Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 3-16
Author(s):  
Ada Rapoport-Albert ◽  
Marcin Wodziński
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
Scholarly Literature ◽  
East European ◽  
Jewish Historiography ◽  
Modern School ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Subsequent Effect

This chapter describes Hasidism’s former reputation as a singular exception to the scarcity of scholarship on the religious dimension of Jewish life in eastern Europe. It cites the nineteenth-century liberal critique of the movement, which contributed to the disproportionate prominence of Hasidism in the scholarly literature about the religious life of east European Jews. It also explains liberal critique that originated in the militantly anti-Hasidic posture adopted by the early nineteenth-century maskilim, which left a deep imprint on the modern school of Jewish historiography. The chapter talks about the Jewish communities of eastern Europe that were divided into the opposing camps: Hasidic and anti-Hasidic. It analyzes the dichotomy that placed the movement at the very heart of an embattled arena and had the subsequent effect of harnessing Hasidism to a wide range of ideologically driven historiographical constructs.

The Missing Rabbis of Eastern Europe

2010 ◽  
pp. 277-301
Author(s):  
Shaul Stampfer
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Ashkenazi Jewish ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
East European ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries ◽  
Selection Of

This chapter examines the east European rabbinate. The rabbinate in modern eastern Europe was not significantly different from the rabbinate in other Ashkenazi Jewish communities up to the eighteenth century. In the following years, many aspects of rabbinical authority changed in almost every country of Europe. During the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a number of developments altered the conditions of rabbinic authority in eastern Europe in unique ways, and also made the selection of communal rabbis more complex than previously. Many of these changes contributed to a weakening of the power and status of the rabbinate — a power and status that were not exceptionally strong to start with. By the end of the nineteenth century, the patterns of the east European rabbinate were far from the traditional Ashkenazi model because the community, as a body that collected taxes and had internal authority, had ceased to exist.

The Pushke and its Development

2010 ◽  
pp. 102-120
Author(s):  
Shaul Stampfer
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Good Condition ◽  
Charitable Organizations ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
Standard Means ◽  
East European ◽  
The Government ◽  
European Jewish ◽  
Charitable Activities

This chapter details how charity is collected by Jewish communities. Traditional east European Jewish communities collected money in a number of ways; taxation was only one of the standard means. Communities had to make sure that payments required by the government were met and that communal facilities, such as synagogues, were kept in good condition. However, the needs of individuals were regarded as a very different matter and they were usually dealt with by voluntary, charitable activities. Donations had to be collected by charitable organizations which could not resort to coercion. One of the most popular methods employed by Jewish charities in recent generations was the pushke (‘charity box’ in Yiddish) which was found in many Jewish homes. While it may appear traditional, this was an innovation of the nineteenth century which spread quickly throughout all of eastern Europe. A careful look at the complicated dynamics behind the simple pushke reveals a great deal about the structure and values of east European Jewish society.

The Inheritance of the Rabbinate in Eastern Europe

2010 ◽  
pp. 302-323
Author(s):  
Shaul Stampfer
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Jewish Community ◽  
Orthodox Jewish ◽  
Standard Pattern ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
East European ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Integral Element

This chapter investigates the inheritance of the rabbinate in eastern Europe. Inheritance of rabbinical posts is almost taken for granted in many contemporary Orthodox or strictly Orthodox Jewish communities. This is true not only in hasidic groups, where inheritance is an integral element of the dynastic system, but in yeshivas and other Orthodox communities as well. It would be tempting but incorrect to assume that there was an unbroken tradition of inheritance of rabbinical posts from antiquity to the modern period. Granted, in many Jewish societies, inheritance of rabbinic leadership was accepted. However, for centuries, the standard pattern of Ashkenazi Jewry was quite different. In medieval and early modern Ashkenazi Jewry, inheritance of rabbinic posts was actually prohibited. In other words, although contemporary inheritance of rabbinical posts appears very traditional and even archaic, in reality it is also a modern innovation. The chapter suggests that it was a practical and reasonable response to changes that took place in the structure of the Jewish community in modern times and that clarifying this development sheds light on the nature of the east European rabbinate and the characteristics of the Jewish community.

Gender Differentiation and the Education of Jewish Women

2010 ◽  
pp. 167-189
Author(s):  
Shaul Stampfer
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Elementary Education ◽  
General Education ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Women's Education ◽  
Jewish Education ◽  
Jewish Women ◽  
East European ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Amount Of Knowledge

This chapter addresses the role, function, and extent of women's education in nineteenth-century east European Jewry, the way this education was integrated into broader gender classifications, and the implications and consequences of women's education. There is a widely held misconception that, in nineteenth-century eastern Europe, almost all Jewish women had a poor Jewish education whereas many received a good general education. Although males and females were provided with very different frameworks for acquiring literacy education, women were not necessarily inferior to men in Jewish knowledge. Women not only knew how to read but read often. It is quite possible that of all the books sold in eastern Europe, the two bestsellers were books specifically intended for a female audience and read only by women: Tsenah urenah and tekhines. The Tsenah urenah is a Yiddish text consisting of a free retelling of aggadic material on the Bible. It is clear, therefore, that in traditional Jewish society, the differences between the educational achievements of boys and girls on the level of elementary education were more perceived than real. The amount of knowledge a boy acquired in a full day of non-intensive study in a ḥeder was not necessarily much more than those of tutored girls who may have studied for an hour or two a day.

Classless: On the Social Status of Jews in Russia and Eastern Europe in the Late Nineteenth Century

2008 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 509-534 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eli Lederhendler
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
Economic Situation ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Class Culture ◽  
East European ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
The Social

In this paper I examine the economic and political factors that undermined the social class structure in an ethnic community—the Jews of Russia and eastern Europe at the end of the nineteenth century. Compared with the documented rise and articulation of working classes in non-Jewish society in that region, Jews were caught in an opposite process, largely owing to discriminatory state policies and social pressures: Among Jews, artisans and petty merchants were increasingly reduced to a single, caste-like status. A Jewish middle class of significant size did not emerge from the petty trade sector and no significant industrial working class emerged from the crafts sector. Historians have largely overlooked the significance of these facts, in part because they have viewed this east European situation as a mere preamble to more sophisticated, modern class formation processes among immigrant Jews in Western societies, particularly in light of the long-term middle-class trajectory of their children. Those historians interested in labor history have mainly shown interest in such continuity as they could infer from the self-narratives of the Jewish labor movement, and have thus overstated the case for a long-standing Jewish “proletarian” tradition. In reassessing the historical record, I wish to put the Jewish social and economic situation in eastern Europe into better perspective by looking at the overall social and economic situation, rather than at incipient worker organizations alone. I also query whether a developing class culture, along the lines suggested by E. P. Thompson, was at all in evidence before Jewish mass emigration. This paper is thus a contribution to the history of labor—rather than organized labor—as well as a discussion of the roots of ethnic economic identity.

Victorian Culture and Classical Antiquity

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Goldhill
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Roman Empire ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Victorian Culture ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Victorian Art ◽  
Victorian Science ◽  
Role Of Religion ◽  
Nineteenth Century Novels

How did the Victorians engage with the ancient world? This book is an exploration of how ancient Greece and Rome influenced Victorian culture. Through Victorian art, opera, and novels, the book examines how sexuality and desire, the politics of culture, and the role of religion in society were considered and debated through the Victorian obsession with antiquity. Looking at Victorian art, it demonstrates how desire and sexuality, particularly anxieties about male desire, were represented and communicated through classical imagery. Probing into operas of the period, the book addresses ideas of citizenship, nationalism, and cultural politics. And through fiction—specifically nineteenth-century novels about the Roman Empire—it discusses religion and the fierce battles over the church as Christianity began to lose dominance over the progressive stance of Victorian science and investigation. Rediscovering some great forgotten works and reframing some more familiar ones, the book offers extraordinary insights into how the Victorian sense of antiquity and our sense of the Victorians came into being. With a wide range of examples and stories, it demonstrates how interest in the classical past shaped nineteenth-century self-expression, giving antiquity a unique place in Victorian culture.

An Overview of the History of Religious Life in the United States

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Wittberg ◽  
Thomas P. Gaunt
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious Order ◽  
Religious Institutes ◽  
History Of ◽  
Socioeconomic Composition

This chapter briefly describes the history of religious institutes in the United States. It first covers the demographics—the overall numbers and the ethnic and socioeconomic composition—of the various institutes during the nineteenth century. It next discusses the types of ministries the sisters, brothers, and religious order priests engaged in, and the sources of vocations to their institutes. The second section covers changes in religious institutes after 1950, covering the factors which contributed to the changes as well as their impact on the institutes themselves and the larger Church. The chapter concludes with a brief overview of the subsequent chapters.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nurit Yaari
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
The Political ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Jewish Culture ◽  
The Past ◽  
Future State ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
State Of Israel

This chapter examines the lack of continuous tradition of the art of the theatre in the history of Jewish culture. Theatre as art and institution was forbidden for Jews during most of their history, and although there were plays written in different times and places during the past centuries, no tradition of theatre evolved in Jewish culture until the middle of the nineteenth century. In view of this absence, the author discusses the genesis of Jewish theatre in Eastern Europe and in Eretz-Yisrael (The Land of Israel) since the late nineteenth century, encouraged by the Jewish Enlightenment movement, the emergence of Jewish nationalism, and the rebirth of Hebrew as a language of everyday life. Finally, the chapter traces the development of parallel strands of theatre that preceded the Israeli theatre and shadowed the emergence of the political infrastructure of the future State of Israel.

Women and Slavery in the Nineteenth Century

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daina Ramey Berry ◽  
Nakia D. Parker
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Black Women ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Enslaved Women ◽  
Chattel Slavery ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Slave Traders ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Nineteenth Century United States ◽  
Kinship Bonds

This chapter analyzes the lives of enslaved women in the nineteenth-century United States and the Caribbean, an era characterized by the massive expansion of the institution of chattel slavery. Framing the discussion through the themes of labor, commodification, sexuality, and resistance, this chapter highlights the wide range of lived experiences of enslaved women in the Atlantic World. Enslaved women’s productive and reproductive labor fueled the global machinery of capitalism and the market economy. Although enslaved women endured the constant exploitation and commodification of their bodies, many actively resisted their enslavement and carved out supportive and sustaining familial, marital, and kinship bonds. In addition, this essay explains how white, native, and black women could be complicit in the perpetuation of chattel slavery as enslavers and slave traders. Considering women in their roles as the oppressed and the oppressors contributes and expands historical understandings of gender and sexuality in relation to slavery.

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