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Articles 1 - 12 of 12

Full-Text Articles in History

Domestic Interiors Of Two Viennese Jewish Elites Probate Court In Vienna, 1730s, David Horowitz Aug 2005

Domestic Interiors Of Two Viennese Jewish Elites Probate Court In Vienna, 1730s, David Horowitz

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The probate inventories of mid-eighteenth-century Viennese Court Jews provide a rare opportunity to reflect upon the role of material consumption in the processes of acculturation and class formation among Central European Jewish elites during the decades preceding the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment). Probate inventories are lists of assets and possessions drawn up by government officials in the process of settling the estate of the deceased. These inventories require cautious interpretation by the historian, but potentially yield precious rewards since they afford a glimpse into the individual’s complex material world.

This presentation is for the following text(s):


The City As A Place Of Regulation, Border And Exclusion, Bernard D. Cooperman Aug 2005

The City As A Place Of Regulation, Border And Exclusion, Bernard D. Cooperman

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

This presentation is for the following text(s):

  • Supplications to the Government, Jewish Settlement in Livorno Atti Civili del Ufficio di governatore di Livorno (1605, 1610)


Law, Boundaries, And City Life In Early Modern Poland-Lithuania, Magda Teter Aug 2005

Law, Boundaries, And City Life In Early Modern Poland-Lithuania, Magda Teter

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The dynamics of relations within cities thus are shaped not only by class or religious or ethnic membership but also by the legal framework. In the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, divisions between the private and royal domains within cities disrupted not only their legal coherence but also that of Jewish communities themselves, sharpening economic competition and often also conflict. This is what the 1711 decree of the Lithuanian Tribunal against the kahal of Minsk highlights--legal distinctions sometimes exacerbated urban tensions.

This presentation is for the following text(s):

  • Decree of the Lithuanian Tribunal against the Kahal of Minsk (1711)

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Marching Soldiers, Opera Houses And Young Jewish Men In Eighteenth-Century Hague: Haag Jewish Community Minute Book, Stefan Litt Aug 2005

Marching Soldiers, Opera Houses And Young Jewish Men In Eighteenth-Century Hague: Haag Jewish Community Minute Book, Stefan Litt

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The presented sources have been selected from the oldest minute book, the pinkas, of the Ashkenazi community in The Hague, which was kept from 1723 until 1786. The Hague was then the Dutch capital and residence of the Orange Stadholders. The city was much smaller than Amsterdam, but it was still one of the most important urban centers of the Dutch Republic. As the capital, its urban population included many officials, diplomats and soldiers, and these people formed and influenced the urban life significantly. The second half of the eighteenth century witnessed the high point of the Rococo with its …


The Personal Record Book Of Hayyim Gundersheim Dayyan (1774), Edward Fram Aug 2005

The Personal Record Book Of Hayyim Gundersheim Dayyan (1774), Edward Fram

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

Rabbinic courts were and remain an integral part of the Jewish community and the Jewish community in Frankfurt in the late eighteenth century had not one but two such courts. The courts handled a wide range of issues including divorces, contracts, real estate transactions, trusts, estates, and also gave opinions on the scope of Jewish communal authority. This particular case deals with a house on the so called "Judengasse" in Frankfurt. The Jewish ghetto was divided up into lots that had names rather than street numbers and houses on the lots were often owned by more than one family. The …


Close Quarters Privacy And Jewish House Space In Early Modern Polish Cities, Adam Teller Aug 2005

Close Quarters Privacy And Jewish House Space In Early Modern Polish Cities, Adam Teller

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The following texts were chosen in order to illustrate the implications of the growth in Jewish population in Poland's larger towns during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when the number of Jews grew faster than the non-Jewish authorities would allow the Jewish quarters to expand. This led to an increasing degree of crowding in the Jewish quarter as a whole as well as in individual houses. To illustrate this, some demographic data on the situation in the Jewish quarter of Poznan may be seen in the presentation.

This presentation is for the following text(s):

  • Cracow Community Ordinance of 5355 (1595) …


Rural Jews Of Alsace, Debra Kaplan Aug 2005

Rural Jews Of Alsace, Debra Kaplan

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

From 1348/9-1477, the Jews of Alsace were expelled from the cities in which they had lived throughout the Middle Ages. While many opted to leave the Empire for centers in Eastern Europe and Italy, some Jews remained, moving to the towns and villages in the countryside. By the 1470's, the majority of Alsatian Jews lived in rural areas. Quotas often dictated residential policies in towns and villages, so it was not uncommon to find one or two Jewish families per village/town. The following documents detail the relationship of rural Alsatian Jews, as represented by their communal leaders, with two Alsatian …


Taverns And Public Drinking In Florence, Stefanie Siegmund Aug 2005

Taverns And Public Drinking In Florence, Stefanie Siegmund

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The texts presented here (from Florence, Italy, 1571-1622) draw our attention to a set of spaces neither specifically Jewish nor Christian, but decidedly urban and early modern: the eating and drinking establishments of the cities. Not included here but relevant are the rabbinic laws that forbid Jews to eat non-kosher food, regulate the wine Jews drink, and prohibit Jews from spending or handling money on the Sabbath and on festival days. As a set, the texts both hint at chronological developments in the city of Florence and in the ghetto and also serve to caution against facile readings of any …


Proceedings Of Old Bailey (18th Century), Todd Endelman Aug 2005

Proceedings Of Old Bailey (18th Century), Todd Endelman

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

Todd Endelman discusses the following six texts were published in The Whole Proceedings upon the King's Commission of Oyer and Terminer and Gaol Delivery for the City of London and also the Gaol Delivery for the County of Middlesex, a series of printed volumes recording cases tried at the Old Bailey in the City of London in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (now accessible on line at www.oldbaileyonline.org.)

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Question Of The Eruv In Early Modern Europe, David Katz Aug 2005

Question Of The Eruv In Early Modern Europe, David Katz

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

Both the responsum of Rabbi Aboab and that of Hakham Zvi Ashkenazi reflect a feature of pre-modern kehillah life almost never dealt with in scholarly literature, namely, the urban eruv, a physical boundary delineating space in which one is permitted to carry items on Sabbath, erected by the kehillah.

This presentation is for the following text(s), available in the PDF file:

  • Samuel Aboab's Responsum 257
  • Hakham Zvi Ashkenazi's Responsum, She'elot u'Teshuvot Hakham Zvi no. 6 (1699)

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The Shtetl In Context, Thomas Hubka Aug 2005

The Shtetl In Context, Thomas Hubka

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The town plans that will be analyzed were part of a greater, pre-nineteenth century Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, including most of today's Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, and western Ukraine. The overall organization and character of the Polish, eighteenth century, small Jewish town was primarily developed during the fourteenth-through-eighteenth century Polish colonization of its eastern provinces in what is now Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine.


Emw 2005: Jews And Urban Spaces, Emw 2005 Aug 2005

Emw 2005: Jews And Urban Spaces, Emw 2005

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The second Early Modern Workshop (August, 2005) was hosted by the Louis L. Kaplan Chair in Jewish History, the Department of History, and the Rebecca and Joseph Meyerhoff Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Maryland; by the Hebraica Section of the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., and supported by Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT.

Texts and maps cover a number of urban and geographic settings from London, to The Hague, Frankfurt, Livorno, Florence, Strasbourg, Prague, Poznań, and Minsk. They deal with physical personal space (minutes from the Poznań community record book; responsum of Rabbi Isaac the Great from Poznań; …