"Deutsch s careful work makes a significant contribution to the cultural and intellectual history of early modern Europe and to the history of Jewish-Christian relations. His survey of the landscape will enable other historians to offer new case studies and make better use of this literature as sources in their research. His effort to accentuate the more neutral tone and more realistic depictions that characterize some of this literature moves beyond a methodological contribution and offers new possibilities for understanding the place of Jews and Judaism in early modernity. "--
Marginalia"Yaacov Deutsch's new book aims at providing a study of Jews in ethnographic
writings and 'a comprehensive survey of this genre's assorted works, with a stress on their general characteristics, the writing objectives they betray, the interconnections between the different works, and the ramifications of this entire exercise' (1)... Deutsch demonstrates a mastery of his subject and a wealth of knowledge about Jewish lifestyles the early modern Europeans had at their disposal." --
Renaissance Quarterly"Deutsch's book, which takes us from the early 16th century (beginning with the work of Johan Pfefferkon in 1508) through the late 18th century... is the only comprehensive survey of all ethnographic works about Jews, Judaism, and Jewish rituals published in Western Europe in this pivotal period and should serve as a reference for any future scholarship on the perception of Jews in the early modern world." --
The Blog of the Center for Jewish Law"Deutsch's mastery of the literature written by Christians about Jews and Judaism in the early modern period is unparalleled.
Judaism In Christian Eyes will not only illuminate the changing perceptions of Jews in works written by Christians, it will also defamiliarize Jewish practices and allow us to see them in a new light. Deutsch's work is a welcome addition to the scholarship on early modern culture and to the difficult passage of Jewish-Christian relations in the age of religious turmoil."
-- Elisheva Carlebach, Salo Baron Professor of Jewish History, Culture and Society, Columbia University
"Yaacov Deutsch gives us a brilliant and fascinating account of how Jewish religious practices, from circumcision to kosher food to Passover Seders, were described and interpreted by Christian witnesses in the early modern period."
-- Susannah Heschel, Eli Black Professor of Jewish Studies, Dartmouth College
"Yaacov Deutsch has mined the previously only sporadically explored field of early modern Jewish ethnographies, uncovering a rich deposit of sources for everyone interested in the history of Christian-Jewish relations. Drawing on his profound erudition, Deutsch offers an illuminating and finely nuanced reconstruction of diverse Christian perceptions of Judaism across a nearly three hundred year span. All told, this insightful, highly original study constitutes an important, new chapter in the historiography of Christian-Jewish relations."
- David H. Price, author of
Johannes Reuchlin and the Campaign to Destroy Jewish Books (2011)
