A History of East European Jews

Content: PART I. POLAND AS A PLACE OF REFUGE FOR JEWS --
Polish Princes\' offer of protection from persectution --
Opponents of the Jews --
Economic success --
Social structure and self-administration of the Jews --
Learning and culture --
Jews as intermediaries between town and country --
Golden age for the Jews in Poland? --
PART II. EAST EUROPEAN JEWRY AS A \'CULTURAL PATTERN OF LIFE\' IN EASTERN EUROPE --
Catastrophe of 1648 --
Consequences of the catastrophe --
Kabbala --
Messiah in Poland: Shabtai Tsevi and Jacob Frank --
Popular piety of Hasidism --
Origins of the Ostjuden --
\'Shtetl\' --
Contacts between Jews and non-Jews: Jewish peddlers and innkeepers --
Symbiosis diminishes --
Jews in the partitions of Poland --
Reaction of the Jews to the new political, intellectual, and religious conditions --
Tsarist empire and the Jews --
East European Jews outside Tsarist rule --
PART III. THE CRISIS OF THE JEWS IN EASTERN EUROPE A NEW IDENTITY --
Transformation of the traditional intermediary function --
\'Expulsion\' and \'restructuring\' --
Luftmenshn --
Transformation of the occupational structure and new intermediary activities --
Competition to oust rivals from the market and anti-Semitism --
Haskala: the Jewish enlightenment --
Assimilation and acculturation --
\'Necktied\' and \'kaftaned\' Jews --
By way of an example: Jews in Warsaw and Łódź --
Jewish family --
Men and women in Jewish society --
Jewish upbringing --
Everyday religious customs --
Synagogue and community organizations --
Increasing conflicts with the non-Jewish world --
Socialism, Zionism, new Jewish identity --
Immigration as an attempt to find a new homeland --
Center of East European Jewry: Galicia and Bukovina --
Positive model with contradictions: Hungary --
Different attitudes to the emancipation of the Jews in Romania, Serbia, and Bulgaria --
\'Ritual murder\': the case of Bohemia and Moravia --
PART IV. ATTEMPTED ANNIHILATION AND NEW HOPE --
Jews in the Russian Revolution and in the Soviet Union --
East European Jewish nationality and new waves of anti-Semitism: the Jews in Poland between the two world wars --
Precarious situation in individual East European countries --
Attempted extermination of the Jews --
Jews in postwar Poland: new suffering and new hope --
AFTERWORD: THE SIGNIFICANCE OF MEMORY.