Out of the Ghetto: The Social Background of Jewish Emancipation 1770-1870

by Jacob Katz, Henry L. Feingold (Editor)

Jacob Katz presents the developing interrelationship between Jews and their Gentile environment as a whole, from both Jewish and non-Jewish points of view. If the results of the Jewish emancipation process differed from country to country, the forces effecting the changes were identical -- the upheaval of the French Revolution, the loosening of bonds between church and state, and the ideas of the Enlightenment. It was those humanistic ideas that made impossible the Jews' transition from the ghetto to partial inclusion in society at large and that attracted Jewish intellectuals to the "secular knowledge" of languages, mathematics, philosophy, and the wider world beyond their ancient learning.

Genres: History, Judaism, Nonfiction

271 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1973

Reviews

[Jackie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a classic work studying the Jews of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in German, Austrian and (a little bit of) French lands. It examines the classic cast of characters--Mendelssohn, Wessely, von Dohm, Napoleon Sanhedrin, etc.--in describing the profound changes that were to lead Jews “out of the ghetto” and into the general cultural mainstream. In many ways, it’s a bit like a textbook of the years 1770-1830. But that said, Katz makes a clear argument as well.
Katz argues that the growth of the modern state provided the space and the impetus for these changes in Jewish society. However, he also notes a Hegelian dialectic that within the new modern worldview was the emerging threads of modern anti-semitism that would later spell the destruction of the modern Jewish community. His other main argument is that the trajectory of Jewish emancipation is similar across political boundaries throughout west-central Europe if one looks at it from a social history perspective--nowhere was the transformation, in law and in gentile attitude, an automatic one but rather it progressed in fits and starts over decades. Emancipation “failed” to fully integrate the Jews because they still wanted to maintain aspects of their group identity.
Like in “Tradition and Crisis,” he discusses a bit about neutral space (although that point is more of a factor in the former work).

[Russel Henderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I understand subsequent scholarship has improved understanding of the time period, but by and large the book holds up quite well. He does an excellent job paralleling the two huge changes taking place in the European Jewish community of the time, the movement toward political emancipation and the changes within Judaism itself, the schisms in the conservative approaches to the faith occasioned by the political and social freedoms but also by the wider European intellectual trends of the Enlightenment, the Revolutionary Era and the period thereafter.

[Nat W · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book touches on a crucial time in Jewish history and lays the geopolitical foundation of modern European Jewish history. My only two qualms are 1) it is very hard to read, especially the first few chapters and 2) this almost solely focuses on European Jewry but does not touch on the geopolitical landscape of Sephardi or Mizrahi Jews during this same time.

[Arlian Sorkal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good. It has answers for many larger and smaller questions about the process of Jewish Emancipation.

[F · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good. It has answers for many larger and smaller questions about the process of Jewish Emancipation.

[Matt Stahl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, if not a bit dry at times.