A history of East European Jews / by Heiko Haumann.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 251-270) and index.

PART I. POLAND AS A PLACE OF REFUGE FOR JEWS -- Polish Princes' offer of protection from persectution -- Opponents of the Jews -- Economic success -- Social structure and self-administration of the Jews -- Learning and culture -- Jews as intermediaries between town and country -- Golden age for the Jews in Poland? -- PART II. EAST EUROPEAN JEWRY AS A 'CULTURAL PATTERN OF LIFE' IN EASTERN EUROPE -- Catastrophe of 1648 -- Consequences of the catastrophe -- Kabbala -- Messiah in Poland: Shabtai Tsevi and Jacob Frank -- Popular piety of Hasidism -- Origins of the Ostjuden -- 'Shtetl' -- Contacts between Jews and non-Jews: Jewish peddlers and innkeepers -- Symbiosis diminishes -- Jews in the partitions of Poland -- Reaction of the Jews to the new political, intellectual, and religious conditions -- Tsarist empire and the Jews -- East European Jews outside Tsarist rule -- PART III. THE CRISIS OF THE JEWS IN EASTERN EUROPE A NEW IDENTITY -- Transformation of the traditional intermediary function -- 'Expulsion' and 'restructuring' -- Luftmenshn -- Transformation of the occupational structure and new intermediary activities -- Competition to oust rivals from the market and anti-Semitism -- Haskala: the Jewish enlightenment -- Assimilation and acculturation -- 'Necktied' and 'kaftaned' Jews -- By way of an example: Jews in Warsaw and Łódź -- Jewish family -- Men and women in Jewish society -- Jewish upbringing -- Everyday religious customs -- Synagogue and community organizations -- Increasing conflicts with the non-Jewish world -- Socialism, Zionism, new Jewish identity -- Immigration as an attempt to find a new homeland -- Center of East European Jewry: Galicia and Bukovina -- Positive model with contradictions: Hungary -- Different attitudes to the emancipation of the Jews in Romania, Serbia, and Bulgaria -- 'Ritual murder': the case of Bohemia and Moravia -- PART IV. ATTEMPTED ANNIHILATION AND NEW HOPE -- Jews in the Russian Revolution and in the Soviet Union -- East European Jewish nationality and new waves of anti-Semitism: the Jews in Poland between the two world wars -- Precarious situation in individual East European countries -- Attempted extermination of the Jews -- Jews in postwar Poland: new suffering and new hope -- AFTERWORD: THE SIGNIFICANCE OF MEMORY