Cities Of Splendour In The Shaping Of Sephardi History

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Cities of Splendour in the Shaping of Sephardi History

Author : Jane S. Gerber
Publisher : Liverpool University Press
ISBN 13 : 1789624258
Total Pages : 333 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (896 download)

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Book Synopsis Cities of Splendour in the Shaping of Sephardi History by : Jane S. Gerber

Download or read book Cities of Splendour in the Shaping of Sephardi History written by Jane S. Gerber and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2020-05-20 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sephardi identity has meant different things at different times, but has always entailed a connection with Spain, from which the Jews were expelled in 1492. While Sephardi Jews have lived in numerous cities and towns throughout history, certain cities had a greater impact in the shaping of their culture. This book focuses on those that may be considered most important, from Cordoba in the tenth century to Toledo, Venice, Safed, Istanbul, Salonica, and Amsterdam at the dawn of the seventeenth century. Each served as a venue in which a particular dimension of Sephardi Jewry either took shape or was expressed in especially intense form. Significantly, these cities were mostly heterogeneous in their population and culture—half of them under Christian rule and half under Muslim rule—and this too shaped the Sephardi world-view and attitude. While Sephardim cultivated a distinctive identity, they felt at home in the cultures of their adopted lands. Drawing upon a variety of both primary and secondary sources, Jane Gerber demonstrates that Sephardi history and culture have always been multifaceted. Her interdisciplinary approach captures the many contexts in which the life of the Jews from Iberia unfolded, without either romanticizing the past or diluting its reality.

Cities of Splendour in the Shaping of Sephardi History

Author : Jane S. Gerber
Publisher : Liverpool University Press
ISBN 13 : 1789628016
Total Pages : 541 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (896 download)

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Book Synopsis Cities of Splendour in the Shaping of Sephardi History by : Jane S. Gerber

Download or read book Cities of Splendour in the Shaping of Sephardi History written by Jane S. Gerber and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2020-05-20 with total page 541 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sephardi identity has meant different things at different times, but has always entailed a connection with Spain, from which the Jews were expelled in 1492. While Sephardi Jews have lived in numerous cities and towns throughout history, certain cities had a greater impact in the shaping of their culture. This book focuses on those that may be considered most important, from Cordoba in the tenth century to Toledo, Venice, Safed, Istanbul, Salonica, and Amsterdam at the dawn of the seventeenth century. Each served as a venue in which a particular dimension of Sephardi Jewry either took shape or was expressed in especially intense form. Significantly, these cities were mostly heterogeneous in their population and culture—half of them under Christian rule and half under Muslim rule—and this too shaped the Sephardi world-view and attitude. While Sephardim cultivated a distinctive identity, they felt at home in the cultures of their adopted lands. Drawing upon a variety of both primary and secondary sources, Jane Gerber demonstrates that Sephardi history and culture have always been multifaceted. Her interdisciplinary approach captures the many contexts in which the life of the Jews from Iberia unfolded, without either romanticizing the past or diluting its reality.

CCAR JOURNAL - SPRING/SUMMER 2021

Author : Elaine Rose Glickman
Publisher : CCAR Press
ISBN 13 : 0881233749
Total Pages : 400 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (812 download)

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Book Synopsis CCAR JOURNAL - SPRING/SUMMER 2021 by : Elaine Rose Glickman

Download or read book CCAR JOURNAL - SPRING/SUMMER 2021 written by Elaine Rose Glickman and published by CCAR Press. This book was released on 2021-05-31 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Central Conference of American Rabbis Spring/Summer 2021 Journal Published by CCAR Press, a division of the Central Conference of American Rabbis

Jews, Food, and Spain

Author : Hélène Jawhara Piñer
Publisher : Academic Studies PRess
ISBN 13 : 1644699206
Total Pages : 271 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (446 download)

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Book Synopsis Jews, Food, and Spain by : Hélène Jawhara Piñer

Download or read book Jews, Food, and Spain written by Hélène Jawhara Piñer and published by Academic Studies PRess. This book was released on 2022-11-22 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2022 National Jewish Book Award Finalist for Sephardic Culture A fascinating study that will appeal to both culinarians and readers interested in the intersecting histories of food, Sephardic Jewish culture, and the Mediterranean world of Iberia and northern Africa. In the absence of any Jewish cookbook from the pre-1492 era, it requires arduous research and a creative but disciplined imagination to reconstruct Sephardic tastes from the past and their survival and transmission in communities around the Mediterranean in the early modern period, followed by the even more extensive diaspora in the New World. In this intricate and absorbing study, Hélène Jawhara Piñer presents readers with the dishes, ingredients, techniques, and aesthetic principles that make up a sophisticated and attractive cuisine, one that has had a mostly unremarked influence on modern Spanish and Portuguese recipes.

From Catalonia to the Caribbean: The Sephardic Orbit from Medieval to Modern Times

Author : Federica Francesconi
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004376712
Total Pages : 377 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (43 download)

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Book Synopsis From Catalonia to the Caribbean: The Sephardic Orbit from Medieval to Modern Times by : Federica Francesconi

Download or read book From Catalonia to the Caribbean: The Sephardic Orbit from Medieval to Modern Times written by Federica Francesconi and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-08-20 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Catalonia to the Caribbean is a polyphonic collection of essays in dialogue with Jane S. Gerber’s seminal contributions to Sephardic Studies. The essays present new sources and new perspectives that challenge our perceptions of the Sephardic experience from Medieval to Modern Times.

Francophone Sephardic Fiction

Author : Judith Roumani
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1793620105
Total Pages : 183 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (936 download)

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Book Synopsis Francophone Sephardic Fiction by : Judith Roumani

Download or read book Francophone Sephardic Fiction written by Judith Roumani and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-04-13 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Francophone Sephardic Fiction:Writing Migration, Diaspora, and Modernity approaches modern Sephardic literature in a comparative way to draw out similarities and differences among selected francophone novelists from various countries, with a focus on North Africa. The definition of Sepharad here is broader than just Spain: it embraces Jews whose ancestors had lived in North Africa for centuries, even before the arrival of Islam, and who still today trace their allegiance to ways of being Jewish that go back to Babylon, as do those whose ancestors spent a few hundred years in Iberia. The author traces the strong influence of oral storytelling on modern novelists of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries and explores the idea of the portable homeland, as exile and migration engulfed the long-rooted Sephardic communities. The author also examines diaspora concepts, how modernity and post-modernity threatened traditional ways of life, and how humor and an active return into history for the novel have done more than mere nostalgia could to enliven the portable homeland of modern francophone Sephardic fiction.

Salo Baron

Author : Rebecca Kobrin
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231555709
Total Pages : 372 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

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Book Synopsis Salo Baron by : Rebecca Kobrin

Download or read book Salo Baron written by Rebecca Kobrin and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2022-03-15 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1930, Columbia University appointed Salo Baron to be the Nathan L. Miller Professor of Jewish History, Literature, and Institutions—marking a turning point in the history of Jewish studies in America. Baron not only became perhaps the most accomplished scholar of Jewish history in the twentieth century, the author of many books including the eighteen-volume A Social and Religious History of the Jews. He also created a program and a discipline, mentoring hundreds of scholars, establishing major institutions including the first academic center to study Israel in the United States, building Columbia’s Judaica collection, intervening as a public intellectual, and exerting an unparalleled influence on what it meant to study the Jewish past. This book brings together leading scholars to consider how Baron transformed the course of Jewish studies in the United States. From a variety of perspectives, they reflect on his contributions to the study of Jewish history, literature, and culture, as well as his scholarship, activism, and mentorship. Among many distinguished contributors, David Sorkin engages with Baron’s arguments on Jewish emancipation; Francesca Trivellato puts him in conversation with economic history; David Engel examines his use of anti-Semitism as an analytical category; Deborah Lipstadt explores his testimony at the trial of Adolf Eichmann; and Robert Chazan and Jane Gerber, both once Baron’s doctoral students, offer personal and intellectual reminiscences. Together, they testify to Baron’s singular legacy in shaping Jewish studies in America.

The Oxford Handbook of the Jewish Diaspora

Author : Hasia R. Diner
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0197554814
Total Pages : 721 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (975 download)

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Book Synopsis The Oxford Handbook of the Jewish Diaspora by : Hasia R. Diner

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of the Jewish Diaspora written by Hasia R. Diner and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-10-27 with total page 721 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For as long as historians have contemplated the Jewish past, they have engaged with the idea of diaspora. Dedicated to the study of transnational peoples and the linkages these people forged among themselves over the course of their wanderings and in the multiple places to which they went, the term "diaspora" reflects the increasing interest in migrations, trauma, globalism, and community formations. The Oxford Handbook of the Jewish Diaspora acts as a comprehensive collection of scholarship that reflects the multifaceted nature of diaspora studies. Persecuted and exiled throughout their history, the Jewish people have also left familiar places to find better opportunities in new ones. But their history has consistently been defined by their permanent lack of belonging. This Oxford Handbook explores the complicated nature of diasporic Jewish life as something both destructive and generative. Contributors explore subjects as diverse as biblical and medieval representations of diaspora, the various diaspora communities that emerged across the globe, the contradictory relationship the diaspora bears to Israel, and how the diaspora is celebrated and debated within modern Jewish thought. What these essays share is a commitment to untangling the legacy of the diaspora on Jewish life and culture. This volume portrays the Jewish diaspora not as a simple, unified front, but as a population characterized by conflicting impulses and ideas. The Oxford Handbook of the Jewish Diaspora captures the complexity of the Jewish diaspora by acknowledging the tensions inherent in a group of people defined by trauma and exile as well as by voluntary migrations to places with greater opportunity.

Jews and Muslims in Morocco

Author : Joseph Chetrit
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1793624933
Total Pages : 507 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (936 download)

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Book Synopsis Jews and Muslims in Morocco by : Joseph Chetrit

Download or read book Jews and Muslims in Morocco written by Joseph Chetrit and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-07-27 with total page 507 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Multiple traditions of Jewish origins in Morocco emphasize the distinctiveness of Moroccan Jewry as indigenous to the area, rooted in its earliest settlements and possessing deep connections and associations with the historic peoples of the region. The creative interaction of Moroccan Jewry with the Arab and Berber cultures was noted in the Jews’ use of Morocco’s multiple languages and dialects, characteristic poetry, and musical works as well as their shared magical rites and popular texts and proverbs. In Jews and Muslims in Morocco: Their Intersecting Worlds historians, anthropologists, musicologists, Rabbinic scholars, Arabists, and linguists analyze this culture, in all its complexity and hybridity. The volume’s collection of essays span political and social interactions throughout history, cultural commonalities, traditions, and halakhic developments. As Jewish life in Morocco has dwindled, much of what is left are traditions maintained in Moroccan ex-pat communities, and memories of those who stayed and those who left. The volume concludes with shared memories from the perspective of a Jewish intellectual from Morocco, a Moroccan Muslim scholar, an analysis of a visual memoir painted by the nineteenth-century artist, Eugène Delacroix, and a photo essay of the vanished world of Jewish life in Morocco.

The Cambridge History of Judaism: Volume 5, Jews in the Medieval Islamic World

Author : Phillip I. Lieberman
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1009038591
Total Pages : 1216 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (9 download)

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Book Synopsis The Cambridge History of Judaism: Volume 5, Jews in the Medieval Islamic World by : Phillip I. Lieberman

Download or read book The Cambridge History of Judaism: Volume 5, Jews in the Medieval Islamic World written by Phillip I. Lieberman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-09-02 with total page 1216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Volume 5 examines the history of Judaism in the Islamic World from the rise of Islam in the early sixth century to the expulsion of Jews from Spain at the end of the fifteenth. This period witnessed radical transformations both within the Jewish community itself and in the broader contexts in which the Jews found themselves. The rise of Islam had a decisive influence on Jews and Judaism as the conditions of daily life and elite culture shifted throughout the Islamicate world. Islamic conquest and expansion affected the shape of the Jewish community as the center of gravity shifted west to the North African communities, and long-distance trading opportunities led to the establishment of trading diasporas and flourishing communities as far east as India. By the end of our period, many of the communities on the 'other' side of the Mediterranean had come into their own—while many of the Jewish communities in the Islamicate world had retreated from their high-water mark.

Jewish Entanglements in the Atlantic World

Author : Aviva Ben-Ur
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 1501773178
Total Pages : 257 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (17 download)

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Book Synopsis Jewish Entanglements in the Atlantic World by : Aviva Ben-Ur

Download or read book Jewish Entanglements in the Atlantic World written by Aviva Ben-Ur and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2024-01-15 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jewish Entanglements in the Atlantic World represents the first collective attempt to reframe the study of colonial and early American Jewry within the context of Atlantic History. From roughly 1500 to 1830, the Atlantic World was a tightly intertwined swathe of global powers that included Europe, Africa, North and South America, and the Caribbean. How, when, and where do Jews figure in this important chapter of history? This book explores these questions and many others. The essays of this volume foreground the connectivity between Jews and other population groups in the realms of empire, trade, and slavery, taking readers from the shores of Caribbean islands to various outposts of the Dutch, English, Spanish, and Portuguese empires. Jewish Entanglements in the Atlantic World revolutionizes the study of Jews in early American history, forging connections and breaking down artificial academic divisions so as to start writing the history of an Atlantic world influenced strongly by the culture, economy, politics, religion, society, and sexual relations of Jewish people.

Jews of Spain

Author : Jane S. Gerber
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 0029115744
Total Pages : 392 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (291 download)

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Book Synopsis Jews of Spain by : Jane S. Gerber

Download or read book Jews of Spain written by Jane S. Gerber and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1994-01-31 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of the Jews of Spain is a remarkable story that begins in the remote past and continues today. For more than a thousand years, Sepharad (the Hebrew word for Spain) was home to a large Jewish community noted for its richness and virtuosity. Summarily expelled in 1492 and forced into exile, their tragedy of expulsion marked the end of one critical phase of their history and the beginning of another. Indeed, in defiance of all logic and expectation, the expulsion of the Jews from Spain became an occasion for renewed creativity. Nor have five hundred years of wandering extinguished the identity of the Sephardic Jews, or diminished the proud memory of the dazzling civilization, which they created on Spanish soil. This book is intended to serve as an introduction and scholarly guide to that history.

The Ghetto: a Very Short Introduction

Author : Bryan Cheyette
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 0198809956
Total Pages : 169 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (988 download)

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Book Synopsis The Ghetto: a Very Short Introduction by : Bryan Cheyette

Download or read book The Ghetto: a Very Short Introduction written by Bryan Cheyette and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020-08-27 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For three hundred years the ghetto defined Jewish culture in the late medieval and early modern period in Western Europe. In the nineteenth-century it was a free-floating concept which travelled to Eastern Europe and the United States. Eastern European "ghettos", which enabled genocide, were crudely rehabilitated by the Nazis during World War Two as if they were part of a benign medieval tradition. In the United States, the word ghetto was routinely applied to endemic black ghettoization which has lasted from 1920 until the present. Outside of America "the ghetto" has been universalized as the incarnation of class difference, or colonialism, or apartheid, and has been applied to segregated cities and countries throughout the world. In this Very Short Introduction Bryan Cheyette unpicks the extraordinarily complex layers of contrasting meanings that have accrued over five hundred years to ghettos, considering their different settings across the globe. He considers core questions of why and when urban, racial, and colonial ghettos have appeared, and who they contain. Exploring their various identities, he shows how different ghettos interrelate, or are contrasted, across time and space, or even in the same place. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

The Ornament of the World

Author : Maria Rosa Menocal
Publisher : Back Bay Books
ISBN 13 : 0316092797
Total Pages : 262 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (16 download)

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Book Synopsis The Ornament of the World by : Maria Rosa Menocal

Download or read book The Ornament of the World written by Maria Rosa Menocal and published by Back Bay Books. This book was released on 2009-11-29 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This classic bestseller — the inspiration for the PBS series — is an "illuminating and even inspiring" portrait of medieval Spain that explores the golden age when Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived together in an atmosphere of tolerance (Los Angeles Times). This enthralling history, widely hailed as a revelation of a "lost" golden age, brings to vivid life the rich and thriving culture of medieval Spain, where for more than seven centuries Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived together in an atmosphere of tolerance, and where literature, science, and the arts flourished. "It is no exaggeration to say that what we presumptuously call 'Western' culture is owed in large measure to the Andalusian enlightenment...This book partly restores a world we have lost." —Christopher Hitchens, The Nation

When Scotland Was Jewish

Author : Elizabeth Caldwell Hirschman
Publisher : McFarland
ISBN 13 : 9780786455225
Total Pages : 264 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (552 download)

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Book Synopsis When Scotland Was Jewish by : Elizabeth Caldwell Hirschman

Download or read book When Scotland Was Jewish written by Elizabeth Caldwell Hirschman and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2015-05-07 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The popular image of Scotland is dominated by widely recognized elements of Celtic culture. But a significant non–Celtic influence on Scotland’s history has been largely ignored for centuries? This book argues that much of Scotland’s history and culture from 1100 forward is Jewish. The authors provide evidence that many of the national heroes, villains, rulers, nobles, traders, merchants, bishops, guild members, burgesses, and ministers of Scotland were of Jewish descent, their ancestors originating in France and Spain. Much of the traditional historical account of Scotland, it is proposed, rests on fundamental interpretive errors, perpetuated in order to affirm Scotland’s identity as a Celtic, Christian society. A more accurate and profound understanding of Scottish history has thus been buried. The authors’ wide-ranging research includes examination of census records, archaeological artifacts, castle carvings, cemetery inscriptions, religious seals, coinage, burgess and guild member rolls, noble genealogies, family crests, portraiture, and geographic place names.

Discourse on the State of the Jews

Author : Simone Luzzatto
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN 13 : 3110528231
Total Pages : 488 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (15 download)

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Book Synopsis Discourse on the State of the Jews by : Simone Luzzatto

Download or read book Discourse on the State of the Jews written by Simone Luzzatto and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2019-07-08 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1638, a small book of no more than 92 pages in octavo was published “appresso Gioanne Calleoni” under the title “Discourse on the State of the Jews and in particular those dwelling in the illustrious city of Venice.” It was dedicated to the Doge of Venice and his counsellors, who are labelled “lovers of Truth.” The author of the book was a certain Simone (Simḥa) Luzzatto, a native of Venice, where he lived and died, serving as rabbi for over fifty years during the course of the seventeenth century. Luzzatto’s political thesis is simple and, at the same time, temerarious, if not revolutionary: Venice can put an end to its political decline, he argues, by offering the Jews a monopoly on overseas commercial activity. This plan is highly recommendable because the Jews are “wellsuited for trade,” much more so than others (such as “foreigners,” for example). The rabbi opens his argument by recalling that trade and usury are the only occupations permitted to Jews. Within the confines of their historical situation, the Venetian Jews became particularly skilled at trade with partners from the Eastern Mediterranean countries. Luzzatto’s argument is that this talent could be put at the service of the Venetian government in order to maintain – or, more accurately, recover – its political importance as an intermediary between East and West. He was the first to define the role of the Jews on the basis of their economic and social functions, disregarding the classic categorisation of Judaism’s alleged privileged religious status in world history. Nonetheless, going beyond the socio-economic arguments of the book, it is essential to point out Luzzatto’s resort to sceptical strategies in order to plead in defence of the Venetian Jews. It is precisely his philosophical and political scepticism that makes Luzzatto’s texts so unique. This edition aims to grant access to his works and thought to English-speaking readers and scholars. By approaching his texts from this point of view, the editors hope to open a new path in research into Jewish culture and philosophy that will enable other scholars to develop new directions and new perspectives, stressing the interpenetration between Jews and the surrounding Christian and secular cultures.

The Baron

Author : Matthias B. Lehmann
Publisher : Stanford University Press
ISBN 13 : 1503632288
Total Pages : 481 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (36 download)

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Book Synopsis The Baron by : Matthias B. Lehmann

Download or read book The Baron written by Matthias B. Lehmann and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2022-08-23 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sweeping biography that opens a window onto the gilded age of Jewish philanthropy. Baron Maurice de Hirsch was one of the emblematic figures of the nineteenth century. Above all, he was the most influential Jewish philanthropist of his time. Today Hirsch is less well known than the Rothschilds, or his gentile counterpart Andrew Carnegie, yet he was, to his contemporaries, the very embodiment of the gilded age of Jewish philanthropy. Hirsch's life provides a singular entry point for understanding Jewish philanthropy and politics in the late nineteenth century, a period when, as now, private benefactors played an outsize role in shaping the collective fate of Jewish communities. Hirsch's vast fortune derived from his role in creating the first rail line linking Western Europe with the Ottoman Empire, what came to be known as the Orient Express. Socializing with the likes of the Austrian crown prince Rudolph and "Bertie," Prince of Wales, Hirsch rose to the pinnacle of European aristocratic society, but also found himself the frequent target of vicious antisemitism. This was an era when what it meant to be Jewish—and what it meant to be European—were undergoing dramatic changes. Baron Hirsch was at the center of these historic shifts. While in his time Baron Hirsch was the subject of widespread praise, enraged political commentary, and conspiracy theories alike, his legacy is often overlooked. Responding to the crisis wrought by the mass departure of Jews from the Russian Empire at the turn of the century, Hirsch established the Jewish Colonization Association, with the goal of creating a refuge for the Jews in Argentina. When Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, advertised his plan to create a Jewish state (not without inspiration from Hirsch), he still wondered whether to do so in Palestine or in Argentina—and left the question open. In The Baron, Matthias Lehmann tells the story of this remarkable figure whose life and legacy provide a key to understanding the forces that shaped modern Jewish history.