The Faith of Fallen Jews
Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi and the Writing of Jewish History
9781611684872
9781611684131
Distributed for Brandeis University Press
The Faith of Fallen Jews
Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi and the Writing of Jewish History
From his first book, From Spanish Court to Italian Ghetto, to his well-known volume on Jewish memory, Zakhor, to his treatment of Sigmund Freud in Freud’s Moses, Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi (1932–2009) earned recognition as perhaps the greatest Jewish historian of his day, whose scholarship blended vast erudition, unfettered creativity, and lyrical beauty. This volume charts his intellectual trajectory by bringing together a mix of classic and lesser-known essays from the whole of his career. The essays in this collection, representative of the range of his writing, acquaint the reader with his research on early modern Spanish Jewry and the experience of crypto-Jews, varied reflections on Jewish history and memory, and Yerushalmi’s enduring interest in the political history of the Jews. Also included are a number of little-known autobiographical recollections, as well as his only published work of fiction.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi “in the Midst of History” • PART I: SELF-REFLECTION • “To the Russian Reader” • “Words Delivered on the Occasion of Receiving an Honorary Doctorate from the École Pratique des Hautes Études” • PART II: EARLY PATTERNS • “Baer’s History, Translated and Revisited” • “A Jewish Historian in the ‘Age of Aquarius’” • “The Inquisition and the Jews of France in the Time of Bernard Gui” • “In Praise of Ladino” • PART III: IBERIA AND BEYOND • Sephardic Jewry between Cross and Crescent” • “The Re-education of Marranos in the Seventeenth Century” • “Assimilation and Racial Anti-Semitism: The Iberian and the German Models” • PART IV: JEWS AND POLITICS • “Spinoza on the Survival of the Jews” • “‘Servants of Kings and Not Servants of Servants’: Some Aspects of the Political History of the Jews” • “Israel, the Unexpected State: Messianism, Sectarianism, and the Zionist Revolution” • PART V: THE YOKE OF MEMORY • “Toward a History of Jewish Hope” • “Series Z: An Archival Fantasy” • “The Purloined Kiddush Cups: Reopening the Case on Freud’s Jewish Identity” • “Gilgul” • Index