Jewish Emancipation: A History across Five Centuries

by David Sorkin

The first comprehensive history of how Jews became citizens in the modern world

For all their unquestionable importance, the Holocaust and the founding of the State of Israel now loom so large in modern Jewish history that we have mostly lost sight of the fact that they are only part of―and indeed reactions to―the central event of that emancipation. In this book, David Sorkin seeks to reorient Jewish history by offering the first comprehensive account in any language of the process by which Jews became citizens with civil and political rights in the modern world. Ranging from the mid-sixteenth century to the beginning of the twenty-first, Jewish Emancipation tells the ongoing story of how Jews have gained, kept, lost, and recovered rights in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, the United States, and Israel.

Emancipation, Sorkin shows, was not a one-time or linear event that began with the Enlightenment or French Revolution and culminated with Jews' acquisition of rights in Central Europe in 1867–71 or Russia in 1917. Rather, emancipation was and is a complex, multidirectional, and ambiguous process characterized by deflections and reversals, defeats and successes, triumphs and tragedies. For example, American Jews mobilized twice for in the nineteenth century for political rights, and in the twentieth for lost civil rights. Similarly, Israel itself has struggled from the start to institute equality among its heterogeneous citizens.

By telling the story of this foundational but neglected event, Jewish Emancipation reveals the lost contours of Jewish history over the past half millennium.

Genres: History, Judaism, Nonfiction, Jewish, Politics, Antisemitism, Religion

528 pages, Paperback

Published September 14, 2021

About the author

David Jan Sorkin is the Frances and Lawrence Weinstein Professor of Jewish Studies and the Director of the Institute of Research in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Reviews

[Vio · Rating 5 out of 5]

I guess this book is quite authoritative on the subject of Jewish emancipation. It was totally interesting, with all the areas that it covers, going as far as Israel in the 21st century, which found me surprisingly well informed when the events in May 2021 started to appear in *my* news feed.
Well, I still have the footnotes of some chapters to read, but we'll see about that.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book gets 3 stars because the writing is atrocious. It’s super clipped sentences sometimes quoting directly from secondary or tertiary sources without any transition words. Often closing paragraphs under a “Conclusion” subheading will introduce totally new content. And the subheading structure is very hard to parse.

But the subject matter and breadth are quite excellent. Going from the 16th to 21st centuries is pretty cool tracing the development of civil and political rights , including backsliding during the 20th century through the modern day. Emancipation wasn’t just a single event nor an unalloyed good (or bad) but rather an ongoing process. There was into and out of estates emancipations. Civil and political rights, often at different times and cadences and even orders. The emancipation of Judaism was critical to the emancipation of the Jews and was tied up in the emancipation of other sects. The thesis are well defended and presented by the facts. Lots of fun factoids thrown in as well.

Overall I’d take this as an undergrad course for sure but as a book it’s a challenge.

[Abby]

reading this book was literal torture. the actual information is great but the writing hurt so bad i couldn’t finish it

[ariela lopez · Rating 4 out of 5]

lots of thoughts on david sorkin but mostly that he's a genius.