This study explores the shifting boundaries and identities of historic and contemporary Jewish communities. The contributors assert that, geographically speaking, Jewish people rarely lived in ghettos and have never been confined within the borders of one nation or country. Whereas their places of residence may have remained the same for centuries, the countries and regimes that ruled over them were rarely as constant, and power struggles often led to the creation of new and divisive national borders. Taking a postmodern historical approach, the contributors seek to reexamine Jewish history and Jewish studies through the lens of borders and boundaries.
Judith Frishmanis chair of Jewish studies at the Institute of Religious Studies at Leiden University.
Introduction
Judith Frishman and Ido de Haan
Part I: Boundary WorkThe Ghetto of Florence and the Spatial Organization of an Early Modern Catholic State
Stefanie Siegmund
Explaining the Formation of Ghettos under Nazi Rule and its Bearings on Amsterdam. Segregating “The Jews” or Containing the Perilous “Ostjuden”?
Dan Michman
Makers of a Minority Group. Jews in Antwerp in the Twentieth Century
Veerle Vanden Daelen
Part 2: Cultural TrespassersJewish Parliamentary Representatives in the Netherlands, 1848–1914. Crossing Borders, Encountering Boundaries?
Karin Hofmeester
Catinka Heinefetter. A Jewish Prima Donna in Nineteenth-Century France
Robert Schechter
The Political Significance of Anne Frank. On Crossing Boundaries and Defining Them
David J. Wertheim
Part 3: Crossing BordersThe Twentieth-Century Portuguese Jews from Salonika. “Oriental Jews of Portuguese Originlc!
![Borders and Boundaries in and around Dutch Jewish History [Paperback]](/itemImage/2/6/9/2/2_1615299.jpg)