A leading historian argues that historically Jews were more often voluntary migrants than involuntary refugees
For millennia, Jews and non-Jews alike have viewed forced population movement as a core aspect of the Jewish experience. This involuntary Jewish wandering has been explained by pre-modern Jews and Christians as divine punishment, by some modern non-Jews as the result of Jewish harmfulness, by some modern Jews as fostered by Christian anti-Jewish imagery, and by other modern Jews as caused by misguided Jewish acceptance of minority status.
In this absorbing book, Robert Chazan explores these various perspectives and argues that pre-modern Jewish population movement was in most cases voluntary, the result of a sense among Jews that there were alternatives available for making a better life elsewhere.
- ISBN10 0300218575
- ISBN13 9780300218572
- Publish Date 12 February 2019
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Yale University Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 272
- Language English
- URL http://wiley.com/remtitle.cgi?isbn=9780300218572