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3 The absence of a strong comparative dimension in Jewish studies has been noted by both historians and sociologists. When Jewish historians make comparisons, they generally highlight the uniqueness of a particular community on which their studies are based rather than demonstrate and explain similarities and differences among a number of communities. Comparative studies of Jewish communities by sociologists tend to be of two types: (1) comparisons of the pre-emancipation European communities with communities of the modern era (these comparisons often take the United States as the model of modernity and emphasize that “America is different”)1 and (2) comparisons of the Judaism and the Jewishness of the communities in the United States and Israel.2 Sociological comparisons of traditional, or premodern, Jewish communities are one of the lacunae in the narrow span of comparative Jewish studies. The infrequency of the explicit application of the comparative perspective in Jewish studies might at first appear surprising because the fact that Jews have lived in many different societies would seem to invite the comparative approach. Yet Jewish historians and social scientists of traditional Jewish communities tend to assume a basic Jewish pattern and to characterize the different communities as variations of that pattern. Unlike other nations, Jews are held to have remained essentially unchanged, and the notion of continuity is upheld by distinctions between a stable “essence” and changing “appearances” derived from non-Jewish environments.3 The belief that a Jewish autochthonous form can be separated from external influences is linked to the presupposition that the survival of the Jews as a distinctive people in premodern contexts can be explained by their religious separatism. The commitment and devotion of traditionalist Jews to their religion and the nature of that religion—its ritualism and halachic regulation—is frequently put forward to account for Jewish continuity and the singleness of Jewry wherever Jews are found. The Jewish religion is said to account for the survival of the Jews, “despite persecution ,” as in Europe, and “despite tolerance,” as in traditional China and precolonial India.4 One implication of this argument is that secularization, the decline in the social significance of religion, is seen as a threat to the continuation of Diaspora Jewish communities in the modern era. In his introduction to Comparing Jewish Societies, Todd Endelman sought to explain the lack of comparisons by Jewish historians in terms of the political ends and institutional structure of Jewish historical writing and training. Endelman emphaintroduction to part i 01 Part 1.indd 3 9/20/10 10:24 AM 4 i n t r oductio n to p a r t 1 sized the contribution that comparisons could make to the development of Jewish studies and noted that the diasporic character of Jewish history, with its lack of territorial focus, is especially suited to comparative treatment. He made a useful distinction between internal comparisons (the comparison of Jewish communities across time and/or space) and external comparisons (the comparison of Jews with non-Jews, either in the same place or in different national contexts).5 Internal comparisons have advanced in the past few years and include JewishGentile relations in medieval Europe and Islamic countries,6 the German and English Jewish communities in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,7 and the postemancipation French and American communities with an emphasis on the political contexts of the “host” nations.8 Few additions have been made in recent years to the external comparisons that were included in Endelman’s book: Dean Phillip Bell compared Jewish and Christian identities in the fifteenth century,9 and Elisheva Baumgarden compared Jewish and Christian family life in medieval Europe .10 For more than a decade the term diaspora has been applied extensively to a wide range of ethnic and religious groups. However, most writers in the field of diaspora studies treat the Jewish Diaspora as the paradigmatic case or ideal type,11 and they have rarely attempted to compare Jewish and non-Jewish diasporic communities in particular nations or civilizations. External comparisons by sociologists have been limited mainly to studies of the adaptation and mobility of Jewish and other immigrant groups, particularly Italians, in the United States.12 With respect to internal comparisons, an emphasis on the universal, unifying functions of the Jewish religion for Jewish communities has inhibited the application of a comparative approach that seeks to relate variant cultural and religious developments among Jewish communities to the non-Jewish social and cultural environments . Such a comparative approach was advanced more than...

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