Resources for 2005
The City as a Place of Regulation, Border and Exclusion
No description available.
Close Quarters Privacy and Jewish House Space in Early Modern Polish Cities
No description available.
Domestic Interiors of Two Viennese Jewish Elites Probate Court in Vienna, 1730s
The probate inventories of mid-eighteenth-century Viennese Court Jews provide a rare opportunity to reflect upon the role of material consumption in the processes of acculturation and class formation among Central European Jewish elites during the decades preceding the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment). Probate inventories are lists of assets and possessions drawn up by government officials in the process of settling the estate of the deceased. These inventories require cautious interpretation by the historian, but potentially yield precious rewards since they afford a glimpse into the individual’s complex material world. This presentation is for the following text(s): Domestic Interiors of Two Viennese Jewish Elites
Marching Soldiers, Opera Houses and Young Jewish Men in Eighteenth-Century Hague: Haag Jewish Community Minute Book
The presented sources have been selected from the oldest minute book, the pinkas, of the Ashkenazi community in The Hague, which was kept from 1723 until 1786. The Hague was then the Dutch capital and residence of the Orange Stadholders. The city was much smaller than Amsterdam, but it was still one of the most important urban centers of the Dutch Republic. As the capital, its urban population included many officials, diplomats and soldiers, and these people formed and influenced the urban life significantly. The second half of the eighteenth century witnessed the high point of the Rococo with its intensive pursuit of amusement, evidenced by numerous theatres, operas, and pubs, as well as by people’s colorful dresses and the soldiers’ extraordinary uniforms.
Law, Boundaries, and City Life in Early Modern Poland-Lithuania
The dynamics of relations within cities thus are shaped not only by class or religious or ethnic membership but also by the legal framework. In the Polish- Lithuanian Commonwealth, divisions between the private and royal domains within cities disrupted not only their legal coherence but also that of Jewish communities themselves, sharpening economic competition and often also conflict. This is what the 1711 decree of the Lithuanian Tribunal against the kahal of Minsk highlights--legal distinctions sometimes exacerbated urban tensions. This presentation is for the following text(s): Decree of the Lithuanian Tribunal against the Kahal of Minsk
Question of the Eruv in Early Modern Europe
No description available.
The Shtetl in Context
No description available.
The Personal Record Book of Hayyim Gundersheim Dayyan (1774)
Rabbinic courts were and remain an integral part of the Jewish community and the Jewish community in Frankfurt in the late eighteenth century had not one but two such courts. The courts handled a wide range of issues including divorces, contracts, real estate transactions, trusts, estates, and also gave opinions on the scope of Jewish communal authority. This particular case deals with a house on the so called "Judengasse" in Frankfurt. The Jewish ghetto was divided up into lots that had names rather than street numbers and houses on the lots were often owned by more than one family. The case before us deals with reaching an equitable division of the house among it owners.
Rural Jews of Alsace
From 1348/9-1477, the Jews of Alsace were expelled from the cities in which they had lived throughout the Middle Ages. While many opted to leave the Empire for centers in Eastern Europe and Italy, some Jews remained, moving to the towns and villages in the countryside. By the 1470's, the majority of Alsatian Jews lived in rural areas. Quotas often dictated residential policies in towns and villages, so it was not uncommon to find one or two Jewish families per village/town. The following documents detail the relationship of rural Alsatian Jews, as represented by their communal leaders, with two Alsatian cities, Strasbourg and Hagenau. This presentation is for the following text(s): * Decree banning Jewish commerce in Strassburg * Letter from Josel of Rosheim to the magistrates of Strasbourg * Letter from Josel of Rosheim to the magistrates of the city of Strasbourg * Letter from Lazarus of Surbourg to the magistrates of Hagenau
Taverns and Public Drinking in Florence
The texts presented here (from Florence, Italy, 1571-1622) draw our attention to a set of spaces neither specifically Jewish nor Christian, but decidedly urban and early modern: the eating and drinking establishments of the cities. Not included here but relevant are the rabbinic laws that forbid Jews to eat non-kosher food, regulate the wine Jews drink, and prohibit Jews from spending or handling money on the Sabbath and on festival days. As a set, the texts both hint at chronological developments in the city of Florence and in the ghetto and also serve to caution against facile readings of any one text in isolation. As an exercise, one might consider how any of the three texts that refer to Jews might have been interpreted on its own.
Proceedings of Old Bailey (18th century)
Todd Endelman discusses the following six texts were published in The Whole Proceedings upon the King's Commission of Oyer and Terminer and Gaol Delivery for the City of London and also the Gaol Delivery for the County of Middlesex, a series of printed volumes recording cases tried at the Old Bailey in the City of London in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (now accessible on line at [www.oldbaileyonline.org](http://www.oldbaileyonline.org).)