Reassessing Jewish Life in Medieval Europe

Chazan argues that the challenges of life for Jews in medieval Western Christendom stimulated ingenuity, leading to later Jewish successes.

Robert Chazan (Author)

9780521763042, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 27 September 2010

290 pages
23.4 x 15.8 x 2.3 cm, 0.52 kg

'This study provides an intriguing interpretation of Jewish history in the Middle Ages and across the divide between the medieval and the modern. Writing with great authority and building on his own invaluable studies and a magisterial knowledge of others' scholarship, Robert Chazan argues that the negative experience of Jewish life in medieval Christian Europe was alloyed with much more that was positive, though traditionally undervalued by scholars. Together, they informed a broad set of practices and beliefs that were instrumental in the Jews' survival and prosperity long into the present. No student of medieval Jewish history or of the medieval legacy of Jewish life can ignore this wide-ranging and vigorous study.' William Chester Jordan, Princeton University

This book re-evaluates the prevailing notion that Jews in medieval Christian Europe lived under an appalling regime of ecclesiastical limitation, governmental exploitation and expropriation, and unceasing popular violence. Robert Chazan argues that, while Jewish life in medieval Western Christendom was indeed beset with grave difficulties, it was nevertheless an environment rich in opportunities; the Jews of medieval Europe overcame obstacles, grew in number, explored innovative economic options, and fashioned enduring new forms of Jewish living. His research also provides a reconsideration of the legacy of medieval Jewish life, which is often depicted as equally destructive and projected as the underpinning of the twentieth-century catastrophes of antisemitism and the Holocaust. Dr Chazan's research proves that, although Jewish life in the medieval West laid the foundation for much Jewish suffering in the post-medieval world, it also stimulated considerable Jewish ingenuity, which lies at the root of impressive Jewish successes in the modern West.

Prologue: group narratives: tenacity and accuracy
Introduction: the emergence of medieval European Jewry
Part I. Historical Schemes: 1. The Jewish middle age: the Jewish view
2. The Jewish middle age: the Christian view
3. The European middle ages
4. The European Jewish middle ages
Part II. Historical Themes: 5. Demographic movement and change
6. Economic activity
7. Status
8. Relocations within the Christian populace
9. Identity
Epilogue.

Subject Areas: Jewish studies [JFSR1], Early history: c 500 to c 1450/1500 [HBLC], European history [HBJD]