Unwelcome Strangers: East European Jews in Imperial Germany (Studies in Jewish History) - Softcover

Wertheimer, Jack

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0195065859 ISBN 13: 9780195065855

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1991

Synopsis

When East European Jews migrated westward in ever larger numbers between 1870 and 1914, both German government officials and the leaders of German Jewry were confronted by a series of new challenges. What policies did government leaders devise to cope with the seemingly unending tide of Jews flooding across Germany's borders? What was the actual, as opposed to the perceived, character of these Jewish migrants? How did native Jews respond to the arrival of coreligionists from the East? Drawing on archival research conducted in East and West Germany, Israel, and the United States, Unwelcome Strangers probes into these questions, touching on some of the most troubling issues in modern German and Jewish history--the behavior of Germans toward strangers in their midst, the status and self-perception of emancipated Jews in pre-Nazi Germany, and the responses of "privileged" Jews to needy, but alien, coreligionists.

About this title

About the Author

Jack Wertheimer is Joseph and Martha Mendelson Associate Professor of American Jewish History and Director of the Archives of Conservative Judaism at The Jewish Theological Seminary of America.

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0195065859
• ISBN 13: 9780195065855
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288