Shylock's Children Economics and Jeish Identity in Modern Europe [Hardcover]

Throughout much of European history, Jews have been strongly associated with commerce and the money trade, rendered both visible and vulnerable, like Shakespeare's Shylock, by their economic distinctiveness.Shylock's Childrentells the story of Jewish perceptions of this economic difference and its effects on modern Jewish identity. Derek Penslar explains how Jews in modern Europe developed the notion of a distinct Jewish economic man, an image that grew ever more complex and nuanced between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries.

Derek J. Penslaris Samuel Zacks Associate Professor of Jewish History at the University of Toronto and author ofZionism and Technocracy: The Engineering of Jewish Settlement in Palestine 1870-1918(1991). He coeditedIn Search of Jewish Community: Jewish Identities in Germany and Austria, 1918-1933(1998).

A groundbreaking work. . . . Penslar persuasively demonstrates that economic issues, or 'political economy,' had a profound impact on the shape and character of Jewish self-understanding. . . . It will be required reading for all scholars . . . . [and] will also capture the attention of a general audience. David Sorkin, author ofMoses Mendelssohn and the Religious Enlightenment

A major contribution. . . . Placing economics at the center of modern European Jewish history, Penslar presents an original interpretation of the critical issues of modern Jewish history: emancipation, social mobility, anti-Semitism, and the construction of new identities. Paula E. Hyman, author ofThe Jews of Modern France