The Jewish Eighteenth Century

"Shmuel Feiner gives us a capacious and methodologically innovative volume on the "modernity" of the Jewish eighteenth century by juxtaposing myriad events across disparate regions recounted through a captivating panoply of personalities."-David Sorkin, Lucy G. Moses professor of Jewish history at Yale University "Shmuel Feiner has synthesized the work of the best modern scholars of a half-century of European Jewish history and combined it with his own, original research, to tell the story of a period little known to non-specialists. The result is a narrative that is as authoritative as it is entrancing."-Allan Arkush, Jewish Review of Books "Extraordinarily erudite and compulsively readable, this book transforms everything we thought we knew about the Jewish eighteenth century. A remarkable achievement."-Yair Mintzker, Princeton University

Shmuel Feiner is Professor of Modern Jewish History at Bar-Ilan University and Chairman of the Historical Society of Israel. He is author of Haskalah and History; The Emergence of a Modern Jewish Historical Consciousness; The Jewish Enlightenment; Moses Mendelssohn, Sage of Modernity; and The Origins of Jewish Secularization. Jeffrey M. Green is a professional writer and translator who lives and works in Jerusalem. He is author of Thinking through Translation and Largest Island in the Sea.

Preface Acknowledgments Introduction: Happy Times? The First Century in the Modern Age I. 1700 1. Pictures from Married Life: Glikl the daughter of Leib between Hamburg and Metz 2. "Rise up and Succeed": Absolutism and Court Jews in Baroque Culture 3. Jews in the News: The Angry Masses, a Holy Society, and "Judaism Unmasked" 4. Between Enlightened Thought and an Imaginary Universe II. 1701-1725 5. "Everyone Wants to be Happy: Dangers and Amusements 6. "Our Miserable Brethren": Jews in Time of War 7. Melancholy, Career, and Travels: Five Life Stories 8. Christians versus Jews: Bitter and Violent Relations 9. From London to Jerusalem: Confrontations and Disputes 10. The Challenge of Sabbateanism: The Storm over the "Hypocritical Serpent" 11. Competition over the Picture of the World: Witches and Human Knowledge III. 1725-1750 12. To Silence the "Fellow from Padua": Moses Haim Luzzatto and the Great Awakening 13. Criticism and Ambition: From Gulliver to the Baal Shem Tov and Jew Suss 14. Contradictory Tendencies: Hostility, Violence, and "True Happiness" 15. "An Indelible Stain": War and Expulsion 16. A Vision of the Future: Ascent of the Soul, a Path for the Just, and a Teacher of the Perplexed 17. Toward Mid-Century: The Awakening of Shame Index