Jewish Emancipation: A History Across Five Centuries

Jewish Emancipation by David Sorkin offers the first comprehensive history of how Jews became citizens in the modern world, challenging the dominant narratives centered around the Holocaust and the founding of Israel. Sorkin reorients Jewish history by examining the process of emancipation, which has been characterized by deflections, reversals, and varying degrees of success and failure. The book spans from the mid-sixteenth century to the twenty-first century, covering Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, the United States, and Israel. It highlights the multifaceted nature of emancipation, showing how Jews have gained, kept, lost, and recovered rights over time. The narrative is not linear but rather a complex, multidirectional process. For instance, American Jews mobilized twice for emancipation, first for political rights in the nineteenth century and then for lost civil rights in the twentieth. Similarly, Israel has struggled to institute equality among its diverse citizens. By focusing on this foundational event, the book reveals the lost contours of Jewish history over the past half millennium, providing a deeper understanding of the ongoing struggle for rights and equality.