The Impact of the Reformation on Early Modern German Jewry

Abstract

It seems somewhat unnecessary by now to state candidly that the Reformation, at least as traditionally understood, never occurred. While something most assuredly happened in Germany in the sixteenth century, it is impossible to conceive of what that something was absent a discussion of what came before and what came after. In other words, any inquiry into the ‘Reformation’ calls for coverage of a daunting range of topics, personalities, and localities. We do know that anniversaries, such as the one commemorating the 500 anniversary of Luther’s 95 Theses, are historical constructs. As Robert Scribner, the renowned historian of the German Reformation, has reminded us in a slender but provocative book on another anniversary – the occasion of the 500 anniversary of the birth of Martin Luther – for most of us, the Reformation began when Luther brazenly, if rather commonly, posted his 95 Theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg in 1517. But, Scribner cautions,