It is a common assumption that in Israel, Jews have sovereignty, and in most other places where Jews live today, they have religious freedom instead. As Simon Rabinovitch shows in this original work, the situation is much more complicated. Jews today possess different kinds of legal rights in states around the world; some stem from religious freedom protections, and others evolved from a longer history of Jewish autonomy.

By comparing conflicts between Jewish collective and individual rights in courts and laws across the globe, from the French Revolution to today, this book provides a nuanced legal history of Jewish sovereignty and religious freedom. Rabinovitch weaves key themes in Jewish legal history with the individual stories of litigants, exploring ideas about citizenship and belonging; who is a Jew; what makes a Jewish family; and how to define Jewish space. He uses recent court cases to explore problems of conflicting rights and then situates each case in a wider historical context. This unique comparative history creates a global picture of modern legal development in which Jews continue to use the law to carve out surprising forms of sovereignty.

Simon Rabinovitch is the Stotsky Associate Professor of Jewish Historical and Cultural Studies at Northeastern University. He teaches and writes on a range of topics in European, Jewish, Russian, and legal history.

Geraldine Gudefin is a French-born modern Jewish historian researching Jewish family life, legal pluralism, and the migration experiences of Jews in France and the United States. She is currently a research fellow at the Hebrew University’s Avraham Harman Research Institute of Contemporary Jewry, and is completing a book titled An Impossible Divorce? East European Jews and the Limits of Legal Pluralism in France, 1900-1939.

Mentioned in the podcast:

• Simon Rabinovitch, Jewish Rights, National Rites: Nationalism and Autonomy in Late Imperial and Revolutionary Russia (2014)
• Maurice Samuels, The Right to Difference: French Universalism and the Jews (2016)
• David Sorkin, The Religious Enlightenment: Protestants, Jews, and Catholics from London to Vienna (2008)
• David Sorkin, Jewish Emancipation: A History across Five Centuries (2019)
• Lawrence Rosen, The Rights of Groups: Understanding Community in the Eyes of the Law (2024)
• Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, Church State Corporation: Construing Religion in US Law (2020)
• Nomi M. Stolzenberg and David N. Myers, American Shtetl: The Making of Kiryas Joel, a Hasidic Village in Upstate New York (2022)
• David Biale, Power & Powerlessness in Jewish History (1986)

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Power & powerlessness in Jewish history

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