Joint winner of the Wolfson Literary Award for History. This is the first survey history of Jewish life and culture in early modern Europe to concentrate on the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as a radically new phase in Jewish history. Professor Israel argues that the rapidly expanding Jewish role in political and economic spheres in much of Europe from the 1570s was the first fundamental emancipation of European Jewry. 'an important book...will be of extreme value to all students of early modern Europe.' Lionel Kochan, British Book News