Use these questions to help you through the readings. Write a one-to-two page (2 pages double-spaced tops) essay based on some aspects of these readings, and be prepared to discuss the readings and your reactions to them in class. Be sure to include comments on all the readings in your essay.
Jacob Katz, "Family, Kinship, and Marriage Among Ashkenazim in the 16th to 18th Centuries."
1. Make a list of the aspects of family and kinship that Katz covers.
Mark which ones seem
typical of all pre-industrial families, and which ones seem to be
"typically Jewish
traits, both in the mode of life and in the consciousness which
accompanied it. . . ."
(5)
Are there many that seem typical of all societies, although
the "consciousness" is Jewish?
2. A criticism of this article is that Katz does not differentiate between different regions of Europe, and in the changes that occurred over time. What do you gain/lose without such differentiations? without comparisons with West European Jews (p. 20, n. 2)? without comparisons with Christians living in the same region?
3. What do you think about the class relations (especially
p. 10) as Katz describes them?
Are they logical to you? Persuasive?
4. Do you think that, at times, Katz is describing an ideal or a goal rather than a typical practice or attitude, when he states the practice and then the exceptions to it (e.g., rich v. poor relations, p. 15, or the end of the paragraph, top of p. 14)?
5. From this article do you get a sense of what Jewish communities lost upon receiving Emancipation as individuals? Which institutions were necessary to pre-Emancipation Jewish life? Which survive today? Why?
Ellen Umansky "Piety, Persuasion, and Friendship" in Umansky & Ashton, Four Centuries of Jewish Women's Spirituality in Eastern Europe (6), 1-6, 24-6
How did the spiritual lives of Jewish women differ from that of Jewish men?
Roskies, Diane K and David G. Roskies. The Shtetl Book.
1. After their introduction, "Know thy porets,"
the Roskies present three stories or folktales about Jewish-Gentile
relations. These are
not "normal" historical documents.
How can they be useful to historians?
2. In what ways do the stories challenge our stereotypes
about Jewish life in early modern Eastern Europe? Is there a single type
of Jew
depicted?
Is the role of the Jew only one of oppression and sorrow? Did the rendars
ever have any
power vis-a-vis the porets? the peasants?
Weinryb, Jews of Poland: "Legal and Political Situation" (12) 33-45
1. What allowed Jews to settle in Poland legally speaking?
2. Was the situation of the Jews in Poland much better than in Germany
or Bohemia?
Was it better in different parts of Poland?
3. What classes of Poles were the Jews' best protectors? Who were their worst enemies?
4. Does Weinrybís historical account square with the folktales in Roskies?
Shmuel Ettinger, "Jewish Participation in the Settlement of Ukraine" in Aster & Potichnyj, eds., Ukrainian-Jewish Relations (7) 23-30
What was the Jewish role the settlement of Ukraine?
Were the Jews getting involved in a dangerous enterprise, and if so, how
and why?