The horizons of Jewish Studies and European history have been drawing closer in recent years. Jewish Studies scholars now seek to locate their subjects within European history, and European historians recount transnational histories using the Jewish Diaspora. But convergence is still limited. Rabbinic scholars and European historians still seem to inhabit different intellectual universes, as if their concerns did not matter to each other. Traditional Jewish Studies still do not tell a European story, and European intellectual history does not tell a traditional Jewish one. For traditional Jewish culture to become part of European history, rabbinic discourses must be “Europeanized,” and Jewish European history written, at least in part, out of traditional Jewish sources.
The challenges of Jewish European history exemplify those of writing the histories of other minorities, especially Muslim Europeans. The lecture, given by Malachi Hacohen of Duke University, addresses these challenges, searching for a history that is at one and the same time genuinely Jewish and European, in the hope that it might facilitate other histories written from the margins.