A People Apart (Oxford History of Modern Europe) - Hardcover

Vital, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0198208057 ISBN 13: 9780198208051

Publisher: Clarendon Press, 1999

Synopsis

The twentieth century has seen both the greatest triumph of Jewish history and its greatest tragedy: the birth of the nation of Israel, and the state-sponsored genocide of the Holocaust. A People Apart is the first study to examine the role played by the Jews themselves, across the whole of
Europe, during the century and a half leading up to these events.

David Vital explores the Jews' troubled relationship with Europe, documenting the struggles of this 'nation without a territory' to establish a place for itself within an increasingly polarized and nationalist continent. He examines the clash within the Jewish community between politically neutral
traditionalists and a new group of activists, whose unprecedented demands for national and political self-determination were stimulated both by increasing civil emancipation and the mounting effort to drive the Jews out of Europe altogether. Controversially, Professor Vital concludes that the
history of the Jewish people was indeed in crucial respects although certainly not all of their own making; at times by their own autonomous action and choice; at others by inaction and default.

This powerful and stimulating new analysis represents a watershed in our understanding of the history of the Jews in Europe.

About this title

Review:

In 1744, at the height of the War of the Austrian Succession, Empress Maria Therese came to believe that the Jews of Prague were plotting against her, in league with Austria's Prussian enemies. She decided accordingly to expel every member of the city's long-established Jewish community--"a brutal sanction," Anglo-Israeli historian David Vital notes, that "would have put an entire population on to the roads of Europe to march through lands in which they were highly unlikely to be allowed to settle in search of one in which they might." Maria Therese relented eventually, but the Jews of her empire were reminded once again of their precarious position, always potential victims of a ruler's whim.

Half a century later, for the first time in European history, the Jews of France were accorded equal rights of citizenship in the wake of the revolution. From that time on, Vital writes in his encyclopedic history of Jews in early-modern Europe, secularism replaced the former hierarchy of ghetto leaders and rabbinical authority. Able to move more or less freely in the larger society, Jews no longer had to band together for protection, and in short order many of them played important roles in finance, government, and industry. Reaction to their rise was swift: with it came an increase in anti-Semitism and militant nationalism throughout Europe, opposition from both right and left. Their communities now weakened, Jews were ever more vulnerable to attacks by their enemies. These tendencies would culminate in Holocaust, a nightmare of history that, Vital shows, was decades in the making. --Gregory McNamee

About the Author:

From 1977 to his retirement in 1995, David Vital was Nahum Goldmann Professor of Diplomacy at Tel-Aviv University.

About this edition

• Publisher: Clarendon Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0198208057
• ISBN 13: 9780198208051
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 962