From Ghetto to Emancipation: Historical and Contemporary Reconsiderations of the Jewish Community

The central question addressed by the essays in this book was phrased in 1928 by a young Jewish historian named Salo Wittmayer Baron. He challenged what he called "the lachrymose conception" of Jewish history in which the Jewish Middle Ages were all black and the Jewish post-emancipation period was all white. He supported this by saying that "medieval Jews possessed more rights than the great bulk of the population...enjoyed full internal autonomy" in the corporatist order of medieval civilization, while in the wake of the Enlightenment, Judaism was recast into a narrow confessional mold.

Even if overstated, this view raises a still very current question, namely, how can a group seeking to preserve a measure of collective self-identity survive within a liberal society that values individual rights and obligations above all else? The essays in this volume deal with various answers and analyses of this question.