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The Berlin Jewish Community: Enlightenment, Family and Crisis, 1770-1830
The Berlin Jewish community was both the pioneer in intellectual modernization and the first to experience a crisis of modernity. This original and imaginative book connects intellectual and political transformation with the social structures and daily activities of the Jewish community. Steven M. Lowenstein has used extraordinarily rich documentation about the life of Berlin Jewry in the period and assembled a collective biography of the entire community of Berlin Jews. He has examined tax lists, subscription lists, genealogical records, and address lists as well as kosher meat accounts to give us a vivid picture of daily life. On another level in detailing the complexity of Jewish life in Berlin during this period, this book illuminates the connections between the "peaceful stage" of enlightenment and the crisis that followed.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1994
8 people want to read
About the author
Steven M. Lowenstein
16 booksSteven Lowenstein, scholar, teacher, and a writer was born in New York in 1945 into a family of German –Jewish refugees.
He received his master’s degree from the Princeton University in 1969 and went on earning doctorate degree from the Princeton University in 1972.
He taught at a number of universities, including Columbia University and Monmouth College, and worked as a researcher at YIVO and Leo Baeck Institute.
In the late 1970s Dr. Lowenstein moved to California where he is teaching Jewish history at the American Jewish University (formed from the University of Judaism and the Brandeis-Bardin Institute).
Beginning in the late 1970s Steven Lowenstein served as Isadore Levine Professor of Jewish History at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles, California, USA.
He is the author of a large number of scholarly works, including The Jewish Cultural Tapestry: International Jewish Folk Traditions; The Berlin Jewish Community: Enlightenment, Family and Crisis, 1770-1830; and Frankfurt on the Hudson: The German-Jewish Community of Washington Heights, 1933-1983, Its structure and Culture.
He received his master’s degree from the Princeton University in 1969 and went on earning doctorate degree from the Princeton University in 1972.
He taught at a number of universities, including Columbia University and Monmouth College, and worked as a researcher at YIVO and Leo Baeck Institute.
In the late 1970s Dr. Lowenstein moved to California where he is teaching Jewish history at the American Jewish University (formed from the University of Judaism and the Brandeis-Bardin Institute).
Beginning in the late 1970s Steven Lowenstein served as Isadore Levine Professor of Jewish History at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles, California, USA.
He is the author of a large number of scholarly works, including The Jewish Cultural Tapestry: International Jewish Folk Traditions; The Berlin Jewish Community: Enlightenment, Family and Crisis, 1770-1830; and Frankfurt on the Hudson: The German-Jewish Community of Washington Heights, 1933-1983, Its structure and Culture.
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July 29, 2021
Lowenstein is a really, really good social historian whose research almost always involves quantitative methods. This book was the first to look at the influential (although miniscule) Jewish community of Berlin by examining not the intellectuals and Mendelssohn but rather more of a social history. Since the community was so small, Lowenstein does pay a rather large amount of attention to individuals and their families, especially the wealthy Itzig and Ephraim families whose children married into all of the other prominent families in town. These families, who became extremely wealthy by minting currencies during the Seven Years War, fostered the intellectual growth of the community in the tutors that they hired for their children. Since Berlin was not home to an established Jewish community but rather invited individual families, usually on the basis of wealth, the extremely wealthy families exerted a strong influence among the other Jews. There was no formal education for Jewish girls, and for Jewish boys there was a maskilic charity school (1781), although most were tutored at home.
Starting around 1763, Berlin’s tiny group of Jews was already significantly acculturated in its linguistic and cultural patterns, but it was not until after the death of Mendelssohn in 1786 that the young generation of these families began a more serious rebellion from the Judaic forms in which they had been raised. This was the generation of Salon Jewesses who knew far more of romanticism than they did of Judaism. Between 1790 and 1820 there was a large wave of baptisms, and very few of the grandchildren of the prominent families of the 1770s (Itzigs, Ephraims, Mendelssohns) were still Jewish. During these decades, Jewish women converted to gain titles of nobility. The number of baptisms comprised a crisis for the community not only because many of the most prominent families were no longer Jewsh, but because of the decline in communal revenues. In the decades to follow, Reform Judaism may have stemmed the tide of these baptisms, but the scales also shifted and eventually men far outpaced women in baptising, usually in order to qualify for occupations that did not allow Jews.
Lowenstein’s main argument here is that in Berlin, nonobservance had preceded Reform by more than a generation. Reform Judaism was meant to stem the tide of baptism and to restore a religious framework.
Starting around 1763, Berlin’s tiny group of Jews was already significantly acculturated in its linguistic and cultural patterns, but it was not until after the death of Mendelssohn in 1786 that the young generation of these families began a more serious rebellion from the Judaic forms in which they had been raised. This was the generation of Salon Jewesses who knew far more of romanticism than they did of Judaism. Between 1790 and 1820 there was a large wave of baptisms, and very few of the grandchildren of the prominent families of the 1770s (Itzigs, Ephraims, Mendelssohns) were still Jewish. During these decades, Jewish women converted to gain titles of nobility. The number of baptisms comprised a crisis for the community not only because many of the most prominent families were no longer Jewsh, but because of the decline in communal revenues. In the decades to follow, Reform Judaism may have stemmed the tide of these baptisms, but the scales also shifted and eventually men far outpaced women in baptising, usually in order to qualify for occupations that did not allow Jews.
Lowenstein’s main argument here is that in Berlin, nonobservance had preceded Reform by more than a generation. Reform Judaism was meant to stem the tide of baptism and to restore a religious framework.
Displaying 1 of 1 review