On the Word of a Jew Religion, Reliability, and the Dynamics of Trust [Hardcover]

What, if anything, does religion have to do with how reliable we perceive one another to be? When and how did religious difference matter in the past when it came to trusting the word of another? In todays world, we take for granted that being Jewish should not matter when it comes to acting or engaging in the public realm, but this was not always the case. The essays in this volume look at how and when Jews were recognized as reliable and trustworthy in the areas of jurisprudence, medicine, politics, academia, culture, business, and finance. As they explore issues of trust and mistrust, the authors reveal how caricatures of Jews move through religious, political, and legal systems. While the volume is framed as an exploration of Jewish and Christian relations, it grapples with perceptions of Jews and Jewishness from the biblical period to today, from the Middle East to North America, and in Ashkenazi and Sephardi traditions. Taken together these essays reflect on the mechanics of trust, and sometimes mistrust, in everyday interactions involving Jews.

Nina Caputo is Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Florida. She is author ofNahmanides in Medieval Catalonia: History, Community,MessianismandDebating Truth: The Barcelona Disputation of 1263, a GraphicHistoryand editor (with Andrea Sterk) ofFaithfulNarratives: The Challenge of Religion in History.

Joshua Curk received his doctorate from the University of Oxford in 2015. He teaches high school history in Toronto.

Hasia Diner is the Paul and Sylvia Steinberg Professor of American Jewish History and Director of the Goldstein-Goren Center for American Jewish History at New York University. She is author ofRoads Taken: The Great Jewish Migration to the New World and the Peddlers Who Forged the Way.

Stefanie Fischer is a post-doctoral research fellow at Potsdam University. Slã{