Emancipation: New Possibilities and New Perils

Prof. Shulamit Volkov

The 19th century brought with it gradual emancipation to the European Jews, a process which granted them complete legal equality and full citizenship, eliminating centuries-long restrictions.

How did a European society, which was used to seeing the Jews as socially inferior and visibly different, handle their assimilation into civilian life?

References

• Birnbaum, Pierre and Ira Katznelson, eds., Paths of Emancipation: Jews, States and Citizenship (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995).

• Katz, Jacob, Out of the Ghetto: The Social Background of Jewish Emancipation, 1770-1870 (Cambridge M.A., Harvard University Press, 1973).

• Volkov, Shulamit, “Exploring the Other: The Enlightenment’s Search for the Boundaries of Humanity,” in Robert Wistrich, ed., Demonizing the Other: Antisemitism, Racism and Xenophobia (Amsterdam: Published for the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, by Harwood Academic Publishers, 1999), pp. 148 – 167.

• Volkov, Shulamit, Germans, Jews, and Antisemites: Trials in Emancipation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).