Books by Jacob Katz

Eminent social historian Jacob Katz examines the rise and transformation of Jewish communal leadership in Central Europe. It is a story of fragmentation and polarization that sheds light on the tensions within the 19th-century Jewish community in Central Europe as it struggled to respond to the promises and perils of modernization.

From the Babylonian period to the twentieth century, strictly observant Jews have depended on a non-Jew, or ""shabbes goy"" to perform work that was forbidden on the Sabbath. Katz affords the ""shabbes goy"" the central role in this fascinating case study on the larger question of the adaptability of halakhah to the ever-changing circumstances of life.

A new edition of Katz's study of European Jewish society at end of the Middle Ages. It taps into a rich source, the "responsa" literature of the Rabbinic establishment of the time, a time when self-governing communities of Jews dealt with their own civil and religious issues.