symbols, and institutions. Chapters 6 and 7 will consider how a series of
changes in the polity, culture, and society of Europe and the Islamic world
from the mid-sixteenth through the end of the nineteenth century trans-
formed this all-encompassing Jewish identity – at times gradually, at times
abruptly – into an increasingly compartmentalized way of life, forcing Jews
to accommodate the new opportunities presented by cultural enlightenment
and the desacralization of life, political emancipation, and the possibility of
entering mainstream society. This transformation culminated in the emer-
gence of new religious definitions of Judaism during the nineteenth century –
notably Reform Judaism and Orthodoxy. Chapters 8, 9, and 10 will then turn
to the emergence of secular definitions of Judaism at the beginning of the
twentieth century, most famously Zionism and Bundism, and how these
identities, alongside the preexisting religious identities, confronted the chal-
lenges of anti-Semitism and the radically new possibilities presented by the
creation of the State of Israel and the openness of post-Second World War
America. In all, this book will traverse a contiguous, albeit tortuous, series of
steps, beginning with the world of the Hebrew Bible.
4 Introduction: dimensions of Jewish history