Reconstructing Ashkenaz shows that, contrary to traditional accounts, the Jews of Western Europe in the High Middle Ages were not a society of saints and martyrs. David Malkiel offers provocative revisions of commonly held interpretations of Jewish martyrdom in the First Crusade massacres, the level of obedience to rabbinic authority, and relations with apostates and with Christians. In the process, he also reexamines and radically revises the view that Ashkenazic Jewry was more pious than its Sephardic counterpart.
- ISBN10 0804759502
- ISBN13 9780804759502
- Publish Date 10 October 2008
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Stanford University Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 376
- Language English