Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The 2013 Early Modern Workshop on “Jews and Violence in the Early Modern Period” sought to contextualize violence involving Jews in the early modern period. Violence was an important part of the Jews' premodern experience, but all too frequently Jews have only been seen as victims of violence. Participating scholars tried not only to complicate this over-simplified notion of Jews as victims of violence in the premodern period by examining primary sources from the early modern period, and asking the following questions:

a) based on criminal records, the extent of violence involving Jews in various regions and, indirectly, indications of the level of Jewish participation in the underworld of the time;

b) based on court records and legislation concerning violence by and against Jews, how changing legal definition of, and practice towards, violent crime (Gewaltkriminalität) affected Jews in various regions and in various legal systems

c) by comparing violence against Jews with other forms of religiously inspired violence in the period, the position of Jews within the larger society and understand whether the scholarly literature about the inner logic of intolerance and violence in this period applies also to the situation of Jews;

d) by examining records of mass, or mob, violence against Jews, the difference between ritualized social practices (à la charivari), mob riots (Fettmilch riots; Jud Süss execution?), and structured, institutionally sponsored violent rituals (autos da fé; public executions);

e) by examining representations of violence by and against Jews in both Jewish and non-Jewish sources, how Jews and how the outside State/society perceived of Jews as perpetrators or victims.