Maps; Tables; Preface; A Note on Place-Names and Transliteration; Abbreviations; Introduction; 1 The Largest Jewish Community in the World: When Is a Minority Not a Minority?; 2 Economic Integration; 3 The Polish Church and Jews, Polish Jews and the Church; 4 The Community; 5 Was There a Communal "Crisis" in the Eighteenth Century?; 6 The Popularization of Kabbalah; 7 Mystic Ascetics and Religious Radicals; 8 The Contexts of Hasidism; 9 Hasidism, a New Path; 10 Jews and the Sejm; Afterword; Select Bibliography; Acknowledgments; Index
Summary
Missing from most accounts of the modern history of Jews in Europe is the experience of what was once the largest Jewish community in the world--an oversight that Gershon David Hundert corrects in this history of Eastern European Jews in the eighteenth century