Study Questions for Week 5
Israel, Chapters 10 and 11
Chapter 10
How did Jewish demographic patterns in the 1700s differ from those in the 1600s? And how does Israel Explain this?
Was population stagnation limited to one region, or was it more general?
Explain how the following factors influenced Jewish population stagnation in the 1700s: changing trade routes; restrictive laws limiting the size of Jewish communities and limiting Jewish occupations; changes in state trade policy.
What impact peace after 1713 have on Court Jews generally? And how did Ashkenazi Court Jews respond culturally to these changes?
How did changing state policies affect the status of wealthy Sephardi?
What specific aspects of new state trade policies had the most impact on Jewish economic life?
Did new tariff, etc., completely destroy Jewish trade networks? Explain. What was the impact, and why was this a problem?
What were the numerus clausus, and what impact did they have on Jewish life in Germany and Bohemia-Moravia?
What types of Jewish policies did Russia implement between 1725 and 1762 (between the reigns of Peter the Great and Catherine the Great)?
Why did Jewish poverty increase in the 1700s? was this limited only to Germany?
Besides poverty, what other 18th century social trends disturbed rabbinical and communal leaders?
How did rabbis in the West respond to new cultural trends?
How did rabbis in the East respond to the new cultural trends? (For instance, Elijah of Vilna and Besht [Israel Baal Shem Tov].)
What were the basic principles of Hasidism, and how did it effect the kehillot?
According to Israel, what was happening to Jewish communal hierarchies by the 1780s?
So according to Israel, was it Emancipation after the French Revolution that undermined "traditional" Jewish life and institutions in Europe, or were they already in advanced decline before 1789?
Chapter 11
How is Israel challenging traditional Jewish historiography on the 1700s?
Does Israel approve of recent historical interpretations that de-emphasize the anti-Jewish impact of European Christian [Catholic and Protestant] Jewish policies in the late 1400s-1600s? Explain.
What does Israel see as the main Jewish contribution(s) to 17th century European civilization? Explain.
Vital, Preface, Contents, and Introduction
Preface:
What is the main point of the epigram by Schumpter? Why include this?
What kind of history does Vital say he is presenting, and how does he describe the approach he takes in this book?
Table of Contents:
Notice how Vital has organized this book--what does the organization suggest about his approach to the topic?
Introduction:
What are gzeirot?
According to Vital, why was Maria Theresa's 1744 decree to expel Jews from her lands so dramatic a measure? How did Europe's Jewish communities respond, and what were the results? What is the lesson Vital takes from this case?
According to Vital, Jews were subject to two contrasting levels of authority. Explain what he means by this.
Did Jews reject the authority of state rulers? Explain.
According to Vital, what attitude did rulers in "old regime" Europe (before the French Revolution) take towards Jews and why?
Were Jews under the old regime considered members of civil society? Why was this so important?
Why did state authorities under the old regime recognize the relative autonomy of Jewish communities?
Did Mosaic and Talmudic law give Jewish communities a clear and fixed set of legal guidelines on how to govern themselves? Explain.
Why was the problem of social control so complex in old regime Jewish communities?
By the late 1700s, who effectively led most Jewish communities? (What did the term gevir mean?)
According to Vital, why had the wealthy come to have such authority? What was expected of "grandees"? (What does the term shtadlanut mean?)
Like Israel, Vital stresses that the status of Court Jews was always fragile. How does the example of a Jewish leaseholder (arandar) in Poland demonstrate that other wealthy Jews lived similarly precarious lives?
Why, according to Vital, did the authority of the wealthy "unfailingly breed new forms of dissension and distrust" (p. 17) within Jewish communities?
What does Vital mean by "the rule of political self-abnegation"? What does he see as the main weakness of traditional Jewish political culture, and what does he see as its source?
According to Vital, why was there a sort of built-in-anarchism in Jewish culture?
What does Vital mean by "the doctrine of positive, mutual responsibility" (p. 19), and what are some examples?
What happened to individuals who did not follow social norms?
What was a malshin, and why were they treated so harshly?
What lesson does Vital draw from the case of Yizhak Rofeh, and what does this tell us about internalized mechanisms of social control? What does it tell us about the means the communal administration had to enforce social norms?
According to Vital, why couldn't the Jewish community base its government on existing models of non-Jewish governments?
Why did rabbinical authorities tend towards consensus? And why did rapid social change undermine rabbinical authority?
Documents:
Voltaire: A Treatise on Toleration (1763) (http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~wldciv/world_civ_reader/world_civ_reader_2/voltaire.html)
Voltaire makes a general argument about the need for toleration in this document. Based upon the first two sections of the document, what attitude towards Jews might you infer on the part of Voltaire? What about the attitude demonstrated in chapter 22 of the document?
Voltaire, Jews (from Mendes-Flohr and Reinharz, The Jew in the Modern World)
In this brief document, Voltaire deals directly with the question of the "nature" of the Jewish people.
Why does Voltaire consider Jews "worthy of consideration"?
How does Voltaire explain the antipathy between Jews and other peoples?
What does Voltaire have to say about the philosophy of Judaism and the Jewish influence on European civilization?
In sum, what is Voltaire's "tolerant" judgement of the Jews?
On Jews and Christians Living in the Same Place A Quo Primum: Encyclical of Pope Benedict XIV promulgated on June 14, 1751. (http://listserv.american.edu/catholic/church/papal/benedict.xiv/b14aquo.html)
Note that this Papal encyclical, written in 1751, was addressed to the church hierarchy in Poland. As we know from our readings, Poland was the home to Europe's largest Jewish population at this time.
Why, according to this document, did Jews pose a threat to Catholicism? What sort of demographic threat did Benedict XIV claim they pose? What sort of economic threat? What sort of religious threat?
According to the document, who had real (de facto) authority in Polish towns, Jews of Christians? And how did Jews treat the Christian population?
What Jewish "behaviors" does Benedict XIV single out as especially dangerous?
Based on what we have read elsewhere, how can we explain the social realities that lay behind these Papal charges?
Pope Benedict XIV reviews an assortment of earlier church decisions regarding Jews, then lays out how he wishes the church to deal with Jews in Poland. What sort of policies regarding relations between Catholics and Jews does he endorse? And how are these to be upheld?