Jews and Blacks in the Early Modern World

Going beyond inter-ethnic polemics, this book describes the ways Jews imagined and treated Blacks during the first three centuries of the Atlantic slave trade and European colonialism. Jonathan Schorsch uses many previously unexamined sources to reveal the scope of Jewish anti-Blackness in Portugal, the Ottoman Empire, Italy, Amsterdam and the Caribbean. His study concludes that Jewish attitudes and behavior remained barely distinguishable from general European trends, less intense, although hardly benign.


About the Author
Schorsch, Jonathan: - Jonathan Schorsch is Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies in the Religion Department of Columbia University. He has published articles in American Jewish History, European Judaism, and Jewish Culture and History, among other academic journals and is also the Jewish Book Editor for Tikkun magazine.