Divided souls : converts from Judaism in Germany, 1500-1750 / Elisheva Carlebach.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Carlebach, Elisheva.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Christian converts from Judaism--Europe, German-speaking--History.

Christian converts from Judaism.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (1 online resource (xii, 324 pages) : illustrations

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New Haven : Yale University Press, c2001.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This pioneering book reevaluates the place of converts from Judaism in the narrative of Jewish history. Long considered beyond the pale of Jewish historiography, converts played a central role in shaping both noxious and positive images of Jews and Judaism for Christian readers. Focusing on German Jews who converted to Christianity in the sixteenth through mid-eighteenth centuries, Elisheva Carlebach explores an extensive and previously unexamined trove of their memoirs and other writings. These fascinating original sources illuminate the Jewish communities that the converts left, the Christian society they entered, and the unabating tensions between the two worlds in early modern German history. The book begins with the medieval images of converts from Judaism and traces the hurdles to social acceptance that they encountered in Germany through early modern times. Carlebach examines the converts' complicated search for community, a quest that was to characterize much of Jewish modernity, and she concludes with a consideration of the converts' painful legacies to the Jewish experience in German lands."Carlebach's reading of autobiographical texts by converts from Judaism is careful, intelligent, and skeptical--a model of how to treat spiritual memoirs."--Todd M. Endelman, University of Michigan "This superb book highlights the ambiguous identities of these boundary crossers and their impact on both German and Jewish self-definitions."--Paula E. Hyman, Yale University Elisheva Carlebach is professor of history at Queens College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. She is the author of The Pursuit of Heresy: Rabbi Moses Hagiz and the Sabbatian Controversies, winner of the National Jewish Book Award for Jewish History, and coeditor of Jewish History and Jewish Memory.

Contents:

Front matter

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

Chapter 1 THE MEDIEVAL LEGACY

Chapter 2 THE LOST CROWN OF SYNAGOGA

Chapter 3 THE TURNING POINT

Chapter 4 THE LAST DECEPTION

Chapter 5 WRITING THE DIVIDED SELF

Chapter 6 THE PROFESSIONS OF CONVERSION

Chapter 7 CONVERSION AND RUPTURE OF THE FAMILY

Chapter 8 CONVERSION, LANGUAGE, AND IDENTITY

Chapter 9 REVEALING THE SECRETS OF JUDAISM

Chapter 10 REPRESENTATION AND RIVALRY

Chapter 11 CONCLUSION

APPENDIX: THE CONVERSION AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF FRIEDRICH ALBRECHT CHRISTIANI (LEBENS=LAUFF)

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. 289-318) and index.

ISBN:

9786611731267

9781281731265

1281731269

9780300133066

0300133065

OCLC:

1013936061