveyed above, in contrast
to Jonathan
israel,
do not distinguish clearly between
an autonomous period called early modernity and from
a process of modernization that they locate anywhere
from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries.
in
the sec-
ond place, several—especially Hundert and Kaplan—ap-
pear to deny the possibility of meaningfully describing
anything other than a regional Jewish culture such as
that of Amsterdam or Poland and Lithuania. Bonl and
rosman
imply that their assumptions, emerging from
the regions they study, may be applicable elsewhere but
do not fully develop this point.
early Modernity in european and
W
orld Historiography
for
some time now, early modern has become the most
fashionable and convenient label for designating the pe-
riod from the end of the Middle Ages to the modern age.
H i s t o r i o G r A P H i C A L r e f L e C t i o N s 221
As early as the 1960s, historians have preferred to char-
acterize the age of the
renaissance,
the
reformation,
the
Counterreformation, or the Catholic
reform
as simply
the early modern period, avoiding the complexities and
interpretative biases each of these terms has presented
in the past.
in
perusing a number of recent textbooks
on early modern
europe,
i
came away with no precise
denition offered by any historian other than a clus-
ter of economic, political, and cultural developments
that more or less fall within the sixteenth to eighteenth
centuries such as geographic discoveries, the scientic
revolution, the invention of print, confessional conicts,
the emergence of new national political structures, eco-
nomic uctuations, and more.
23
Perhaps randolph starn summed up the notion of
early modernity best in claiming that it represents a pat-
ent but awed remedy to the problem of periodizing the
time between medieval and modern history.
touted as
a
kind of democratic alternative to the previously utilized
terms Renaissance and Reformation, and the high cul-
ture they appeared to suggest, this indeterminacy con-
fers the aura of innovation on an agenda that by now
is as conventional as anything previously said about the
renaissance.
And he concludes, “
early
, partly, some-
times, maybe modern, early modern is a period for our
period’s discomfort with periodization.”
24
By the 1980s, historians had extended the european
experience with early modernity to the entire world, us-
ing the term to describe global history at large.
in
the
newly formulated notion of “an early modern world,”
such robust processes as demographic growth, ination,
social mobility, urbanization, and surging international
trade marked the common experiences of peoples living
222 A P P e N d i x
throughout the eurasian land mass. such an application
of early modernity to the non-
european
world raised
the issue of orientalism, with its potential danger of im-
posing a Western cultural pattern on non-Western soci-
eties. Nevertheless, a growing consensus seems to have
emerged in using the term early modern to designate a
period of truly global proportions.
25
John f. richards’s attempt to dene a global early mo-
dernity through a description of six essential processes
provides a good example of the expansion of the concept.
for
ric
hards, the early modern era was characterized by
the creation of global sea passages that linked all human-
ity with a transportation network of increasing capacity
and efciency.
thi
s development led in turn to a truly
global economy in which long-distance commerce con-
nected expanding economies on each continent. A major
engine of economic expansion was the rise of powerful
trading companies, with their monopolies of trade in
various parts of the world.
the new economic growth
spurred the growth of powerful states with enhanced
abilities to mobilize resources and deploy overwhelming
force.
thr
oughout this period, the world’s population
dramatically increased with the intensication of land
use and colonization.
fin
ally, these changes were accom-
panied by the diffusion of new technologies, especially
New World crops, gunpowder, and print.
26
richards’s early modern world is primarily linked by
economic and material processes that help shape com-
mon patterns of production, distribution, consumption,
and social organization across the globe.
in
dening a
universal condition of human experience, economic and
social history are certainly privileged over the cultural
and intellectual, where commonalities are more difcult
H i s t o r i o G r A P H i C A L r e f L e C t i o N s 223
to locate. in addressing the question of how one speaks
about early modern culture from a global perspective,
two additional promising strategies have emerged: the
rst focuses on cross-cultural exchange, and the second
on the notion of “connected histories.”
Within the perspective of global history, Jerry Bentley
views the period from 1500 to 1800 as an age of cross-
cultural interaction on a previously unprecedented scale.
for
Bentley, the early modern period brought almost all
the world’s peoples into “frequent, intense, and sustained
interaction with one another.”
these
new and intense
networks of exchange embraced the entire world, but
in a manner distinct from those of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries, when
european
and
euro- American
peoples dominated
world affairs through political, eco-
nomic, military, and technological power.
early
moder-
nity thus established increasingly dense networks of
interaction and exchange prior to the industrial revolu-
tion and to state imperialism. While Bentley focuses pri-
marily on factors of economic exchange—reliable and
cheap maritime highways and technologies; biological
exchanges of food and animal species; and mass migra-
tions, especially across the Atlantic
ocean—he
does not
ignore cultural interactions as well.
early
modern
eu-
rope
is only conceivable for him in its participation and
dialogue with the early modern world.
27
the theme of cultural exchange—this time only in
europe,
albeit expanded to include Poland and Lithu-
ania,
russia,
and the
ottoman empire—is
the focus
of the highly ambitious four-volume set titled Cultural
Exchange in Early Modern Europe, edited by
robert
Muchembled
and William Monter.
it
seeks “to uncover
the deep but hidden unities shaping a common
european