Special Features

Do you know that over 90% of south German Jews lived in the countryside—not in the cities—until the 1870s?

Do you know what daily life was like for these Jews?

Do you know about their struggles?

Portraits of Our Past: Jews of the German Countryside answers these questions and more:

  • written for the reader who has no prior knowledge of Judaism or German history—not an academic treatise or thesis.

  • based on thousands of primary documents—incorporates many quotations.

  • includes over 75 illustrations, maps, family trees, and tables—many not previously published.

  • provides information for genealogists—a structure to learn about Jews in German-speaking lands.—includes a nuts and bolts outline for non-German speaking researchers.

  • serves as a useful reference for school and synagogue libraries—the index details historical events, customs, people, and places.

  • priced to be a perfect gift.—or a donation to a library, school, or synagogue.

  • presents another viewpoint for the understanding the times leading up to the Holocaust and why the German Jews stayed in Germany after Hitler’s rise to power.

  • details from primary documents the anti-Jewish feelings and actions perpetrated on the south German rural Jews—includes the 1819 Hep! Hep! riots, the 1848 Baisingen riots, and the 1873 Stuttgart riots.

  • offers a historical perspective of the differences between German Jews and Eastern European Jews.

  • counters the common claim that the German Jews were not religious.

  • explains the reasons behind the Jewish emigration of the mid-19th century—economics, not anti-Semitism.

  • follows the rural Jews as early immigrants to the American Midwest.—includes the unusual path taken by the Berlitz School of Languages’ founder. 

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