The Berlin Jewish Community: Enlightenment, Family and Crisis, 1770-1830 (review)

130 SHOFAR Spring 1995 Vol. 13, No.3 Anglia, these issues define the history of the Anglo-Jewish community. Just listing these issues has brought home to me, all the more forcefully, the fact that the Anglo-Jewish community was never without its sources of tension and controversy, a far cry from the more cozy cohesive community that was the subject of the earlier generation of Anglo-Jewish historians. Though he is occasionally critical of the policies of the Jewish Chronicle, it is abundantly clear that Cesarani retains a great affection for the paper that he, no doubt, grew up reading. This affection comes through most clearly in his discussion of the role of the Chronicle as a "community newspaper." The affection that Cesarani feels toward the paper, despite its faults, is, perhaps, the final evidence of the central role the paper played in the making of modern Anglo-Jewry. David C. Itzkowitz Department of History Macalester College The Berlin Jewish Community: Enlightenment, Family and Crisis, 1770-1830, by Steven M. Lowenstein. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. 300 pp. £35.00. Early-modern Jewish history represents one of the most exciting eras in the Jewish past. Usually bordered by the Spanish Expulsion on one side and the French Revolution on the other, this was a time of considerable intellectual and communal fertility. Almost out of protest against what is widely seen as a "Germanocentric " perspective of Jewish history, especially of modern times, it has been Italian Jewry of the renaissance period that has captured the attention and imagination of many of the outstanding scholars dealing with the period between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. In fact, German Jewry of this period has been vastly ignored despite its obvious significance for the transitions taking place. Steven Lowenstein has bridged the transitionary phase of this period in his new social history of the Berlin community between 1770 and 1830. Indeed, Lowenstein has written a book that we have long needed and will be citing for years to come. The period discussed represents that crucial time which begins with the emergence of the haskalah under Mendelssohn's leadership, includes Book Reviews 131 the well-known salons of the next generation, and reaches the early efforts to introduce Reform into synagogue services.. Lowenstein has painstakingly constructed a detailed statistical presentation of the dynamics of change, employing archival and printed materials to analyze economic endeavors, family structure, extra-marital affairs, conversions, intermarriages, and the combined effects of these factors on Jewish cultural and religious life. He raises for discussion a number ofassumptions that have permeated the literature on the Haskalah phenomenon. Not all of these assumptions withstand Lowenstein's scrutiny. As one example, he has a great deal to say about the role of women as early transmitters of Haskalah values. The study is surprisingly elitist in its orientation. I say surprisingly because that is not Lowenstein's usual perspective. But in the course of this work, we learn a great deal about changing economic elite groups and their impact on the cultural changes taking place as well. Whenever possible, the picture is completed with references to lower social and economic classes, but their attitudes to these changes are less well pronounced in this study. The notion of crisis hangs over the book with a heavy hand; the word itself is used rather excessively. The reference is to the challenge of conversion and assimilation that faced the community during much of this period. Still, in part the notion of crisis dissipates in the face of Lowenstein 's statistics, as, for example, he challenges the picture of an epidemic of conversions at the turn of the century. In his conclusion, the writer raises the question of responsibility for the situation that had developed and provides a sober discussion of the different roles played by the traditionalist and reform sectors of the community. The issue repeats one of the classic questions in the history ofJudaism: did religious movements weaken Jewish life over the course of the centuries by splintering communal strengths or did they contribute renewed strength to the community by precipitating necessary responses to changing conditions? As Lowenstein wisely observes in the case before him, the...