Organization, Self-Perception, and Representation of the Frankfurt Jewish Community in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

The lecture, based on my current dissertation project „At the threshold of modernity: Organization, self-perception and representation of the Frankfurt Jewish community in the 17th and 18th centuries” shall trace the interplay of Jewish communal organization and communal identity in the context of “absolutism”, enlightenment and the forerunners of Jewish legal improvements between 1616 and 1806. I will investigate structural and administrative communication between a Jewish minority in an Imperial city AND municipal authorities as well as the Holy Roman Emperor. Based on Hebrew, Yiddish and German sources (the Frankfurt pinkas in particular), I will ask to what extent we can understand the Frankfurt Jewish community as a representative example of communal developments, conflicts, representation towards the authorities and structural organization of a “typical” Jewish community or whether we should suppose that non-Jewish structures served as a model for the largest kehilla in early modern Germany.