“For we Jews are merciful”: Emotions and Communal Identity

Assigning character traits to national groups was a key pastime in the early modern period, part of a process of consolidation of European national identities. This presentation examines the way emotional characteristics were assigned to emerging national groups. In particular, it focuses on the way in which Jewish communal sources employed language and terms of emotion to characterize Jewish communities. Internally the language often functioned to call notice to an ideal that the community was failing to live up to. The following texts are excerpts from Jewish communal records, as noted for each excerp

Pinkas Shamash Altona (1766-1767)

Elisheva Carlebach\u27s presentation discusses excerpts from the Pinkas Shamash Altona, providing a glimpse on an aspect of Jewish life that usually remained obscured--illegitimate children born to Jewish domestic servants, and the servants themselves, held very marginal status in the community. One of the pertinent issue was death. If they died the responsibility for buying them was contested between many different parties. This presentation is for the following text(s): Pinkas Shamash Altona (1766-1767) Click here for a video presentation

Big Blows on a Small Stage: Records of Violence in Jewish communal registers, Altona 1765-1776

The incidents of interpersonal violence discussed here were recorded in semi-private registers kept by communal scribes across a period of approximately a decade during the second half of the eighteenth century in the Ashkenazic community of Altona. The Ashkenazic “triple” community, AHW, whose center was Altona, then under the Danish crown, is richly represented by surviving internal and archival records for the early modern period. The questions explored address the meaning of this level of physical violence and the means by which it was addressed. Was violence tolerated as a way of keeping disputes within the community? How did it compare to earlier records and to the larger population in this area? Does it indicate a lack of faith in the Jewish judicial system? Did people resort to violence as the swift and immediate rebuke their opponents deserved but would not get in a judicial venue? Was physical violence in this period as a means of resolving disputes primarily based on class? Was violence primarily the response of lower classes who couldn’t afford to litigate disputes? Did women in engage in the same level of physical violence as men, and if not, how did its expression differ

The Letters of Bella Perlhefter (1674-75)

Elisheva Carlebach discusses the literary legacy of Bella bat Jacob Perlhefter (born c. 1650), accomplished writer, instructor of music and rhythm, and entrepreneurial seventeenth-century businesswoman. Her letters provide a rare glimpse into the life of a seventeenth-century Jewish woman (other than Glikl)