Out of the (Historiographic) Ghetto: European jews and reformation narratives: European jews and reformation narratives

Extant historiography has created a historiographic ghetto, seldom considering Jewish sources as relevant to the larger narrative of European history. This has created two parallel, often disconnected areas of study, "European history" and "Jewish history." Archival materials show that Jews and Christians resided side by side and interacted daily in early modern Europe. Reformation Strasbourg and post-Reformation Poland, geographically and demographically diverse, offer new insights about the past by including sources about Jews. In Reformation Strasbourg, leaders of different Christian confessions jointly issued policies aimed at regulating daily interactions between Jews and Christians, despite simultaneously battling one another in the realm of faith and politics. In post-Reformation Poland, the physical presence of Jews recorded underscores their neighborly relations with Christians and further demonstrates the limits to the seemingly successful Counter-Reformation in Poland.