Between Love and Misogamy: Changing Perceptions of Marriage among German Jews, 1750–1800

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalie Naimark-Goldberg
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Jewish Life ◽  
Jewish Women ◽  
German Jews ◽  
Continuity And Change ◽  
Jewish Society ◽  
Traditional Institution ◽  
Love Marriage ◽  
Changing Attitudes ◽  
Attitudes Towards Marriage

Abstract Marriage is a central and binding institution of Jewish life. However, as a historical construct, it was never a static, immutable structure. This article focuses on the changing attitudes towards marriage among German Jews in the second half of the eighteenth century. It discusses how rational considerations external to the couple’s personal needs and desires started losing ground, while its function as a framework for emotional and erotic satisfaction intensified. As marriage was increasingly perceived in terms of self-fulfilment, many pursued happiness through matrimony, embracing the new idea of the love marriage. Although this idea developed from contemporary trends in non-Jewish society, maskilic authors used Jewish sources to maintain this position, trying to present it as consistent with tradition rather than as a break from it. The emergence of a romantic discourse was not the only transformation in the perception of marriage. The individualism that impelled the notion of a love marriage led to another type of discourse among Jewish women and men: the discourse against marriage. Using the perspectives of continuity and change, the article seeks to discern the role that Judaism and Jewish sources played in discourses about misogamy and the modernization of the traditional institution of marriage.

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.

Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry Volume 10

1997 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Jewish Life ◽  
Internal Factors ◽  
Marriage Patterns ◽  
Ritual Murder ◽  
Spiritual World ◽  
Factors Influencing ◽  
Jewish Society ◽  
Polish Society ◽  
Jewish Ritual

Jewish society in Poland–Lithuania in the second half of the eighteenth century was by no means insular: Jews numbered about 750,000, and comprised about half the urban population of the country. The contact between Jews and the wider Polish society found expression in the languages Jews knew, in their marriage patterns, even in their synagogue architecture and decoration, but also in Polish accusations of Jewish ritual murder. All these aspects are here systematically reviewed. Internal factors influencing developments within Jewish society are discussed: treatments of the medieval rabbinic ban on polygamy, as well as various influences of the growing interest in kabbalah — its impact on synagogue structure, on prayer, and on the spiritual world of women. The growth of hasidism is considered through critical analysis of the legends about its founder, Israel Ba'al Shem Tov. This wealth of topics helps to fill the gaps in our understanding of Jewish life in this important period. The New Views section of the volume incorporates valuable studies on other topics.

scholarly journals Dynamics of Continuity and Change: Shifts in Labour Relations in the Potosí Mines (1680–1812)

2016 ◽  
Vol 61 (S24) ◽  
pp. 93-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rossana Barragán Romano
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Economic Sectors ◽  
Labour Relations ◽  
Continuity And Change ◽  
The One

AbstractLabour relations in the silver mines of Potosí are almost synonymous with the mita, a system of unfree work that lasted from the end of the sixteenth century until the beginning of the nineteenth century. However, behind this continuity there were important changes, but also other forms of work, both free and self-employed. The analysis here is focused on how the “polity” contributed to shape labour relations, especially from the end of the seventeenth century and throughout the eighteenth century. This article scrutinizes the labour policies of the Spanish monarchy on the one hand, which favoured certain economic sectors and regions to ensure revenue, and on the other the initiatives both of mine entrepreneurs and workers – unfree, free, and self-employed – who all contributed to changing the system of labour.

Family, love, marriage and migration: the push and pull of private life

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. James Hammerton
Keyword(s):  
Final Section ◽  
Private Life ◽  
Marriage And Family ◽  
Love Stories ◽  
Transnational Marriages ◽  
Love Marriage ◽  
Family Breakdown ◽  
And Migration ◽  
Changing Attitudes ◽  
Push And Pull

This chapter explores ways in which the dynamics of love, marriage and family have shaped experiences and stories voiced by modern migrants. It focuses on the darker and brighter sides of migration and private life, where twin influences of migration and emotionally driven events are difficult to disentangle. These cases provide stark evidence of how modern migration became more discretionary, facilitating decisions to change countries for love – or for loss of love. Even the darker stories suggest migration could provide relief from the pain of family breakdown and divorce possibly due to resilience born of the challenges of adaptation to new countries. Transnational child custody cases and the complications of transnational marriages add further dimensions of complexity. Stories of close-knit but fractured families across three countries, with complex emotional histories, reveal equally complex understandings of the idea of ‘home’ as sanctuary, which owes something to changing attitudes to mobility. The final section, ‘Making the heart grow fonder: transnational love stories’, explores two women’s accounts in which emotions drove transnational love stories in striking ways, one over nearly half a century. All the stories mark a new trend of discretionary migration in an age of affluence.

Going Public

2013 ◽  
pp. 102-145
Author(s):  
Natalie Naimark-Goldberg
Keyword(s):  
Women Writers ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Jewish Women ◽  
Going Public ◽  
Local Conditions ◽  
Female Authors ◽  
Writing Culture ◽  
Women Of Letters

This chapter investigates the literary activity of enlightened Jewish women, discussing their attitudes towards authorship and what the crucial decision to publish their writings meant in the context of their time. As female authors, these Jewish women of letters were part of a broader phenomenon in contemporary Europe. Throughout the eighteenth century and especially towards its end, a female writing culture was developing simultaneously in various lands. Although the pace and nature of this literary expansion differed from place to place, depending on specific local conditions, countries including Germany, France, and England all saw a dramatic increase in the number of women active in the field of literature. The chapter then looks at the literary careers and the attitudes towards publishing of four of the Jewish women writers from the period, namely Esther Gad, Dorothea Mendelssohn, Rahel Levin, and Sara Meyer.

Conclusion

2012 ◽  
pp. 360-370
Author(s):  
Shaul Stampfer
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Young People ◽  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Jewish Life ◽  
Effect Change ◽  
Jewish Society ◽  
Traditional Approaches ◽  
Desire To Change

This concluding chapter examines changes to the role of yeshiva in Jewish society as well as several developments to yeshiva history after the nineteenth century. By the end of the nineteenth century, the changes and conflicts that had struck the Jewish world had affected the yeshiva too. Contemporary discussion of the yeshiva was frequently in the context of the Haskalah and noted its power to effect change. There is no clear answer as to what it was that persuaded young people to abandon traditional Jewish life, but the wholesale attribution of this to the Haskalah is not self-evident. It seems much more likely that the threat to traditional ways came from indifference to Jewish identity rather than from any desire to change that identity. Indifference is naturally hard to identify, and it was easier for conservatives to battle against a concrete enemy, equally eager to do battle, than to engage with an attitude that was so contemptuous of traditional approaches that it did not even bother to argue with them.

Epilogue

2019 ◽  
pp. 261-266
Author(s):  
Philipp Nielsen
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Life ◽  
Concentration Camp ◽  
German Government ◽  
German Jews ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Camp System ◽  
German Jewish

THE GERMAN GOVERNMENT might have intended to eliminate Jewish life in Germany, and it succeeded in depriving of their German lives the individuals who illustrated the (im)possibilities of Jews being engaged on and with the German Right in this book. Yet it did not succeed in ending their lives altogether. The majority of the German Jews appearing on these pages managed to survive the Holocaust, through emigration, hiding, or perseverance in the concentration camp system. After the Holocaust they gave testimony, archived their records, and collected those of others. Without their efforts this book on German Jewish conservatives would not exist; and though it ends with their emigration—all but one never returned to Germany for any lengthy period of time—their individual stories were not over. By briefly recounting their lives after 1938, I want to conclude by paying them my respects....

Strategy and Ruse in the Haskalah of Mendel Lefin of Satanow

2001 ◽  
pp. 86-102
Author(s):  
Nancy Sinkoff
Keyword(s):  
New World ◽  
Jewish Life ◽  
Social Criticism ◽  
East European ◽  
Jewish Society ◽  
European Jewish

This chapter focuses on Menahem Mendel Lefin of Satanow, a fascinating maskil, who was a link between the German and the east European Haskalah. Because he often wrote in Yiddish, he has usually been seen as a populist who advanced the maskilim's criticism of east European Jewish life and culture. He attacked the intoxication with mysticism, became involved in the literary battle against hasidism, and proposed the maskilim as leaders who could heal the ills of Jewish society. In contrast to the view of Lefin as a populist, which was rooted in earlier scholarship's nationalist bias, the chapter notes his sophisticated use of literary strategies aimed at different audiences according to the language of the text. It illustrates these strategies in an analysis of a text written for his fellow Jews; an adaptation and translation of a travel story in the New World meant as a tool of social criticism and anti-hasidic polemics; and also in a text written for a wider audience, an anonymous French memorandum that Lefin submitted to the Polish Sejm in 1791.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document