This chapter reviews the book Purchasing Power: The Economics of Modern Jewish History (2015), edited by Rebecca Kobrin and Adam Teller. Purchasing Power is a collection of essays that offers a wide range of methodological and historiographical perspectives on Jewish economic life from the early to late modern period—from early modern Rome to the Soviet Jewry movement in 1960s–1980s America. The book combines studies focused on both the creation and the deployment of Jewish economic power, thus acknowledging the central role played by philanthropy in Jewish societies. The book looks at Jews as agents (in national, transnational, and global perspectives) and how they “amassed, contested and deployed power through economic means.” The authors overcome taboos in the analysis of the connection between capitalism and the Jews.
