The latest book by Professor Jacob Goldberg, an outstanding scholar who focuses on the history of Jews in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in the early modern period, consists of fourteen articles. The articles were published in various periodicals and collective works, mostly in Polish, with some in English and German (a list of the original titles and places of publication is included). The texts are translated into Hebrew. The book contains an index of persons and an index of places; place names are given in both Hebrew and Polish.

The great value of this book is that it collects in one volume texts that are widely dispersed and (for linguistic reasons) inaccessible and makes them available to Israeli scholars and students interested in the history of Jews in old Poland. The texts illustrate many important aspects of Jewish life in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.

The book contains the following articles:

‘The Attitude of Polish Society towards Jews’. The author examines the image of the Jew in Polish society, anti-Jewish literature, the policy of the Catholic Church towards Jews, and ritual accusations against them (above all, the blood libel). The various subgroups within Polish society—noblemen, peasants, and townspeople— differed in their attitude towards Jews, and the transformation of Polish society in the eighteenth century brought about a change in attitude towards them. The demographic factor—that is, the fact that the Jews constituted 10 per cent of the population—determined Polish attitudes towards the Jews to a much greater extent than it had before and influenced ideas for Jewish reform at the time of the Four-Year Sejm.

‘De non tolerandis Iudaeis’. Anti-Jewish regulations in Polish towns and the struggle against them—the case of Wielun´ in the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. The author discusses rights of de non tolerandis Iudaeis granted to Polish towns (Wielun´ was granted the right in 1566). When a town obtained this right, it did not mean that all Jews were expelled; often they continued to live on the private properties of noblemen in the town (jurydyki) and in other properties excluded from municipal authority. In towns which had been granted this right, it was also possible for Jewish merchants to conduct limited trade.