Yosef Kaplan
Yosef Kaplan was born and raised in Buenos Aires. In 1962 he immigrated to Israel. He studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, majoring in Jewish history and sociology. In 1979 he completed his Ph.D. in Jewish history. He is Bernard Cherrick Professor Emeritus of Jewish History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He was a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; visiting professor at Yale University; fellow at the Royal Institute for Advanced Study in Wassenaar (the Netherlands); associate director of research at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris; Goldsmid Visiting Professor at University College London; visiting scholar at Wolfson College, Oxford; associate director of research at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, Sorbonne, Paris; visiting fellow at All Souls College, Oxford; and a member of the School of Historical Studies, the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. He was chairman of the Historical Society of Israel and member of the editorial board of the historical quarterly Zion. He was one of the founders of the School of History at the Hebrew University and its second director. In 2004 he was elected member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities and since October 2013 he has been chair of the Humanities Division. Between 2009 and 2013 he was the chairman of the World Union of Jewish Studies. In 2013 he was awarded the Israel Prize in Jewish History. His publications include From Christianity to Judaism: The Story of Isaac Orobio de Castro (Hebrew, 1982; English, 1989); Judíos Nuevos en Amsterdam (1996; French, 1999); and An Alternative Path to Modernity (2000; enlarged Hebrew version, 2002). He has edited and coedited twenty books. He is the editor of The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, Volume 5: The Early Modern Era, 1500–1750.
Content by Yosef Kaplan
Primary Source
From Christianity to Judaism: The Story of Isaac Orobio de Castro
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Birth of an Idea: Defining the Early Modern Period
1500–1750The emergence of the early modern period (1500–1750) in Jewish history is relatively recent and complex.
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Community, Congregation, and Self-Government
1500–1750The early modern period witnessed flourishing Jewish self-governance across the diaspora, as economic utility to host nations enabled unprecedented communal autonomy.
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Defining Trends of the Early Modern Period
1500–1750Paradoxically, both centrifugal forces (expulsions, migrations creating global dispersion) and centripetal trends (Hebrew printing, kabbalah) unified Jews in the early modern period.
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Early Modern Egodocuments
1500–1750The early modern period witnessed a proliferation of Jewish "egodocuments"—first-person texts where authors reveal themselves.
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Early Modern Historical Narratives
1500–1750The early modern period saw a flourishing of Jewish historical writing in genres ranging from apologetic treatises to chronicles of specific events.
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Early Modern Italy: Where East and West Meet
1500–1750Ashkenazim, Sephardim, and Marranos encountered each other in Italian cities, developing community structures that later influenced Jewish communal organization throughout the western world.
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Early Modern Jewish Languages
1500–1750As Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews migrated eastward, Yiddish and Ladino emerged as distinct languages. Both languages developed literary traditions, as print became more widespread.
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Early Modern Literature and the Arts
1500–1750Jewish literary creativity flourished in the early modern period, dominated by Hebrew poetry that blended religious themes with Renaissance forms.
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Early Modern Rabbis and Intellectuals on the Move
1500–1750Carrying books and knowledge, itinerant rabbis and scholars traveled between communities, facilitating cultural exchange.
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Early Modern Religious Practices
1500–1750Early modern Jews both preserved tradition and innovated. Documents and legal texts reveal rich details about synagogue life, marriage, family relations, and death rituals.
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Early Modern Spiritual Ideologies
1500–1750Early modern Jewish spiritual life encompassed diverse elements, including theology, ethics, liturgy, and messianism.
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Early Modern Trade and Mercantilism
1500–1750International trade drove Jewish mobility during the age of mercantilism, as Jewish merchants formed wide commercial networks and partnerships and developed cosmopolitan attitudes that facilitated civic inclusion.
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Early Modern Visual and Material Culture
1500–1750Early modern Jewish visual culture flourished, with illuminated manuscripts, ornate synagogues, and portraiture alongside increasing non-Jewish interest in Jewish customs and greater Jewish self-representation.
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Education and Scholarship
1500–1750The early modern period featured educational reforms, anti-Christian polemics, and growing Jewish university participation.
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Jewish Printing and Book Culture
1500–1750Jewish printing unified far-flung communities by standardizing religious texts, created textual uniformity, and enabled vernacular translations, and facilitated the spread of Jewish texts and knowledge.
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Jews Arrive in the New World
1500–1750The 17th century saw Jews establish the first organized New World settlements.
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Jews on the Move: Early Modern Jewish Migration
1500–1750The geography of Jewish settlement shifted dramatically in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
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Spinoza and the Heterodox Challenge
1500–1750Baruch Spinoza is notable for rejecting Judaism without converting to Christianity. After his excommunication from Amsterdam's Sephardic community, he developed the basis of modern biblical criticism.
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The Rise of Kabbalah
1500–1750Kabbalah spread widely after the Spanish expulsion. The Zohar's printing in Italy, Safed's influential kabbalistic center, and Shabbetai Tzvi's messianic movement popularized mystical ideas across Jewish communities.