Iris Idelson-Shein. Difference of a Different Kind

This book focuses on the Jewish attitude toward race as it evolved in the so-called long eighteenth century, mostly during the Jewish Enlightenment of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It attempts to decipher the manner in which European Jews, the “intimate Others” of the “white” Christians, viewed the “exotic other,” mostly black Africans and Native Americans (p. 4), and the way this was reflected in the construction of their own identity vis-à-vis other Europeans. While there is already quite a substantial body of literature concerning the Jewish attitude toward their various others, these mostly concentrate on views toward blacks and cover the period up to early modern times, and thus do not focus on Ashkenazi Jews. As the author correctly indicates, only a handful of studies have focused on the attitudes of Ashkenazi Jews in this particular period with reference to other “others,” and so this book is certainly a welcome addition.

Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Enlightenment · Genealogy · Identity (music) · Jewish identity · Judaism · Literature · Period (music) · Race (biology) · Sociology · Theology · White (mutation) · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Gender Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Philosophy · Race, History, and American Society · Religious studies