The Conditions in Jewish Society in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in the Middle Decades of the Eighteenth Century

2018 ◽  
pp. 45-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
GERSHON DAVID HUNDERT
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Jewish Society

The Conditions in Jewish Society in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the Middle Decades of the Eighteenth Century

1996 ◽  
pp. 45-50
Author(s):  
Gershon David Hundert
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social History ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Generational Conflict ◽  
East European ◽  
Explanatory Factors ◽  
Jewish Society ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

This chapter investigates the conditions in Jewish society in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in the middle decades of the eighteenth century. The place of hasidism in the religious history of the eighteenth century ought to be reconsidered not only in light of the questions about the schismatic groups in the Orthodox Church raised by Ysander, but also in light of the general revivalist currents in western Europe. The social historian cannot explain hasidism, which belongs to the context of the development of the east European religious mentality in the eighteenth century. Social history does, however, point to some significant questions that ought to be explored further. One of these is the role of youth and generational conflict in the beginnings of the movement, and not only in its beginnings. A realistic recovery of the situation of the Polish-Lithuanian Jewry in the eighteenth century shows that neither the economic nor the security conditions were such as to warrant their use as causal or explanatory factors in the rise and reception of hasidism.

Jewish Marriage in Eighteenth-Century Poland

1997 ◽  
pp. 3-39
Author(s):  
Jacob Goldberg
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Jewish Population ◽  
Early Marriage ◽  
Stable Model ◽  
Jewish Society ◽  
Polish Society ◽  
Marital Breakdown ◽  
Polish Jews

This chapter discusses Jewish marriage in eighteenth-century Poland. Jews, as well as many non-Jews, acknowledged that Jewish marriages embodied a good, stable model and praised them as examples to be emulated in an era when immorality and marital breakdown seemed to threaten the institution. Even in much earlier times, Jewish marriages, particularly those of Polish Jews, were recognized as embodying all desirable matrimonial attributes. In the course of the eighteenth century, Jewish marital practices attracted the attention of all levels of Polish society, as well as of leading maskilim in other countries. It was during the period of the Polish Enlightenment that the model of Jewish marriage was promoted on a wider scale because it conformed to popular ideas based on contemporary mercantilist and cameralist principles. The chapter then considers the convergence of opinion between Jewish and Christian Enlightenment representatives on some aspects of marriage in Jewish society, and looks at the incidence of early marriage in the Jewish population and the vicissitudes in the practice of young couples living in the home of their parents.

Mystical and Modernizing Trends: Prague’s Rabbinic Culture Threatened

2010 ◽  
pp. 64-94
Author(s):  
Sharon Flatto
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Traditional Culture ◽  
The State ◽  
German Culture ◽  
Community Institutions ◽  
Jewish Society ◽  
Secular Education ◽  
Jewish Youth

This chapter identifies various trends and developments which threatened Prague's traditional culture during the last decades of the eighteenth century. It analyses the unique responses of Prague's rabbinate to the Haskalah, the increasing centralization of the Habsburg state, and Sabbatianism. It also points out the importance of the state in the transformation of Prague's traditional Jewish society, particularly its embrace of German culture and cites Joseph II's systematic policy of Germanization that reshaped several of the central community institutions. The chapter highlights state-imposed secular education that forced the rabbinic authorities to modify the curriculum offered to Prague's Jewish youth. It discusses the traditional rabbinic assertion of the primacy of Torah, which precluded the study of extra-talmudic subjects.

Introduction

2005 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Marcin Wodziński
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
Proper Understanding ◽  
Jewish Historiography ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
Jewish Society ◽  
Polish Jews

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the conflict between representatives of the Jewish Enlightenment (the Haskalah) and its rival hasidic movement, which has been seen in the historical literature as one of the most important debates to occupy Jewish society in central and eastern Europe in the modern age. Indeed, the earliest studies devoted to this question made their appearance at the dawn of modern Jewish historiography. However, a closer reading of such studies reveals that the overwhelming majority of references to the ‘age-old hostility’ of enlightened Jews to hasidism are based on stereotypes that often obscure a proper understanding of the sources. This book analyses attitudes towards hasidism among a few famous representatives of the Polish Haskalah, from the first enlightened comments concerning hasidism at the end of the eighteenth century to the demise of the Haskalah and its successors at the start of the twentieth century. It also looks at the ideas, concepts, and prejudices of a broad section of the maskilim among Polish Jews.

Sociability and Acculturation in German Spas

2013 ◽  
pp. 146-179
Author(s):  
Natalie Naimark-Goldberg
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Active Part ◽  
Jewish Women ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Notable Feature ◽  
Jewish Society ◽  
European Culture ◽  
Annual Visit ◽  
Theatrical Performances

This chapter assesses an unexamined aspect of the process by which enlightened Jewish women became integrated into non-Jewish European culture and society: the practice of visiting spas. Their letters reveal that these women often chose to spend the summer months at one of the spa centres of central Europe. The spas offered many advantages alongside their original function as places of healing and recuperation: the semi-urban way of life which developed in these resorts over the course of the eighteenth century offered visitors a wide array of pastimes and enjoyments, such as musical and theatrical performances, parties, and walks along the main boulevards and in more rural surroundings. For Jewish women in particular, the unique, liberated atmosphere of the spas offered a space in which they could widen their circle of acquaintances, integrate themselves into non-Jewish society, and take an active part in discussions on cultural and other issues. Thus, the annual visit to one or more spas, which became a notable feature of bourgeois life, constituted an important component in the acculturation of the modernizing Jewish women discussed in this book.

Prague’s Jewish Community

2010 ◽  
pp. 23-39
Author(s):  
Sharon Flatto
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Organizational Structure ◽  
Jewish Community ◽  
Cultural Transformation ◽  
Public Records ◽  
Jewish Society ◽  
Language Law

This chapter provides an overview of the history and inner workings of the eighteenth-century Jewish community of Prague. It focuses on the efflorescence of Prague's rabbinic culture during the latter half of the century despite Joseph II's Toleranzpatent, which officially abolished the Jewish community's autonomy. It also mentions several historians who claim that the Toleranzpatent marks the beginning of the modernization of Bohemian Jewry that was characterized by political and cultural transformation. The chapter examines Joseph II's Sprachgesetz or language law in 1748 that mandated that all Jewish communal business and public records be kept in German. It elaborates Joseph II's reforms that attempted to eliminate distinctively Jewish behaviour and erode the Jewish community's organizational structure, which challenged traditional Jewish society.

Jewish Art and Architecture in the East European Context: The Gwozdziec-Chodorów Group of Wooden Synagogues

1997 ◽  
pp. 141-182
Author(s):  
Thomas C. Hubka
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Jewish Community ◽  
Specific Group ◽  
East European ◽  
European Context ◽  
Jewish Art ◽  
Jewish Society ◽  
Art And Architecture ◽  
Design Construction

This chapter focuses on a specific group of eighteenth-century wooden synagogues — labelled the Gwoździec–Chodorów group — within their east European context. It identifies the architectural ideas and building traditions which generated these synagogues, and particularly to emphasize the role of ideas from Jewish sources and from the Jewish community in this process. This entails investigating all phases of building development, including sponsorship, inspiration, liturgy, design, construction, and painting, and then differentiating between non-Jewish east European sources and sources from the local and the broader Jewish community. The role of Jewish ideas requires careful differentiation because their influence on the architecture of the synagogues has been so loosely assumed and insufficiently documented in current scholarship. The chapter then suggests that the explosion of interest in kabbalah in Jewish society during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries may have informed the architecture of the synagogues.

How Modern Is an Antimodernist Movement? The Emergence of Hasidic Politics in Congress Poland

AJS Review ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-240
Author(s):  
Marcin Wodziński
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Jewish Society ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Reform Jewish

The various efforts to reform Jewish society in Poland from the late eighteenth century on elicited reactions among the representatives of Jewish society, both among those who supported the reforms and among others, much more numerous, who were less favorably inclined toward reform. The hasidim were, of course, among the latter. All the reforms affected the hasidim, just as they did other members of the community, but certain actions directed against their movement as such affected them specifically. It seems natural, therefore, that hasidim were not simply passive victims of the deeds undertaken by the central and regional organs of the state. It would be hard to expect otherwise because, after all, the hasidim were a party most interested in the favorable resolution of antihasidic government investigations.

Yiddish, The Language Of Love: Isaac Wetzlar’s Libes Briv (1748/49) In The Context Of Jewish–Pietist Encounter

transversal ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-3
Author(s):  
Rebekka Voß
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Special Section ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Northern Germany ◽  
Central European ◽  
Jewish Society ◽  
Love Letter

Abstract This special section examines Isaac Wetzlar‘s Love Letter, a Yiddish proposal for the improvement of Jewish society, written in 1748/49 in Northern Germany. The articles concentrate on the links between Libes briv and the contours of German Pietism in order to initiate exploration of the complex relationship between Central European Judaism and eighteenth-century Pietism. This largely unrecognized arena of Jewish-Christian encounter is presented as a significant factor in a century that promoted modernity

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