Download PDF | Robert Chazan - Reassessing Jewish life in Medieval Europe, Cambridge University Press, 2010.
293 Pages
This book reevaluates the prevailing notion that Jews in medieval Christian Europe lived under an appalling regime of ecclesiastical limitation, governmental exploitation and expropriation, and unceasing popular violence. Robert Chazan argues that, because Jewish life in medieval Western Christendom was indeed beset with grave difficulties, it was nevertheless an environment rich in opportunities; the Jews of medieval Europe overcame obstacles, grew in number, explored innovative economic options, and fashioned enduring new forms of Jewish living.
His research also provides a reconsideration of the legacy of medieval Jewish life, which is often depicted as wholly destructive and projected as the underpinning of the twentieth-century catastrophes of antisemitism and the Holocaust. Dr. Chazan’s research proves that, although Jewish life in the medieval West laid the foundation for much Jewish suffering in the post-medieval world, it also stimulated considerable Jewish ingenuity, which lies at the root of impressive Jewish successes in the modern West.
Robert Chazan is S. H. and Helen R. Scheuer Professor of Jewish History in the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University. His most recent books are God, Humanity, and History: The Hebrew First Crusade Narratives (2000), Fashioning Jewish Identity in Medieval Western Christendom (Cambridge, 2004), and The Jews of Medieval Western Christendom (Cambridge, 2006).
Acknowledgments
This project has taken me well beyond my normal range of research and writing. Thus, I have been more deeply dependent than usual on colleagues and friends for their input in areas that I do not command. Happily, a number of such colleagues and friends have responded generously to my entreaties for aid. I would like to thank Professor Michael Toch for reading Chapters 5 and 6 and for sharing his rich knowledge of medieval Jewish demography and economic life. Professor David Engel, my Skirball Department colleague for many years, and Professor Steven Fine have read and commented upon Chapter 4, making available to me their rich knowledge of modern Jewish historiography.
For many reasons, the Epilogue was especially difficult for me to write, and I am thus indebted to Professor Steven Cohen, Professor Hasia Diner, and Professor Marion Kaplan for their reading of the Epilogue and for sharing their diverse perspectives with me. Clearly, all these fine scholars bear no responsibility for the shortcomings that remain, despite their best efforts. Once again, the settings from which this book has emerged have been stimulating and supportive. I have found a remarkable academic home in NYU’s Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies for nearly a quarter century. In the Skirball Department, I find myself surrounded by brilliant and productive colleagues, ever ready to stop and chat about mutual scholarly interests, and gifted students deeply committed to their study of the Jewish past. My immediate home environment remains what is has been for many decades now – warm and supportive to the utmost.
My wife, Dr. Saralea Chazan, immersed in her practice, her research, and her writing, has once more encouraged this project throughout. Without her ongoing encouragement, this book could not have been completed. Our grown children and their spouses – all involved in creative academic and professional careers of their own – have nonethelessfound the time to listen and lend their backing. Their children have simply been awellspring of enjoyment to their grandparents.
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