From East and West Jews in a Changing Europe, 1750-1870

The period from 1750 to 1870 was the formative age of the Jewish experience in modern Europe. The Jews completed their migration from segregation on the margins of early modern society to integration in the modern state, a process which encompassed the alteration of political and civil rights and the transformation of economic, social and demographic patterns. In "From East to West" a group of scholars focus on different countries (England, France, Poland, Russia, the Ottoman Empire), on various social types (bankers, businessmen, intellectuals, revolutionaries, rabbis) and on a rich diversity of Jewish identification (enlightenment, Reform, Orthodoxy, Hasidism, secularism, apostasy). They apply the methods of biographical and generational study to provide a history of European Jewry.