Guide

The Political and Cultural Geography of Jewish Life

1880–1890

A census of world Jewry and introductions to the impact of modernity and shifting political situations set the stage for the changes to come.

 

 

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A World Jewish Population Census

In 1880, there were approximately 7,663,000 Jews in the world. Of these, 5,727,000 (88.4%) lived in Eastern Europe and the Balkans, while 1,044,000 resided in Western Europe (less than one-fifth of all Jews on the continent). In Asia and Africa (including Palestine), there were about 630,000, with another 262,000 in the American continents, Australia, and New Zealand. In other words, the vast majority of the Jews of the world lived in the “Old World,” and merely a little more than 3 percent resided on these last continents, which had been home to only about 11,000 Jews in 1825. 

This situation, in which only a negligible minority of Jews in the world lived outside the continents in which their grandparents had lived, was to change dramatically in less than forty years. Moreover, it was not only Jews’ places of residence, legal status, and sources of livelihood that would undergo a transformation: their languages, clothing, foods, habits, and customs from the Old World were also to change. Western modes of modernity not only influenced those who headed west to new countries but also reached into the lives of people who remained in place with ever greater intensity.

Initial Encounters with Modernity

Profound changes in Jewish life, planted by political, social, and economic transformations in the early modern period in the North Atlantic region of Europe, were already discernible in communities of Europe and the Mediterranean basin as early as the seventeenth century. Western influences were precociously marked among merchants and financiers involved in international economic activity and among intellectuals who benefited from the patronage of the wealthy. The broadening contacts of individuals and groups with agents of political, economic, and cultural change in Western and Central Europe were not limited to any one Jewish population, but rather were shared by Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazim, Ladino-speaking Sephardim, Judeo-Italian-speaking Italian Jews, and Jews of the Mediterranean Basin speaking Judeo-Arabic.

These initial encounters with modernity by Jews in port cities from Rhode Island to Odessa to Mogador deepened as the influence of northwestern and central European countries expanded to the eastern and southern fringes of the continent and across the Mediterranean. It was only in the nineteenth century, however, with globalization of capitalism and the overseas expansion of European colonial activity, that Western influence over Jews took on unprecedented proportions.

Shifting Governmental Policies

Beyond economic and social transformations, the shifting policies of states and governments were also a powerful force for change, as regimes of various sorts sought to encourage the acculturation of ethnic-religious minorities into the larger national or imperial culture. The administrations in those places—where most of the world’s Jews lived at the time—used the mechanisms of the state for this purpose, especially for state education systems and conscription into the army. The contact and conflict—between Jews and Western influences—took on a political-ideological character in the nineteenth century, with far-reaching political, social, economic, religious, and cultural implications of its own.

Responses to Modernity: Embrace or Reject?

Jews reacted differently to the changes unfolding around and among them. Some enthusiastically accepted the spirit of the new age and sought to adjust both themselves and their nation to fit in with the different values of the Western Enlightenment. Others shied away from the antitraditional messages of modernity and sought to fortify the walls of their traditional community. Finally, there were many others whose lives changed spontaneously, as they adapted to the changing political orders and social reality without offering either opposition or avowed support.

One way or another, the struggle between Jews and the various manifestations of modernity involved a cross-border political confrontation that lasted for many years, a clash mainly between a postcorporate religious society—a network of thousands of local ethnic-religious communities, each with unique cultural features but all sporting a shared set of institutions—and imperial or colonial governments. And yet, a significant part of the conflict occurred within the Jewish communities themselves, between those who were seen as agents of Westernization and those who considered themselves the flag-bearers for Jewish continuity in an age of change.

This conflict did not unfold simultaneously throughout the Jewish diaspora. Its pace and power differed from place to place, and the same is true of the eventual product—both social and cultural—created by these encounters with the various manifestations of the new era. The diverse sources brought together in the Posen Library show that what occurred to the Jewish people from 1880 until the end of World War I was in fact, to a large extent, an intensification of processes that had already begun, and the expansion among growing populations of sets of ideas, methods of organization, customs, and artistic genres that had already existed on an influential level in previous decades. However, the pace of change accelerated to such a degree, and such large sections of the Jewish people experienced these sweeping social and cultural transformations, that we may deem the period beginning at the end of the nineteenth century a new chapter in the global history of Jews.

Two Kinds of Surveys of Jewish Life Before its Dramatic Transformation

What characterized this Jewish society that was about to be so dramatically transformed in the decades to come? It is useful to offer two kinds of “survey maps” of Jewish life circa 1880:

  1. The first views Jews both in terms of the distinct, if interwoven historical-cultural communities to which many of them still meaningfully belonged.
  2. The second presents the diverse political situations that Jews found themselves in as denizens of numerous distinct and rapidly changing geopolitical units around the world in the early 1890s. This provides a starting point for understanding the rapid changes that immigration brought about in a relatively short period of time. In the Posen Library the user will learn about the political situations of the following communities: 

This then gives us a picture of Jewish life around the globe in 1880. But vast changes were soon to come due to mass migration from Eastern Europe, and on a smaller scale, from the Mediterranean world. This mass migration led in many directions. 

Read next: 

The Historical-Cultural Communities of the Diaspora

Download the full introduction to
Volume 7.