Beyond Expulsion Jews, Christians, and Reformation Strasbourg [Hardcover]

Beyond Expulsionis a history of Jewish-Christian interactions in early modern Strasbourg, a city from which the Jews had been expelled and banned from residence in the late fourteenth century. This study shows that the Jews who remained in the Alsatian countryside continued to maintain relationships with the city and its residents in the ensuing period. During most of the sixteenth century, Jews entered Strasbourg on a daily basis, where they participated in the city's markets, litigated in its courts, and shared their knowledge of Hebrew and Judaica with Protestant Reformers. By the end of the sixteenth century, Strasbourg became an increasingly orthodox Lutheran city, and city magistrates and religious leaders sought to curtail contact between Jews and Christians. This book unearths the active Jewish participation in early modern society, traces the impact of the Reformation on local Jews, discusses the meaning of tolerance, and describes the shifting boundaries that divided Jewish and Christian communities.

Beyond Expulsionchallenges a number of preconceptions in both Jewish and Reformation history. In historiography of the Reformation, Jews are almost never present. Kaplan inserts Jews into the narrative of Reformation Strasbourg, challenging the prevailing story that once Jews were expelled from a place, their history there ended as well. Kaplan shows that, despite the expulsion of Jews from Strasbourg, they continued to have history there; more importantly, this history is tightly connected to the confessional history of the city and the Empire. [U]ntil now surprisingly few scholars have attempted to answer the questions Where did [Jews expelled from German cities] all go and what were the consequences? Debra Kaplan's new book not only directly takes on these queries but does so in an impressively documented yet nuanced treatment . . . [T]his is an admirable and very useful book. Kaplan's analysis is consistently evenhanded, her arlS$