Judaism and the City, Judaism in the City: A Historiographical Journey

The theme ‘Jews and the city’ is a relevant research topic in the field of Jewish Studies, and in the last decades it has been also invested by the epistemological debate enhanced by the spatial turn. Although this relationship is strongly emphasized in the historiography on Judaism, the focus is often, as we shall see, on the modern period, thus associating it with the processes of modernization and secularization (often dubbed ‘assimilation’ in Jewish historiography). As part of the research project on Religion and Urbanity this article attempts to highlight the development of a few ‘urban themes’ in the historiography of Judaism and enucleate trajectories that might be pursued in future research projects. Its structure falls into three different sections: The first one introduces some perspectives on historiography of Judaism from the Wissenschaft des Judentums; the second explores some themes that are distinctively linked to Jewish history, specifically the notions of ghetto, port-Jews, and religious minorities. The third section attempts to delineate some potential new directions to highlight how the focus on urban and spatial theories might shed new light on the historical evaluation of different forms of Jewish religion.