The two and half centuries from 1492 to around 1750 were characterized by
developments in the world of Christendom and Islam that distinguish this
period from both the premodern and the modern periods, while marking a
transition between the very different Jewish worlds of the late fifteenth and
the late eighteenth centuries. First and foremost, extensive migration and the
rise of print culture increased contact between heretofore mutually isolated
parts of the Jewish world. Migration in this context meant not only a steady
eastward migration, from Spain to the Ottoman Empire and from central
Europe to Poland; but also a two-pronged demographic migration from out-
lying small towns to larger cities and centers of urban commerce and culture,
and from more established areas of settlement to frontier and border regions
in Poland and the Ottoman Empire. These migration movements, moreover,
brought together Jews from parts of the Jewish world that had heretofore
been largely isolated from one another. The convergence of Ashkenazic and
Sephardic Jews in the Italian states epitomized this trend, but it was true in
the Ottoman Empire as well.
The rise of print culture following the invention of the printing press
complemented this convergence of Jews by making it possible for literate
Jews who did not meet face to face to read one another’s written texts and
exchange views on an unprecedented scale. A text like the Shulchan Aruch
(Set Table), a code of Jewish law initially written by Joseph Karo in the Land
of Israel, was eventually published in Poland with Karo’s code and the Polish
rabbi Moses Isserles’ glosses (known as theMapah, tablecloth) side by side –
virtually unimaginable prior to the age of the printing press. Similarly, the
publication of editions of the Hebrew Bible with commentaries by scholars
from all over the Jewish world surrounding the biblical text was no less a
product of print culture.
Migration and print culture had a homogenizing effect on the Jewish
world, as customs and rabbinic precedents from one part of the Jewish world
impacted on the understanding and practice of Judaism elsewhere. At the
same time, as disparate customs were juxtaposed through face-to-face
encounters and written exchanges, a tension emerged between the preexisting
Chapter 6