{"product_id":"a-historian-in-exile-9780812293272","title":"A Historian in Exile","description":"\u003cp\u003eSolomon ibn Verga was one of the victims of the decrees expelling the Jews from Spain and Portugal in the 1490s, and his \u003ci\u003eShevet Yehudah\u003c\/i\u003e (\u003ci\u003eThe Scepter of Judah\u003c\/i\u003e, ca. 1520) numbered among the most popular Hebrew books of the sixteenth century. Its title page lured readers and buyers with a promise to relate \"the terrible events and calamities that afflicted the Jews while in the lands of non-Jewish peoples\": blood libels, disputations, conspiracies, evil decrees, expulsions, and more.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe book itself preserves collective memories, illuminates a critical and transitional phase in Jewish history, and advances a new vision of European society and government. It reflects a world of renaissance, reformation, and global exploration but also one fraught with crisis for Christian majority and Jewish minority alike. Among the multitudes of Iberian Jewish \u003ci\u003econversos\u003c\/i\u003e who had received Christian baptism by the end of the fifteenth century, ibn Verga experienced the destruction of Spanish-Portuguese Jewry just as the Catholic Church began to lose exclusive control over the structures of Western religious life; and he joined other Europeans in reevaluating boundaries and affiliations that shaped their identities.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eA Historian in Exile\u003c\/i\u003e, Jeremy Cohen shows how \u003ci\u003eShevet Yehudah\u003c\/i\u003e bridges the divide between the medieval and early modern periods, reflecting a contemporary consciousness that a new order had begun to replace the old. Ibn Verga's text engages this receding past in conversation, Cohen contends; it uses historical narrative to challenge regnant assumptions, to offer new solutions to age-old problems, to call Jews to task for bringing much of the hostility toward them upon themselves, and to chart a viable direction for a people seeking a place to call home in a radically transformed world.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Jeremy Cohen","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48295614939387,"sku":"9780812293272","price":74.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0779\/3917\/9771\/files\/9780812293272.jpg?v=1772482848","url":"https:\/\/indiepubs.com\/products\/a-historian-in-exile-9780812293272","provider":"IndiePubs","version":"1.0","type":"link"}