Introduction: Continuities and Discontinuities in the Formation of a Transoceanic Diaspora, 1391-1789

The present introduction contrasts the Jewish Middle Ages, in which Jewish culture-areas were relatively disconnected, with the Jewish early modern centuries, during which Jews became part of a cohesive diasporic society with a similarly distinctive and cohesive, yet internally diverse, civilization. The explains that the latter civilization was the outcome of key centripetal and centrifugal forces, and that each of those forces is the focus of each of the other chapters in the collection. While these forces were closely related to larger early modern phenomena, such as mercantilism, international geopolitics, and the rise of book culture, the present chapter proposes that Jews had their own, distinctive Early Modern Period. They were protagonists, in other words, of their own story, of the interplay of tradition and change in Jewish life, and did not merely react to developments that were external to their communities.