Difference of a Different Kind : : Jewish Constructions of Race During the Long Eighteenth Century / / Iris Idelson-Shein.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter University of Pennsylvania Press Complete Package 2014-2015
• VerfasserIn: Idelson-Shein, Iris,
• Place / Publishing House: Philadelphia : : University of Pennsylvania Press, , [2014]; ©2014
• Year of Publication: 2014
• Language: English
• Series: Jewish Culture and Contexts
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (280 p.) :; 12 illus.

European Jews, argues Iris Idelson-Shein, occupied a particular place in the development of modern racial discourse during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Simultaneously inhabitants and outsiders in Europe, considered both foreign and familiar, Jews adopted a complex perspective on otherness and race. Often themselves the objects of anthropological scrutiny, they internalized, adapted, and revised the emerging discourse of racial difference to meet their own ends.Difference of a Different Kind explores Jewish perceptions and representations of otherness during the formative period in the history of racial thought. Drawing on a wide range of sources, including philosophical and scientific works, halakhic literature, and folktales, Idelson-Shein unfolds the myriad ways in which eighteenth-century Jews imagined the "exotic Other" and how the evolving discourse of racial difference played into the construction of their own identities. Difference of a Different Kind offers an invaluable view into the ways new religious, cultural, and racial identities were imagined and formed at the outset of modernity.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Note on translations and transliteration -- Introduction -- Chapter 1. An East Indian Encounter -- Chapter 2. "And Let Him Speak" -- Chapter 3. Whitewashing Jewish Darkness -- Chapter 4. Fantasies of Acculturation -- Epilogue. A Terrible Tale -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- Acknowledgments