The early modern period has been generally treated by European historians as a period of rapid change. The increasing power of the centralized state, the invention and spread of printing, new economic forms and ideologies, changed demographic patterns, and significant improvements in communications and transportation have all been noted and linked to new patterns of cultural activity, the intensification of social discipline, and changing formulations of identity. Scholarship, in other words, has recognized the Early Modern as a distinct period well worthy of study on its own.
In Jewish history, on the other hand, scholars have tended to see the chronologically parallel period as either the end of the medieval or the beginning of the modern. The concept of an “early modern period” in Jewish history has not been widely recognized.
It is the goal of our workshop to bring together a number of influential scholars to work together for four days in order to try to define the parameters of change within this chronological period in Jewish history. The participants come from a broad range of geographic, thematic, and disciplinary perspectives. We hope that by the end of the workshop we will have made significant progress towards defining the parameters of change within the Jewish history of this period.
In order to accomplish our goal, we have adopted a somewhat unusual working format. Each participant will prepare one or, preferably, two primary texts that he/she feels illustrate(s) the change and transformation typical of the period. (If the participant opts to present two texts, we ask that one be from the early modern period and the other date from either the medieval or the modern. Thus a comparison of the two texts would help to explain why the early modern period is different.)
All texts will become available on a peer-reviewed website both in the original language and in an English translation. Eventually, we hope that all texts will be available in Hebrew, English and the original language.
This is intended as the first in a series of international workshops devoted to explorations of early modern Jewish history. We seek to establish a community of scholars working on this period and intend to provide a venue for publishing both primary source material and scholarly papers on our subject. Following the workshop, we intend to publish the texts, translations, and scholarly notes on the web, on a website co-sponsored and maintained by Wesleyan University and the Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Maryland.
For more information about this project please contact a member of the organizing committee: Magda Teter, Department of History, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT 06459, USA; Email: mteter@wesleyan.edu
Other members: Bernard Cooperman, University of Maryland; Edward Fram, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel; Adam Teller, Haifa University, Israel.