Redcliffe Salaman (1874–1955) was an English Jew of many facets: a country gentleman, a physician, a biologist who pioneered the breeding of blight-free strains of potatoes, a Jewish nationalist, and a race scientist. A well-known figure in his own time, The Last Anglo-Jewish Gentleman restores him to his place in the history of British science and the British Jewish community. Redcliffe Salaman was also a leading figure in the Anglo-Jewish community in the 20th century. At the same time, he was also an incisive critic of the changing character of that community. His groundbreaking book, The History and Social Influence of the Potato, first published in 1949 and in print ever since, is a classic in social history. His wife Nina was a feminist, poet, essayist, and translator of medieval Hebrew poetry. She was the first (and to this day, only) woman to deliver a sermon in an Orthodox synagogue in Britain. The Last-Anglo Jewish Gentleman offers a compelling biography of a unique individual. It also provides insights into the life of English Jews during the late-19th and early-20th centuries and brings to light largely unknown controversies and tensions in Jewish life.

Redcliffe Salaman (1874–1955) was an English Jew of many facets: a country gentleman, a physician, a biologist who pioneered the breeding of blight-free strains of potatoes, a Jewish nationalist, and a race scientist. A well-known figure in his own time, The Last Anglo-Jewish Gentleman restores him to his place in the history of British science and the British Jewish community. Redcliffe Salaman was also a leading figure in the Anglo-Jewish community in the 20th century. At the same time, he was also an incisive critic of the changing character of that community. His groundbreaking book, The History and Social Influence of the Potato, first published in 1949 and in print ever since, is a classic in social history. His wife Nina was a feminist, poet, essayist, and translator of medieval Hebrew poetry. She was the first (and to this day, only) woman to deliver a sermon in an Orthodox synagogue in Britain. The Last-Anglo Jewish Gentleman offers a compelling biography of a unique individual. It also provides insights into the life of English Jews during the late-19th and early-20th centuries and brings to light largely unknown controversies and tensions in Jewish life.

The movement from tradition to modernity engulfed all of the Jewish communities in the West, but hitherto historians have concentrated on the intellectual revolution in Germany by Moses Mendelssohn in the second half of the eighteenth century as the decisive event in the origins of Jewish modernity. In The Jews of Georgian England, Todd M. Endelman challenges the Germanocentric orientation of the bulk of modern Jewish historiography and argues that the modernization of European Jewry encompassed far more than an intellectual revolution. His study recounts the rise of the Anglo-Jewish elite--great commercial and financial magnates such as the Goldsmids, the Franks, Samson Gideon, and Joseph Salvador--who rapidly adopted the gentlemanly style of life of the landed class and adjusted their religious practices to harmonize with the standards of upper-class Englishmen. Similarly, the Jewish poor--peddlers, hawkers, and old-clothes men--took easily to many patterns of lower-class life, including crime, street violence, sexual promiscuity, and coarse entertainment. An impressive marshaling of fact and analysis, The Jews of Georgian England serves to illuminate a significant aspect of the Jewish passage to modernity. "Contributes to English as well as Jewish history. . . . Every reader will learn something new about the statistics, setting or mores of Jewish life in the eighteenth century. . . ." --American Historical Review Todd M. Endelman is William Haber Professor of Modern Jewish History, University of Michigan. He is also the author of Comparing Jewish Societies, Jewish Apostasy in the Modern World, and Radical Assimilation in English Jewish History, 1656-1945.

The movement from tradition to modernity engulfed all of the Jewish communities in the West, but hitherto historians have concentrated on the intellectual revolution in Germany by Moses Mendelssohn in the second half of the eighteenth century as the decisive event in the origins of Jewish modernity. In The Jews of Georgian England, Todd M. Endelman challenges the Germanocentric orientation of the bulk of modern Jewish historiography and argues that the modernization of European Jewry encompassed far more than an intellectual revolution.His study recounts the rise of the Anglo-Jewish elite--great commercial and financial magnates such as the Goldsmids, the Franks, Samson Gideon, and Joseph Salvador--who rapidly adopted the gentlemanly style of life of the landed class and adjusted their religious practices to harmonize with the standards of upper-class Englishmen. Similarly, the Jewish poor--peddlers, hawkers, and old-clothes men--took easily to many patterns of lower-class life, including crime, street violence, sexual promiscuity, and coarse entertainment.An impressive marshaling of fact and analysis, The Jews of Georgian England serves to illuminate a significant aspect of the Jewish passage to modernity."Contributes to English as well as Jewish history. . . . Every reader will learn something new about the statistics, setting or mores of Jewish life in the eighteenth century. . . ." --American Historical ReviewTodd M. Endelman is William Haber Professor of Modern Jewish History, University of Michigan. He is also the author of Comparing Jewish Societies, Jewish Apostasy in the Modern World, and Radical Assimilation in English Jewish History, 1656-1945.

Having unfolded in the diverse communities of the diaspora, Jewish experience lends itself almost effortlessly to comparative treatment. The contributors to this volume take up the challenge, examining Jewish societies from medieval to modern times, in Western and Eastern Europe, North and South America, North Africa, India, China, and the Middle East. The essays use the methodological strategies and theoretical insights of history, sociology, anthropology, and political science to explore such topics as Jewish and African nationalism; Arab and Jewish railway workers in British-ruled Palestine; East European Jewish immigrants in New York, London, and Paris; ritual murder trials in fin-de-siècle Central Europe; and Catholic and Jewish enlightenment movements. Further, because of their comparative structure and method, these essays stimulate fresh questions about the larger societies in which Jews lived--their values, practices, and structures. Comparing Jewish Societies will appeal to students and scholars at all levels who wish to break out of old frameworks to observe the Jews and their religion with a new, methodologically sophisticated eye. Todd M. Endelman is William Haber Professor of Modern Jewish History, University of Michigan.

In Todd Endelman's spare and elegant narrative, the history of British Jewry in the modern period is characterized by a curious mixture of prominence and inconspicuousness. British Jews have been central to the unfolding of key political events of the modern period, especially the establishment of the State of Israel, but inconspicuous in shaping the character and outlook of modern Jewry. Their story, less dramatic perhaps than that of other Jewish communities, is no less deserving of this comprehensive and finely balanced analytical account. Even though Jews were never completely absent from Britain after the expulsion of 1290, it was not until the mid-seventeenth century that a permanent community took root.Endelman devotes chapters to the resettlement; to the integration and acculturation that took place, more intensively than in other European states, during the eighteenth century; to the remarkable economic transformation of Anglo-Jewry between 1800 and 1870; to the tide of immigration from Eastern Europe between 1870 and 1914 and the emergence of unprecedented hostility to Jews; to the effects of World War I and the turbulent events up to and including the Holocaust; and, to the contradictory currents propelling Jewish life in Britain from 1948 to the end of the twentieth century. We discover not only the many ways in which the Anglo-Jewish experience was unique but also what it had in common with those of other Western Jewish communities.

In Todd Endelman''s spare and elegant narrative, the history of British Jewry in the modern period is characterized by a curious mixture of prominence and inconspicuousness. British Jews have been central to the unfolding of key political events of the modern period, especially the establishment of the State of Israel, but inconspicuous in shaping the character and outlook of modern Jewry. Their story, less dramatic perhaps than that of other Jewish communities, is no less deserving of this comprehensive and finely balanced analytical account.Even though Jews were never completely absent from Britain after the expulsion of 1290, it was not until the mid- seventeenth century that a permanent community took root. Endelman devotes chapters to the resettlement; to the integration and acculturation that took place, more intensively than in other European states, during the eighteenth century; to the remarkable economic transformation of Anglo-Jewry between 1800 and 1870; to the tide of immigration from Eastern Europe between 1870 and 1914 and the emergence of unprecedented hostility to Jews; to the effects of World War I and the turbulent events up to and including the Holocaust; and to the contradictory currents propelling Jewish life in Britain from 1948 to the end of the twentieth century. We discover not only the many ways in which the Anglo-Jewish experience was unique but also what it had in common with those of other Western Jewish communities.

In Broadening Jewish History Todd Endelman seeks to expand the horizons of modern Jewish historiography by focusing on ‘ordinary’ rather than exceptional Jews, arguing that what ordinary people did or felt can do more to deepen our understanding of Jewish history than what a few exceptional individuals thought and wrote. He also makes a strong case for comparative history, showing convincingly that only a comparison across national borders can identify the Germanness of German Jewish history or the Englishness of English Jewish history, and thereby reveal what is unique about each. This innovative collection of historiographical essays and case studies redefines the area under consideration and deftly restates the need for Jewish social history to counterbalance the current focus on cultural studies.The essays offer an important examination of the major trends in the writing of modern Jewish history and the assumptions that have guided historians in their narration of the Jewish past. Professor Endelman shows in particular how the two watershed events of twentieth-century Jewish history—the Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel—influenced Jewish historiography for decades thereafter. He also demonstrates how progressive integration into the scholarly framework of American academia has shaped both the form and the content of Jewish historical research.Each of the case studies focuses on a largely unknown figure whose career illustrates the often tortuous paths of integration and acceptance that Jews faced. Some achieved fleeting fame but many of the people who populate the volume remain altogether unknown, their histories recoverable only as statistics.In its wide-ranging analysis of trends in recent historical writing and its treatment of key themes and issues, this book is essential reading for professional historians, students, and indeed all those with an interest in Jewish history.

The subject of Disraeli's jewishness was one that obsessed contemporaries but was subsequently downplayed by historians and others until very recently. The essays in this volume provide a new perspective, stressing the importance of Disraeli's Jewishness in the construction of his personality, ideology and politics as well as in responses to him. This collection is an important addition not only to the understanding of Disraeli but also to the workings of race relations in Liberal Victorian Britain.

The subject of Disraeli's jewishness was one that obsessed contemporaries but was subsequently downplayed by historians and others until very recently. The essays in this volume provide a new perspective, stressing the importance of Disraeli's Jewishness in the construction of his personality, ideology and politics as well as in responses to him. This collection is an important addition not only to the understanding of Disraeli but also to the workings of race relations in Liberal Victorian Britain.

Launched in 1945, Commentary magazine became one of America's most celebrated periodicals. Under the editorship of Elliot E. Cohen, it developed into the premier postwar journal of Jewish affairs attracting a readership far wider than its Jewish community origin. This book is the first detailed and critical study of Commentary magazine during its formative years. Abrams traces the development of the key issues that have occupied its first fifty years: the construction of a new American Jewish identity, Judaism, the Holocaust, the State of Israel, and the Cold War. This account of the chief and most influential journal of Jewish thought, opinion, and culture in America will complete the picture of postwar American Jewish and general intellectual life. It is based upon a wide range of sources including archival and other material never before published in the context of Commentary magazine.

Redcliffe Salaman (1874–1955) was an English Jew of many facets: a country gentleman, a physician, a biologist who pioneered the breeding of blight-free strains of potatoes, a Jewish nationalist, and a race scientist. A well-known figure in his own time, The Last Anglo-Jewish Gentleman restores him to his place in the history of British science and the British Jewish community. Redcliffe Salaman was also a leading figure in the Anglo-Jewish community in the 20th century. At the same time, he was also an incisive critic of the changing character of that community. His groundbreaking book, The History and Social Influence of the Potato, first published in 1949 and in print ever since, is a classic in social history. His wife Nina was a feminist, poet, essayist, and translator of medieval Hebrew poetry. She was the first (and to this day, only) woman to deliver a sermon in an Orthodox synagogue in Britain. The Last-Anglo Jewish Gentleman offers a compelling biography of a unique individual. It also provides insights into the life of English Jews during the late-19th and early-20th centuries and brings to light largely unknown controversies and tensions in Jewish life.

Redcliffe Salaman (1874–1955) was an English Jew of many facets: a country gentleman, a physician, a biologist who pioneered the breeding of blight-free strains of potatoes, a Jewish nationalist, and a race scientist. A well-known figure in his own time, The Last Anglo-Jewish Gentleman restores him to his place in the history of British science and the British Jewish community. Redcliffe Salaman was also a leading figure in the Anglo-Jewish community in the 20th century. At the same time, he was also an incisive critic of the changing character of that community. His groundbreaking book, The History and Social Influence of the Potato, first published in 1949 and in print ever since, is a classic in social history. His wife Nina was a feminist, poet, essayist, and translator of medieval Hebrew poetry. She was the first (and to this day, only) woman to deliver a sermon in an Orthodox synagogue in Britain. The Last-Anglo Jewish Gentleman offers a compelling biography of a unique individual. It also provides insights into the life of English Jews during the late-19th and early-20th centuries and brings to light largely unknown controversies and tensions in Jewish life.

The movement from tradition to modernity engulfed all of the Jewish communities in the West, but hitherto historians have concentrated on the intellectual revolution in Germany by Moses Mendelssohn in the second half of the eighteenth century as the decisive event in the origins of Jewish modernity. In The Jews of Georgian England, Todd M. Endelman challenges the Germanocentric orientation of the bulk of modern Jewish historiography and argues that the modernization of European Jewry encompassed far more than an intellectual revolution. His study recounts the rise of the Anglo-Jewish elite--great commercial and financial magnates such as the Goldsmids, the Franks, Samson Gideon, and Joseph Salvador--who rapidly adopted the gentlemanly style of life of the landed class and adjusted their religious practices to harmonize with the standards of upper-class Englishmen. Similarly, the Jewish poor--peddlers, hawkers, and old-clothes men--took easily to many patterns of lower-class life, including crime, street violence, sexual promiscuity, and coarse entertainment. An impressive marshaling of fact and analysis, The Jews of Georgian England serves to illuminate a significant aspect of the Jewish passage to modernity. "Contributes to English as well as Jewish history. . . . Every reader will learn something new about the statistics, setting or mores of Jewish life in the eighteenth century. . . ." --American Historical Review Todd M. Endelman is William Haber Professor of Modern Jewish History, University of Michigan. He is also the author of Comparing Jewish Societies, Jewish Apostasy in the Modern World, and Radical Assimilation in English Jewish History, 1656-1945.

The movement from tradition to modernity engulfed all of the Jewish communities in the West, but hitherto historians have concentrated on the intellectual revolution in Germany by Moses Mendelssohn in the second half of the eighteenth century as the decisive event in the origins of Jewish modernity. In The Jews of Georgian England, Todd M. Endelman challenges the Germanocentric orientation of the bulk of modern Jewish historiography and argues that the modernization of European Jewry encompassed far more than an intellectual revolution.His study recounts the rise of the Anglo-Jewish elite--great commercial and financial magnates such as the Goldsmids, the Franks, Samson Gideon, and Joseph Salvador--who rapidly adopted the gentlemanly style of life of the landed class and adjusted their religious practices to harmonize with the standards of upper-class Englishmen. Similarly, the Jewish poor--peddlers, hawkers, and old-clothes men--took easily to many patterns of lower-class life, including crime, street violence, sexual promiscuity, and coarse entertainment.An impressive marshaling of fact and analysis, The Jews of Georgian England serves to illuminate a significant aspect of the Jewish passage to modernity."Contributes to English as well as Jewish history. . . . Every reader will learn something new about the statistics, setting or mores of Jewish life in the eighteenth century. . . ." --American Historical ReviewTodd M. Endelman is William Haber Professor of Modern Jewish History, University of Michigan. He is also the author of Comparing Jewish Societies, Jewish Apostasy in the Modern World, and Radical Assimilation in English Jewish History, 1656-1945.

Having unfolded in the diverse communities of the diaspora, Jewish experience lends itself almost effortlessly to comparative treatment. The contributors to this volume take up the challenge, examining Jewish societies from medieval to modern times, in Western and Eastern Europe, North and South America, North Africa, India, China, and the Middle East. The essays use the methodological strategies and theoretical insights of history, sociology, anthropology, and political science to explore such topics as Jewish and African nationalism; Arab and Jewish railway workers in British-ruled Palestine; East European Jewish immigrants in New York, London, and Paris; ritual murder trials in fin-de-siècle Central Europe; and Catholic and Jewish enlightenment movements. Further, because of their comparative structure and method, these essays stimulate fresh questions about the larger societies in which Jews lived--their values, practices, and structures. Comparing Jewish Societies will appeal to students and scholars at all levels who wish to break out of old frameworks to observe the Jews and their religion with a new, methodologically sophisticated eye. Todd M. Endelman is William Haber Professor of Modern Jewish History, University of Michigan.

In Todd Endelman's spare and elegant narrative, the history of British Jewry in the modern period is characterized by a curious mixture of prominence and inconspicuousness. British Jews have been central to the unfolding of key political events of the modern period, especially the establishment of the State of Israel, but inconspicuous in shaping the character and outlook of modern Jewry. Their story, less dramatic perhaps than that of other Jewish communities, is no less deserving of this comprehensive and finely balanced analytical account. Even though Jews were never completely absent from Britain after the expulsion of 1290, it was not until the mid-seventeenth century that a permanent community took root.Endelman devotes chapters to the resettlement; to the integration and acculturation that took place, more intensively than in other European states, during the eighteenth century; to the remarkable economic transformation of Anglo-Jewry between 1800 and 1870; to the tide of immigration from Eastern Europe between 1870 and 1914 and the emergence of unprecedented hostility to Jews; to the effects of World War I and the turbulent events up to and including the Holocaust; and, to the contradictory currents propelling Jewish life in Britain from 1948 to the end of the twentieth century. We discover not only the many ways in which the Anglo-Jewish experience was unique but also what it had in common with those of other Western Jewish communities.

In Todd Endelman''s spare and elegant narrative, the history of British Jewry in the modern period is characterized by a curious mixture of prominence and inconspicuousness. British Jews have been central to the unfolding of key political events of the modern period, especially the establishment of the State of Israel, but inconspicuous in shaping the character and outlook of modern Jewry. Their story, less dramatic perhaps than that of other Jewish communities, is no less deserving of this comprehensive and finely balanced analytical account.Even though Jews were never completely absent from Britain after the expulsion of 1290, it was not until the mid- seventeenth century that a permanent community took root. Endelman devotes chapters to the resettlement; to the integration and acculturation that took place, more intensively than in other European states, during the eighteenth century; to the remarkable economic transformation of Anglo-Jewry between 1800 and 1870; to the tide of immigration from Eastern Europe between 1870 and 1914 and the emergence of unprecedented hostility to Jews; to the effects of World War I and the turbulent events up to and including the Holocaust; and to the contradictory currents propelling Jewish life in Britain from 1948 to the end of the twentieth century. We discover not only the many ways in which the Anglo-Jewish experience was unique but also what it had in common with those of other Western Jewish communities.

In Broadening Jewish History Todd Endelman seeks to expand the horizons of modern Jewish historiography by focusing on ‘ordinary’ rather than exceptional Jews, arguing that what ordinary people did or felt can do more to deepen our understanding of Jewish history than what a few exceptional individuals thought and wrote. He also makes a strong case for comparative history, showing convincingly that only a comparison across national borders can identify the Germanness of German Jewish history or the Englishness of English Jewish history, and thereby reveal what is unique about each. This innovative collection of historiographical essays and case studies redefines the area under consideration and deftly restates the need for Jewish social history to counterbalance the current focus on cultural studies.The essays offer an important examination of the major trends in the writing of modern Jewish history and the assumptions that have guided historians in their narration of the Jewish past. Professor Endelman shows in particular how the two watershed events of twentieth-century Jewish history—the Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel—influenced Jewish historiography for decades thereafter. He also demonstrates how progressive integration into the scholarly framework of American academia has shaped both the form and the content of Jewish historical research.Each of the case studies focuses on a largely unknown figure whose career illustrates the often tortuous paths of integration and acceptance that Jews faced. Some achieved fleeting fame but many of the people who populate the volume remain altogether unknown, their histories recoverable only as statistics.In its wide-ranging analysis of trends in recent historical writing and its treatment of key themes and issues, this book is essential reading for professional historians, students, and indeed all those with an interest in Jewish history.

The subject of Disraeli's jewishness was one that obsessed contemporaries but was subsequently downplayed by historians and others until very recently. The essays in this volume provide a new perspective, stressing the importance of Disraeli's Jewishness in the construction of his personality, ideology and politics as well as in responses to him. This collection is an important addition not only to the understanding of Disraeli but also to the workings of race relations in Liberal Victorian Britain.

The subject of Disraeli's jewishness was one that obsessed contemporaries but was subsequently downplayed by historians and others until very recently. The essays in this volume provide a new perspective, stressing the importance of Disraeli's Jewishness in the construction of his personality, ideology and politics as well as in responses to him. This collection is an important addition not only to the understanding of Disraeli but also to the workings of race relations in Liberal Victorian Britain.

Launched in 1945, Commentary magazine became one of America's most celebrated periodicals. Under the editorship of Elliot E. Cohen, it developed into the premier postwar journal of Jewish affairs attracting a readership far wider than its Jewish community origin. This book is the first detailed and critical study of Commentary magazine during its formative years. Abrams traces the development of the key issues that have occupied its first fifty years: the construction of a new American Jewish identity, Judaism, the Holocaust, the State of Israel, and the Cold War. This account of the chief and most influential journal of Jewish thought, opinion, and culture in America will complete the picture of postwar American Jewish and general intellectual life. It is based upon a wide range of sources including archival and other material never before published in the context of Commentary magazine.