Delves into Jewish religion and culture at a time of profound social and political revolution in the wider European culture. In September 1791, two years after the Revolution, French Jews were granted full rights of citizenship. General and Jewish scholarship has traditionally focused on this turning point of emancipation while often overlooking many of the most crucial aspects of French Jewish history. In Rites and Passages, Jay R. Berkovitz argues that no serious treatment of Jewish emancipation can ignore the cultural history of the Jews during the ancien regime. It was during the late...

Winner of the Jordan Schnitzer Award in the category of Modern Jewish History. This award, the highest honor the Association for Jewish Studies bestows on scholarship, was established in 2008 by the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation to honor scholars whose work embodies the best in the field: rigorous research, theoretical sophistication, innovative methodology, and excellent writing. Presented here to the public for the first time, the Pinkas of the Metz Beit Din is the official register of civil cases that came before the Metz rabbinic court in the two decades prior to the French...