This landmark study of Jewish life in the High Middle Ages sheds new light on the origins of modernity, including Jewish-Gentile relations, the Jewish role in early capitalism, the beginnings of Haskala (Enlightenment) and of Hasidism,
"An insightful study into the structure of the Jewish 'traditional society' in the Europe of Ashkenazic Jewery, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, and the Germanic lands including Bohemia, Moravia, and Alsace from the 16th to the latter half of the 18th century."—Review of Religious Research
Jacob Katz ( 1904-1998) is the author of From Prejudice to Destruction: Anti-Semitism, 1700-1933 and Out of the Ghetto: The Social Background of Jewish Emancipation, 1770-1870.
