The Jewish Metropolis

The Jewish Metropolis: New York City from the 17th to the 21st Century covers the entire sweep of the history of the largest Jewish community of all time. It provides an introduction to many facets of that history, including the ways in which waves of immigration shaped New York’s Jewish community; Jewish cultural production in English, Yiddish, Ladino, and German; New York’s contribution to the development of American Judaism; Jewish interaction with other ethnic and religious groups; and Jewish participation in the politics and culture of the city as a whole. Each chapter is written by an expert in the field, and includes a bibliography for further reading. The Jewish Metropolis captures the diversity of the Jewish experience in New York.

The readmission of some categories of Jews into Kiev in 1859 brought about a rapid rise of the Jewish community in the city. Kiev had a symbolical significance as "the mother of the Russian cities" and was an important religious center, so the massive migration of Jews in it provoked anxiety among the Christians. The authorities and to some extent voluntary associations of Kiev tried to maintain a segregation between the Jews and non-Jews; while attacking Jews for their "isolation", they opposed also Jewish cultural assimilation. Describes the pogrom of 1881 and the bloody pogrom of October 1905. Argues that the pogroms of 1881 in Kiev and elsewhere took place mainly in the areas of new Jewish settlement. The pogromists in Kiev called not so much to "beat the Jews" as to expel them from the city. Dismisses the view that the perpetrators of the pogrom were vagabond workers from central Russia: the role of the locals in the riot was significant. The 1905 pogrom was a by-product of the revolution, in which many Jews took part. The authorities not only were reluctant to stop it (as it was also in 1881), but even encouraged the rioters for violence. Christian neighbors nearly always refused to hide or to protect Jews. Dozens were killed in what the nationalists regarded as a symbolic reconquest of Kiev from "seditionist Jews". Describes also the Beilis case in Kiev, which can be regarded that an anti-Jewish campaign launched by the all-Russian right rather than by Kiev antisemites. The pogroms shattered the hopes of most Jews for peaceful coexistence with non-Jews, but did not stop the Jewish migration to Kiev and their acculturation.

Warsaw. The Jewish Metropolis offers analyses of the cultural, religious, political and intellectual history of Warsaw Jewry, once the leading Jewish metropolis in Europe and the world.

Berlin Metropolis: Jews and the New Culture, 1890-1918 vividly documents the diverse ways that Jewish artists, intellectuals, and cultural impresarios participated in this burst of creativity and promoted the emergence of modernism in Berlin and on the international scene."--BOOK JACKET.

New York Jews, so visible and integral to the culture, economy and politics of America's greatest city, has eluded the grasp of historians for decades. Surprisingly, no comprehensive history of New York Jews has ever been written. City of Promises: The History of the Jews in New York, a three volume set of original research, pioneers a path-breaking interpretation of a Jewish urban community at once the largest in Jewish history and most important in the modern world.

Part 2 of the three part series, Deborah Dash Moore, general editor.