The Politics of Jewish Commerce

Jonathan Karp is Associate Professor in the Judaic Studies and History Departments at Binghamton University, SUNY. He is co-editor of The Art of Being Jewish in Modern Times (with Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, 2007). His current book projects are The Rise and Demise of the Black-Jewish Alliance: A Class-Cultural Analysis and Philosemitism in History (with Adam Sutcliffe; Cambridge University Press, 2008).

• Introduction; 1. This new-fangled age; 2. From ancient constitution to Mosaic Republic; 3. The new system of commercial government; 4. The natural order of things; 5. A state within a state; 6. The Israelites and the aristocracy; 7. Jews, commerce, and history; 8. Capitalism and the Jews; Afterword: industrialization and beyond.

Review of the hardback: 'Jonathan Karp's book is an erudite, elegant, and insightful study of the centrality of economics to political thought in western Europe from the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries. Skillfully blending together a vast range of primary sources in six languages, Karp argues convincingly that Judaism and the Jews served as prisms through which the spectrum of Enlightenment thought was filtered.' Derek Penslar, University of Toronto