Beyond Expulsion

Jews, Christians, and Reformation Strasbourg

Debra Kaplan

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN:
  9780804774420
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780804779050
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Jewish History
• Index: History

Beyond Expulsion is a history of Jewish-Christian interactions in early modern Strasbourg, a city from which the Jews had been expelled and banned from residence in the late fourteenth century. This study shows that the Jews who remained in the Alsatian countryside continued to maintain relationships with the city and its residents in the ensuing period. During most of the sixteenth century, Jews entered Strasbourg on a daily basis, where they participated in the city's markets, litigated in its courts, and shared their knowledge of Hebrew and Judaica with Protestant Reformers. By the end of the sixteenth century, Strasbourg became an increasingly orthodox Lutheran city, and city magistrates and religious leaders sought to curtail contact between Jews and Christians. This book unearths the active Jewish participation in early modern society, traces the impact of the Reformation on local Jews, discusses the meaning of tolerance, and describes the shifting boundaries that divided Jewish and Christian communities.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Note on Currency, Spelling, and Translations
• Introduction: Beyond Expulsion: A Paradigm Shift
• 1. “Our City Is Seen as Greatly Superior”: Strasbourg and Its Reformation
• 2. “Without Trees, the Fire Will Be Extinguished”: Reinventing Jewish Life in the Rural Sphere
• 3. Shared Spaces: Social Interactions in the Countryside
• 4. Creating Jewish Space in the Christian City: The Jews and Strasbourg’s Markets
• 5. “As Is Also Apparent in the Old Chronicles and History Books”: Magisterial Laws, Confession Building, and Reformation-Era Tolerance
• 6. “I Listened to the Account of a Jew”: Christian Hebraism in Strasbourg
• 7. Constructing Jewish Memory: Self-Texts, the Reformation, and Narratives of Jewish History
• Conclusion: Becoming French: Alsatian Jews in the Wake of Confession Building
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index