Chapter 2: Glimmerings of a New Age
Study Questions
1) What series of events made up the “Deluge of 1648-1660” for Polish Jewry?
2) Why were the Jews of Cracow accused of being in league with the invading Christian Swedes?
3) What circumstances in Poland-Lithuania enabled the Jews to attain an unprecedented level of self-governance and freedom?
4) What were the kehillot (singular: kehillah)? How were they organized?
5) How did the sociopolitical environment in which the Jews of the Habsburg and Prussian regimes lived differ from that of Poland? Were there advantages or disadvantages to living in a region dominated by an all-powerful monarch compared to one characterized by a dispersed nobility?
6) What motivated Oliver Cromwell to permit a certain degree of Jewish emigration? Was his position accepted as official state policy? And did the status of the Jews subsequently change with the restoration of the monarchy in1660?
7) What was the Sabbatian movement? Have historians come to a consensus on the reasons for its upsurge and subsequent tenacious, if limited, popularity?
8) Was Baruch Spinoza’s philosophy of pantheism and deism evidence of the increasing influence of western rationalism on Jewish life and thought? Or was Spinoza’s retreat from traditional Judaism an isolated incident?
9) Describe the role of the “court Jew.” Where was he most active? Did he help to advance or retard Jewish emancipation?
10) Gartner observes that the papacy had "protected Jews for a millenium" but that this policy suddenly changed in the mid-sixteenth century. What are some of the reasons for the papacy's change in attitude toward the Jews?
11) In a world in which everyone was beholden to someone in terms of both rights and obligations, to whom were the Jews beholden? How secure was this relationship?