The Jews of Europe after the Black Death

"Anna Foa's history of Jewish life in Europe from the fourteenth century through the nineteenth concentrates on the creative aspects of Jewish life and on continuities and correspondences among very different local Jewish communities.".

"After describing the reaction of European Jews to the wave of anti-Semitism and the construction of the anti-Semitic stereotype that followed the Black Death, Foa discusses in the second chapter the historical relations between the Church and the Jews in terms of their peculiar symbiosis.

In later chapters, she focuses on forms of Jewish identity that succeeded the various expulsions and exiles - expressed through internal society, family structures, collectives, and intercommunal relations - and on the life of specific communities, primarily in Spain and Italy and secondarily in northern Europe and England. In addition, she devotes an entire chapter to the structures of ghetto life.".

"Foa blends narrative history with thematic investigations. This story, perhaps surprisingly, tells of a stability that underlies and survives change, not only in the internal social structures and cultural attitudes of Jews toward themselves and others but also in the external attitudes of Christian society toward Jews."--BOOK JACKET.