Jews in the Early Modern World (review)

Dean Phillip Bell’s book is an overview of the history of the Jews in the early modern period, defined, somewhat arbitrarily, as 1400–1700. The book consists of five thematic chapters, plus an introduction and conclusions. The long bibliography and a section of “Suggested Readings” should be very helpful for students and teachers. Chapter One discusses the medieval period, attempting to paint background for what is to follow in Chapters Two through Five, which cover “Settlement and Demography,” “Community and Social Life,” “Identity: Religion and Culture,” and “Relations with the Other.” The author took upon himself a very difficult task: to write a book that would provide a broad overview of the history of the Jews from the Middle Ages through the end of the seventeenth century; and, as with any such broad studies, the limited space has forced him to make hard choices of what to include or exclude.

One of the most valuable aspects of the book is its expansion of geographic perspective to include a discussion of Jewish communities in places beyond Europe and the Ottoman Empire, such as “the New World,” as well as India and China. The chapter on “Settlement and Demography” is useful in giving an overview of the demographic trends in the early modern period. But the extensive use of numbers, derived from Encyclopedia Judaica, a source used extensively in the book, is most problematic. Although the author acknowledges that “demographic information is notoriously difficult to secure for the premodern history” (p. 35), the book nonetheless provides authoritative-looking tables with population numbers for periods as remote as the 1300s. The chapter also unnecessarily simplifies the division of the Jewish population into Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jews (pp. 35–36). While such division has been common, scholars are now more sensitive to communities that existed independently of the Germanic (Ashkenazic) or Iberian (Sephardic) lineage, including Italian, Iraqi, or Persian Jews.

The chapter on “Settlement and Demography” overlaps with the chapter on “Relations with the Other.” The latter outlines the legal status of Jews. Demographic patterns are obviously related to the Jews’ legal status, and it would have been useful to have the two discussed together, rather than placing the two in separate chapters far removed from each other.

Although “complexity” is perhaps the most frequently used word in the book, the book actually shies away from it. The chapter on “Community and Social Life” tends to focus on internal community developments, without linking them with the non-Jewish world. There is no question that internal community needs were crucial for the maintenance of a communal structure (courts, synagogues, mikvaot etc), yet recent scholarship, especially on Italy and Poland (e.g. Teller, Cooperman, Siegmund), has raised questions about the extent of Jewish autonomy, signaling that even the creation of certain bodies of what appears to be autonomous communal governance was often a result of political and economic policies of the non-Jewish governments.

The chapter “Community and Social Life,” about communal structures, focuses on the male Jewish functions (rabbis, parnasim, courts, etc.); the same is true of the chapter on “Identity: Religion and Culture.” Although the author rightfully says that “women were integral members of the Jewish community and family” (p. 121), in the book itself women are not an integral part of the society. Indeed “Jews” are male in the book (see, e.g., p. 130 “Jews, even Jewish women”). Women receive rather scant attention, and only within the context of family and “women” (pp. 120–127), or “deviance” (p. 166); they remain segregated and marginal in the book. If a focus on formal community structures makes it perhaps difficult to integrate women, discussion of economic activities or education, or “observance,” could have easily been more inclusive. Women’s involvement in economic activities is discussed briefly in the subsection “Women” (p. 122) rather than in the following section, “Professions and Occupations” (pp. 127–131). In chapter Four “Identity: Religion and Culture,” a discussion of...