The central addressed the conference question by reported on in this book was posed by Salo Wittmayer Baron, then a young Jewish historian, in his 1928 essay "Ghetto and Emancipation". In it he challenged what he called "the lachrymose conception" of Jewish history in which the Jewish Middle Ages were all evil and Jewish post-Emancipation was all good. In asserting that medieval Jews possessed "more rights than the great bulk of the population...and enjoyed full internal autonomy" in the corporatist order of medieval civilization, he also found much to criticize in the loss of communal autonomy and the recasting of Judaism into a narrow confessional mold in the wake of the Enlightenment. In other words, how can a group seeking to preserve a measure of collective identity survive within a liberal society that values individual rights and obligations above all else? This became the basis for a conference in 1995 at the University of Scranton attended by a distinguished roster of scholars on various fields of Jewish studies from across the United States.

From Ghetto to Emancipation: Historical and contemporary reconsideration of the Jewish community

Politics & Social Sciences

David N. Myers

William Rowe

Social Sciences

University of Scranton Press

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Books by David N. Myers

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by David N. Myers. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

From Ghetto to Emancipation: Historical and contemporary reconsideration of the Jewish community