Early Modern Jewish History
Fall Term 2004
Final Examination
Note: The exam is given on a “take-home” basis. Your answers should refer to the readings as well as to themes developed in the lectures. Feel free to use outside sources (reference manuals, the library and scholarly on-line sites) in composing your answers.
Your answers should occupy no more than 8 double-spaced typed pages.
The exam is due in my office (or my mailbox in the history department) by 1:30 pm on Tuesday, December 14, 2004. If you do not hand it to me personally, please make sure that it is stamped with the date by someone in the department office.
While you are welcome to discuss the questions with your classmates, you should compose your answers individually and write your answers alone so as to avoid even the appearance of plagiarism.
Answer one question from part I and any two questions from part II.
Part I (50%). Answer one of the following questions:
1. The course has argued that the years 1450–1750 represent a separate and distinct period in Jewish History. Outline the arguments for and against this position, explaining what features you believe mark the period, and how these are continuous with, or mark a break from, what came before and what followed.
2. Outline the various theories about a “crisis” in the Jewish world at the end of the early modern period and explain how this crisis may have led to specific religious and intellectual changes in both western and eastern European Jewries. Your answer should address both the external and the internal sources of this crisis.
Part II (25% each). Answer two of the following questions:
3. Describe the cultural impact among Jews of the invention of printing. Be sure to include treatments of halakhic and mystical thought in the early modern period.
4. Explain the purpose and dynamic of autobiography among Jews in the early modern period. Using the two works we read together (as well as any other models which you know), describe why the authors wrote what they did and how they did. Compare the approaches shown by your various sources and explain any differences you perceive.
5. What factors led to the sudden growth of Safed as a Jewish center in the sixteenth century and what special factors characterized its religious life?
6. Outline the nature and role of messianism in Jewish life in the early modern period. What was unique about Jewish messianic thought and activism in this period?
7. Drawing on your knowledge of the Jewish community in Amsterdam as a prime example, outline the paths by which former New Christians created an individual and communal Jewish identity for themselves.
Good luck!