Through most of Western European history, Jews have been a numerically tiny or entirely absent minority, but across that history Europeans have nonetheless worried a great deal about Judaism. Why should that be so? This short but powerfully argued book suggests that Christian anxieties about their own transcendent ideals made Judaism an important tool for Christianity, as an apocalyptic religion--characterized by prizing soul over flesh, the spiritual over the literal, the heavenly over the physical world--came to terms with the inescapable importance of body, language, and material things in...
Through most of Western European history, Jews have been a numerically tiny or entirely absent minority, but across that history Europeans have noneth...
