1. See, e.g., the introduction and opening essay by Sabine Hödl, Peter Rauscher, and Barbara Staudinger, eds., Hofjuden und Landjuden: Jüdisches Leben in der Frühen Neuzeit, (Berlin: Philo Verlag, 2004), 7, 9.

2. Stefan Rohrbacher, “Die jüdischen Gemeinden in den Medinot Ashkenas zwischen Spätmittelalter und Dreiβigjährigen Krieg,” in Jüdische Gemeinden und ihr christlicher Kontext in kulturräumlich vergleichender Betrachtung von der Spätantike bis zum 18. Jahrhundert, ed. Christoph Cluse, Alfred Haverkamp, and Israel J. Yuval (Hannover: Hahn, 2003), 451.

3. See, e.g., Marianne Awerbach, “Alltagsleben in der Frankfurt Judengasse im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert,” in Jüdische Kultur in Frankfurt am Main von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart: Ein internationales Symposium der Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main und des Franz Rosenzweig Research Center for German-Jewish Literature and Cultural History Jerusalem, ed. Karl E. Grözinger (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 1997), 2–24. Awerbach details the complexity and vibrancy of the ghetto in Frankfurt (24), along the way pointing out rabbinic attempts to differentiate Jews from Christians through sumptuary laws that legislated the dress of Jewish women and rabbinic complaints about the study of foreign languages (18).

4. See, e.g., Birgit E. Klein, “Die ‘Frankfurter Rabbinerversammlung' von 1603: Vorgeschichte, Verordnungen, Folgen,” in Die Frankfurter Judengasse: Jüdisches Leben in der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. Fritz Backhaus, Gisela Engel, Robert Liberles, and Margarete Schlüter (Frankfurt: Societas Verlag, 2006), 161, regarding new documentation from archival as well as internal Jewish sources. Or consider the work of Sabine Ullmann, in which she has combed a variety of archival documents, including court records, to shed light on the village Jewish communities in early modern Swabia. See her “Poor Jewish Families in Early Modern Rural Swabia,” International Review of Social History 8 (2000): 93–113.

5. See Monika Richarz and Reinhard Rürup, eds., Jüdisches Leben auf dem Lande (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997), esp. 199 and 205.

6. Robert Liberles, “Juden, Kaffee und Kaffeehandel im 18. Jahrhundert,” in Backhaus et al., Die Frankfurert Judengasse, 236 – 48.

7. Consider Wolfgang Treue, “Ratsherren und Rabbiner: Eliten und Herrschaftsformen im frühneuzeitlichen Frankfurt,” in Backhaus et al., Die Frankfurter Judengasse, 200 – 12.

8. See Claudia Ulbrich, Shulamit and Margarete: Power, Gender, and Religion in a Rural Society in Eighteenth-Century Europe, trans. Thomas Dunlap (Leiden: Brill, 2004; German orig., 1999).

9. See Fritz Backhaus, “Die Bevölkerungsexplosion in der Frankfurter Judengasse des 16. Jahrhunderts,” in Backhaus et al., Die Frankfurter Judengasse, 107.

10. Eric Zimmer, in his Gaḥaltan shel ḥakhamim: perakim be-toldot ha-rabanut be-Germanyah ba-me'ah ha-shesh-‘esreh uva-me'ah ha-sheva'-‘esreh (Be'er Sheva': Ben Gurion University, 1999), e.g., stresses the importance of territorialization of internal Jewish governing structures and internal conflicts.

11. Michael Toch, “Wirtschaft und Geldwesen der Juden Frankfurts im Spätmittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit,” in Grözinger, Jüdische Kultur in Frankfurt, 25 – 46.

12. See, e.g., Stefan Litt, Juden in Thüringen in der Frühen Neuzeit (1520–1650) (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2003).

13. See Stefan Rohrbacher, “ ‘Er erlaubt es uns, ihm folgen wir.' Jüdische Frömmigkeit und religiöse Praxis im ländlichen Alltag,” in Hödl, Rauscher, and Staudinger, Hofjuden und Landjuden, 275.

14. Sabine Hödl, Peter Rauscher, and Barbara Staudinger, “Jüdisches Leben in der Frühen Neuzeit,” in Hödl, Rauscher, and Staudinger, Hofjuden und Landjuden, 13.

15. Wolfgang Treue, “Eine kleine Welt: Juden und Christen im ländlichen Hessen zu Beginn der Frühen Neuzeit,” in Hödl, Rauscher, and Staudinger, Hofjuden und Landjuden, 251–69; see esp. 253–54, 263.

16. J. Friedrich Battenberg, Die Juden in Deutschland vom 16. bis zum Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts (Munich: Oldenburg, 2001), 101–102.

17. Karl E. Grözinger, “Legenden aus dem Frankfurt des 18. Jahrhunderts: Umbrüche und Unruhen,” in Grözinger, Jüdische Kultur in Frankfurt, 189ff, esp. 191.

18. Elisheva Carlebach, “The Last Deception: Failed Messiahs and Jewish Conversion in Early Modern German Lands,” in Millenarianism and Messianism in Early Modern European Culture, vol. 1, Jewish Messianism in the Early Modern World, ed. Matt D. Goldish and Richard H. Popkin (Dordrecht: Kluwer), 125.

19. Christoph Daxelmüller, “Jewish Popular Culture in the Research Perspective of European Ethnology,” Ethnologia Europea 16 (1986): 97–116.

20. Stefan Rohrbacher, “Medinat Schwaben: Jüdisches Leben in einer süddeutschen Landschaft in der Frühneuzeit,” in Judengemeinden in Schwaben im Kontext des Alten Reiches, ed. Rolf Kiessling (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1995), 102.

21. See the introductory comments in Ivan G. Marcus, The Jewish Life Cycle: Rites of Passage from Biblical to Modern Times (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2004).

22. See Klaus Hödl, “From Acculturation to Interaction: A New Perspective on the History of the Jews in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna,” Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 25, no. 2 (2007): 82–103.

23. See Klaus Wolf, “ ‘Die judden sollen dis spiel in iren husen bliben.’ Die Ghettoisierung der Frankfurter Juden im Spiegel des stadtbürgerlichen Spiels,” in Backhaus et al., Die Frankfurter Judengasse, 189–99.

24. Michael Toch, “Spätmittelalterliche Rahmenbedingungen jüdischer Existenz: Die Verfolgungen,” in Hödl, Rauscher, and Staudinger, Hofjuden und Landjuden, 21, 31, 34.

25. Ibid., 47.

26. Maria R. Boes, “Jews in the Criminal-Justice System of Early Modern Germany,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 30, no. 3 (Winter 1999): 418.

27. Ibid., 420.

28. Ibid., 422.

29. Ibid.

30. Ibid., 430.

31. Ibid., 435.

32. See, e.g., R. Po-chia Hsia, The Myth of Ritual Murder: Jews and Magic in Reformation Germany (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988).

33. See Nicoline Hortzitz, “Verfahrensweisen sprachlciher Diskriminierung in antijüdischen Texten der Frühen Neuzeit: Aufgezeigt am Beispiel der Metaphorik,” in Kiessling, Judengemeinden in Schwaben, 194–216.

34. Consider Rotraus Ries, “ ‘De joden to verwisen’—Judenvertreibungen in Nordwestdeutschland im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert,” in Judenvertreibungen in Mittelalter und früher Neuzeit, ed. Friedhelm Burgard, Alfred Haverkamp, and Gerd Mentgen (Hannover: Hahn, 1999), 199, 211. Sometimes, as in Hamburg, the economic interests of the civic leaders led to tolerance against the position of orthodox Lutheran leaders, who argued for the expulsion or marginalization of the Jews. See Jutta Braden, “Luthertum und Handelsinteressen—Die Judenpolitik des Hamburger Senats im 17. Jahrhunderts,” in Die Hamburger Kauffrau Glikl: Jüdische Existenz in der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. Monika Richarz (Hamburg: Christians Verlag, 2001), 159–94, esp. 159–60; see also her full study based on her dissertation, Hamburger Judenpolitik im Zeitalter lutherischer Orthodoxie, 1590–1710 (Hamburg: Christians Verlag, 2001).

35. See Achim Detmers, Reformation und Judentum: Israel-Lehren und Einstellungen zum Judentum von Luther bis zum frühen Calvin (Stuttgart: Verlag W. Kohlhammer, 2001); and Thomas Kaufmann, “Luther and the Jews,” in Jews, Judaism, and the Reformation in Sixteenth-Century Germany, ed. Dean Phillip Bell and Stephen G. Burnett (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 69–104.

36. Elisheva Carlebach, Divided Souls: Converts from Judaism in Germany, 1500 –1750 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001).

37. John D. Martin, Representations of Jews in Late Medieval and Early Modern German Literature (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2004).

38. See the rather whimsical and uneven, if still useful for our purposes, translation by A. T. S. Goodrick of H. J. C. von Grimmelshausen, The Adventurous Simplicissimus (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1962). The Jew is presented in a nonpolemical way as a money changer or pawnbroker (49) but also less “positively” as rogue (57), gamer (126), and usurer (referring to “the Jews' spear,” which is frequently depicted in illustrated broadsheets of the time, 280). Jews are presented as notoriously seeking economic gain (294), as the consummate bargainers (329) but also, on one occasion, dredging up more “theological” constructs, as the stoners of Christ (373). The “Jewish spear” was an image used in the sixteenth century to denote usury and unfair financial practices. The term appears in Sebasian Brant's Das Narrenschiff, and the image is used in several illustrated pamphlets in the sixteenth century. See Eric Zafran, “Saturn and the Jews,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 42 (1979): 20 n. 48. Zafran cites Max Geisberg's The German Single-Leaf Woodcut, 1500–1550, 4 vols. (New York, 1974), no. 1582, for an important example.

39. Rolf Kiessling, “Zwischen Vertreibung und Emanzipation—Judendörfer in Ostschwaben während der Frühen Neuzeit,” in Kiessling, Judengemeinden in Schwaben, 173.

40. J. Friedrich Battenberg, “Von der Kammerknechtschaft zum Judenregal: Reflexionen zur Rechtsstellung der Judenschaft im Heiligen Römischen Reich am Beispiel Johannes Reuchlins,” in Hödl, Rauscher, and Staudinger, Hofjuden und Landjuden, 83, 68.

41. Udo Arnoldi, Pro Iudaeis: Die Gutachten der hallischen Theologen im 18. Jahrhundert zu Fragen der Judentoleranz (Berlin: Institut Kirche und Judentum, 1993), 241.

42. See, e.g., Dean Phillip Bell, Jewish Identity in Early Modern Germany: Memory, Power and Community (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007).

43. See, e.g., Robert Liberles, “Die Juden und die anderen—Das Bild des Nichtjuden in Glikls Memoiren,” in Die Hamburger Kauffrau Glikl, 140 – 41.

44. See Rolf Kiessling and Sabine Ullmann, “Christlich-jüdische ‘Doppelgemeinden’ in den Dörfern der Markgrafschaft Burgau während des 17./18. Jahrhunderts,” in Jüdische Gemeinden und ihr christlicher Kontext in kulturräumlich vergleichender Betrachtung von der Spätantike bis zum 18. Jahrhundert, ed. Christoph Cluse, Alfred Haverkamp, and Israel J. Yuval (Hannover: Hahn, 2003), 513–34.

45. Consider, e.g., the Hollekreisch ceremony and Jewish adaptation of the legend of Frau Holle. See Elisheva Baumgarten, Mothers and Children: Jewish Family Life in Medieval Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), 96; Jill Hammer, “Holle's Cry: Unearthing a Birth Goddess in a German Jewish Naming Ceremony,” Nashim 9, no. 1 (2005): 62–87; and Martha Keil, “Lilith und Hollekreisch—Schwangerschaft, Geburt und Wochenbett im Judentum des deutschen Spätmittelalters,” in Aller Anfang: Geburt, Birth, Naissance, ed. Gabriele Dorffner and Sonia Horn (Vienna: Verlagshaus der Ärtzte, 2005), 145–72.

46. Christian Pfister, “Weeping in the Snow: The Second Period of Little Ice Age-type Impacts, 1570–1630,” in Kulturelle Konsequenzen der ‘Kleinen Eiszeit’, ed. Wolfgang Behringer, Hartmut Lehmann, and Christian Pfister (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005), 69.

47. Ibid., 83.

48. See Rüdiger Glaser, Klimageschichte Mitteleuropas: 1000 Jahre Wetter, Klima, Katastrophen (Darmstadt: Primus-Verlag, 2001), 58–59; see also Geoffrey Parker, Europe in Crisis, 1598–1648 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1979), 21–22.

49. Erich Landsteiner, “Wenig Brot und saurer Wein: Kontinuität und Wandel in der zentral-europäischen Ernährungskultur im letzten Drittel des 16. Jahrhunderts,” in Behringer, Lehmann, and Pfister, Kulturelle Konsequenzen der ‘Kleinen Eiszeit’, 109. See also Karl Gunnar Persson, Grain Markets in Europe, 1500–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

50. Wolfgang Behringer, “Die Krise von 1570: Ein Beitrag zur Krisengeschichte der Neuzeit,” in Um Himmels Willen: Religion in Katastrophen, ed. Manfred Jakubowski-Tiessen and Hartmut Lehmann (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003), 54, 78ff.

51. Basler Chroniken, ed. Der Historischen Gesellschaft in Basel, vol. 1 (Leipzig: S. Hirzel Verlag, 1872), 173–74.

52. Wolfgang Harms and Michael Schilling, eds., Die Sammlung der Zentralbibliothek Zürich: Kommentierte Ausgabe, Teil 2: Die Wickiana II (1570 –1588), vol. 7 of Deutsche Illustrierte Flugblätter des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1997), 56 –57.

53. See his Sa[e]chssische Chronica: Darin[n]en deutlich begriffen der Alten Teutschen/Sachssen/Schwaben/Francken.Thu[e]ringer/Meissner/Wenden/Sclauen/Cimbern und Cherussken/Ko[e]nigen und Fu[e]rsten/rc. . . (Frankfurt am Main: Christoff Raben, 1585), 708, 718, 721–22.

54. Ibid., 722. Added to the challenges caused by severe weather patterns, of course, were the devastations of the Thirty Years' War, which themselves fostered grave economic hardships and frequent famines, particularly during the 1620s. See generally for the famines of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Robert Jütte, “Klimabedingte Teurungen und Hungersnote: Bettelverbote und Armenfürsorge als Krisenmanagement,” in Behringer, Lehmann, and Pfister, Kulturelle Konsequenzen der ‘Kleinen Eiszeit’, 226.

For the portents associated with this period, see the intriguing Lacrymae Germaniae or, The Teares of Germany. Vnfolding her woefull Distresse by Jerus Alems Calamity in a Sermon Preached at a Generall Assembly in the Maiden-Towne of Norenberg in Germany, before the Lords of the States, and many others of quality there met together, to humble themselves before the Lord, trans. from the High Dutch copy (London: Printed by I. Okes, 1638). In many places, the Thirty Years' War had remarkable demographic, economic, and political effects. In the Duchy of Württemberg, by 1640, the population had declined to one quarter of the prewar level (Bernhard Stier and Wolfgang von Hippel, “War, Economy, and Society,” in Germany: A New Social and Economic History, volume II, 1630 –1800, ed. Sheilagh Ogilvie [London: Hodder Arnold, 1996], 235). Augsburg in 1600 had 45,000 inhabitants; by 1635, however, the city was inhabited by only 16,000 people. Between 1632 and 1635, Mainz lost 8,000 people (half of its inhabitants). Such proportional population losses could be experienced in any size town. Although the population losses could be quite significant and in some places long lasting, as a rule, urban populations tended to recover quickly. The war had other serious consequences besides population loss, however. Between 1625 and 1647, the prosperous and densely populated area around Magdeburg and Halberstadt lost an average of 64 percent of its dwellings through direct combat, dilapidation, plundering, and arson (ibid., 240). The indebtedness of Nuremberg rose from 1.8 million Gulden in 1618 to 7.4 million in 1648 (ibid., 241).

55. Among the older literature, see Geoffrey Parker and Lesley M. Smith, eds., The General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century (London: Routledge/Kegan Paul, 1985; orig., 1978) and Parker, Europe in Crisis.

56. Manfred Jakubowski-Tiessen, “ ‘Erschreckliche und unerhörte Wasserflut:’ Wahrnehmung und Deutung der Flutkatastrophe von 1634,” in Jakubowski-Tiessen and Lehmann, Um Himmels Willen, 189, 191.

57. Zwo Predig, wien man sich Christlich halten soll, wann grosse Ungewitter oder Hagel sich erheben, mit . . . Unterrichtung, von dem Leutte gegen Wetter (Nuremberg: Val. Geyβler, 1570), partially paginated.

58. Behringer, “Die Krise von 1570,” 109ff.

59. Ibid., 74.

60. Otto Ulbricht, “Extreme Wetterlagen im Diarium Heinrich Bullingers (1504 –1574),” in Behringer, Lehmann, and Pfister, Kulturelle Konsequenzen der ‘Kleinen Eiszeit’, 161.

61. The city council, as a consequence, in 1567 reinstituted the 1529 limit on interest to 5 percent and extended its preaching about the punishment for usury.

62. Here and above, see Ulbricht, “Extreme Wetterlagen,” 165ff.

63. See Nicoline Hortzitz, “Verfahrensweisen sprachlicher Diskriminierung in antijüdischen Texten der Frühen Neuzeit,” in Kiessling, Judengemeinden in Schwaben, 208–10.

64. Cited in ibid., 208.

65. The black death, e.g., was at times attributed to the Jews in late medieval and early modern chronicles; however, this was not uniformly the case. Frequently authors with more clerical backgrounds were more likely to disseminate the motif of Jewish guilt, though many Christian chroniclers never mentioned the Jews at all. The weather, though apparently attributed by some, especially in popular culture, to witches and devils, was not generally seen by theologians as susceptible to their power.

66. Johannes Aventinus, Baierische Chronik (Jena: E. Diederichs, 1926), 175–76.

67. See Battenberg, Die Juden in Deutschland vom 16. bis zum Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts, 95.

68. Wolfgang Harms, ed., Deutsche Illustrierte Flugblätter des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts, vol. 1 (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1985), no. 170.

69. “Er wirt ihnen ein wetter zu lohn geben.” The actual Psalm reads, “The Lord seeks out the righteous man, but loathes the wicked one who loves injustice. He will rain down upon the wicked blazing coals and sulfur; a scorching wind shall be their lot” (Psalms 11:5–6).

70. “Ich will den Wolke[n] gebiete[n] das sie nicht regnen” (Isaiah 5:6).

71. “Mein lieber hatte einen Weinberg und wartet dass er trauben brachte aber er brächte härtling Zehen acker sollen nur einen eymer geben.”

72. “Ich will die Sonn am mittag vnder ghen lasse[n] vnd das lnd am heÿligen tag lass on finster werde[n].” The passage cited is Amos 8:9, “I will make the sun set at noon, I will darken the earth on a sunny day.”

73. “Der Geitz ist eine wurtzel alles ubels welches hatt etliche gelustet und sind vom glauben Irre gegenagen und machen ihnen selbst vil vergeblicher unrube.”

74. “Amos 5. Darumb weil ihr die armen underdrucket, und nem[m]et das korn mit grosen lasten von ihnen, so solt ihr in den hausern nicht wohnen, die ihr von werkstucken gebawet habt. und den Wein nicht trincken, den ihr in den feinen Weinbergen gepflantzet habt, Danichweis ewer ubertretten, des vil ist, und ewere sünd die starck sind, wie ihr die gerechten drenget, und blutgelt nemet. Und die armen im thor underdrucket. Darumb muss der klug zur selbigen zeit schweigen, danes ist ein böse zeitt. Der gerecht wirt sich frewen wan er solche rache sihet. Ps. 58.”

75. See Harms, Deutsche Illustrierte Flugblätter, 1:222, 225.

76. Monster, Wunder und Kometen: Sensationsberichte auf Flugblättern des 16. bis 18. Jahrhunderts. Eine Ausstellung der Universitätsbibliothek 19. November-12 Dezember 1999, catalog by Christina Hofmann-Randall (Erlangen: Universitätsbibliothek, 1999), 66.

77. Harms, Deutsche Illustrierte Flugblätter, 1:183; Monster, Wunder und Kometen, 9.

78. Harms, Deutsche Illustrierte Flugblätter, 1:167.

79. John Roger Paas, The German Political Broadsheet, 3:455.

80. Ibid., 446ff; for money clipping, see 452ff.

81. Harms, Deutsche Illustrierte Flugblätter, 1:106, no. 55. To give one, albeit late, example, from 1701, there was a Polish nobleman who possessed much grain but could not sell it for the planned exorbitant price; he resolved therefore to give it to the pigs rather than sell it to the poor cheaply. For that deed, God turned him into a pig to serve as an example.

82. Ibid., 377, 424.

83. M. Ginsburger, trans., Die Memoiren des Ascher Levy aus Reischshofen im Elsass (1598–1635) (Berlin, 1913), 60 [in German].

84. Ibid., 6 [German introduction].

85. Ibid., 9 [Hebrew 3].

86. Ibid., 17 [Hebrew 8].

87. Ibid., 18 [Hebrew 9–10], for example

88. See ibid., 20 –22 [Hebrew 10 –11].

89. Ibid., 25, 26 [Hebrew 13, 14].

90. Ibid., 23 [Hebrew 12]: “in spring and summer of 385 (1625) it did not rain at the correct time.” See also 24 [Hebrew 12].

91. See, e.g., ibid., 29 [Hebrew 16], 38 [Hebrew 22], 57 [Hebrew 36].

92. In the context of war, Asher resorts to explanation by sin: “Now, because of our many sins, I was forced with them to flee” (ibid., 57 [Hebrew 36]).

93. Asher writes, e.g., “The entire month of Tevet 386 (1626) it was not cold and there was no snow, and at the beginning of Shevat the sun was so warm just as in the days of the summer, and this is how it remained until the end of Shevat, and each day there was dew on the ground. At the beginning of Adar it was cold and snow fell, and the land was frozen and it snowed very heavily” (ibid., 24 [Hebrew 12]).

94. Ibid., 39 [Hebrew 25].

95. Of a 1633 flood, e.g., he writes tellingly, “On Shabbat, the 11th of Shevat, the water began to gain the upper hand, for during the entire preceding weeks there was rain and wind, as it is not possible to describe, storms, which ripped the mountains and uprooted fir trees, and the water gained the upper hand in the entire region. On Wednesday, the fifteenth, it ceased. No one can recall such an amount of water and many men and cattle were lost; it was especially strong in Hagenau” (ibid., 57–58 [Hebrew 37]). A similarly broad description is provided for 1631: “The cold began with strength on the holiday of Chanukah and did not end for 13 days, and all the world was afraid that the Rhine would freeze and the army of the Emperor would come from the other bank. Suddenly the rainfall came and the cold snapped. A second cold period set in with the 26th of Tevet” (ibid., 67 [Hebrew 41]).

96. Ibid., 27 [Hebrew 15].

97. Ibid., 28 [Hebrew 15].

98. Ibid., 30–31 [Hebrew 17].

99. Ibid., 55 [Hebrew 35].

100. Mordechai Breuer, “Modernism and Traditionalism in Sixteenth-Century Jewish Historiography: A Study of David Gans' Tzemah David,” in Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth Century, ed. Bernard Dov Cooperman (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), 54; see also idem, Introduction to Ẓemaḥ David, by David Gans (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1983).

101. Gans argued that the study of general history is important for a number of reasons, including his belief that it is important that Jews will not seem to non-Jews “like cattle that cannot distinguish between their right and left, or as though we [Jews] were all born but the day before yesterday.” Cited and trans. in Michael A. Meyer, Ideas of Jewish History (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1987), 131. See Matthias Pohlig, Zwischen Gelehrsamkeit und konfessioneller Identitätsstiftung: Lutherische Kirchen-und Universalgeschichtsschreibung 1546–1617 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007), regarding universal and church history in the sixteenth century in the context of confessionalization.

102. See Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1982).

103. Indeed, the tensions in Gans's project and his outlook in general have been well stated with regard to his relation to science. According to Andre Neher, Jewish Thought and the Scientific Revolution of the Sixteenth Century: David Gans (1541–1613) and his Times, trans. David Maisel (Oxford: Littman Library, Oxford University Press, 1986), 214, “Three ways, then, opened up for David Gans: that of submission to the authority of the Gentiles and acceptance of the Ptolemaic system, whose chief Jewish representative was the great Moses Maimonides; that of the Maharal, who also recognized the scientific supremacy of Gentile astronomy, but placed above it a purely Jewish astronomy which, however, is not scientific and is the only one to possess the absolute truth. And, lastly, there was that of the Rema, with his very vague and generalized approach of a simultaneous respect for Jewish tradition and the Ptolemaic system, ended in a state of painful anxiety.” On his conciliatory role between de Rossi and Maharal, see Breuer, “Modernism and Traditionalism,” 58; and Breuer, Introduction to Ẓemaḥ David, vii.

104. Breuer, “Modernism and Traditionalism,” 77–78; B. Z. Degani, “Hamivneh shel hahistoriah ha‘olamit vege’ulat yisra'el be-Ẓemaḥ David lerabi David Gans,” Zion 45, no. 3 (1980): 173; see also Salo Baron, History and Jewish Historians: Essays and Addresses (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1964), 192, for de Rossi's argument regarding the use of sources of Gentile origin. For de Rossi's rationalizations and their inherent flaws, see Lester A. Segal, Historical Consciousness and Religious Tradition in Azariah de' Rossi's Me'or ‘Einayim (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 55f.

105. Breuer, “Modernism and Traditionalism,” 57.

106. Ibid., 50–53.

107. Baron, History and Jewish Historians, 178, 226–30.

108. See, e.g., Gans, Ẓemaḥ David, 200.

109. Breuer, “Modernism and Traditionalism,” 62; see idem, Introduction to Ẓemaḥ David, xiii–xv for Hebrew sources and xv–xxvi for German sources.

110. Ibid., 60.

111. See Breuer, “Modernism and Traditionalism,” 68ff, for his assessment of Gans's practical and secular attitude and his critique of the typical Ashkenazic rabbi of his time and the institution of ordination.

112. Ibid., 65–67. See also Dean Phillip Bell, Sacred Communities: Jewish and Christian Identities in Fifteenth-Century Germany (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 218–23.

113. Gans, Ẓemaḥ David, 218.

114. This despite the general view that the import of celestial and earthly phenomena and their reflection of divine providence appear frequently throughout the work. For other natural disasters and portents, see ibid., 225, 226 (quoting his Christian sources about three suns in the sky), 305 (blood from heaven, in 1006), 308 (snow), 405–406 (a comet in 1572).

115. See ibid., 391; Breuer, “Modernism and Traditionalism,” 65; and idem, Introduction to Ẓemaḥ David, xiv.

116. Meyer, Ideas of Jewish History, 163.

117. Ibid., 128 [Gans, Ẓemaḥ David, 164].

118. Ibid., 128–29 [ibid., 165].

119. Ibid., 129–31 [ibid., 165–67].

120. Gans, Ẓemaḥ David, 405, 406, 410, 413, 416.

121. Abraham David, ed., A Hebrew Chronicle from Prague, c. 1615, trans. Leon J. Weinberger with Dena Ordan (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1993), 24. The chronicler did note a fire in the Jewish street in Prague in 1559 (and the associated death of a woman attributed to “our iniquities”) and registered floods in the city that forced the temporary closure of the Altneuschul in 1598 (53). Though a comet was described from 1577 as an omen that God would hopefully regard as good and a blessing (52), the floodwaters were not presented within a divine context and not described as punishment for sin (53).

122. Ibid., 38, 40, 44, for example

123. Johannes Brenz, in Zwo Predig: “Im andern Bu[e]ch Moysi am 9. Capitel Lesen wir/Das Gott dem Moysi befalcht/Er solte sein Handt auβstrecken das es Hagelt vber gantz Egyptenlandt/vber Menschen/vnnd Viech. Sihe/da ist offentlich angezeigt/das GOTT ein Vrsacher des Hagels sey/vnd schicke ihn darumb/das er der Menschen Su[e]nde vnnd boβheit darmit wo[e]lle straffen” (unpaginated).

124. Thoman Rörer, in ibid., unpaginated.

125. Gans, Ẓemaḥ David, 282; cf. Spangenberg, Sächsische Chronica, 130.

126. See Bell, Jewish Identity in Early Modern Germany, 106 –107, 112.

127. Gans, Ẓemaḥ David, 374; cf. Spangenberg, Sächsische Chronica, cap. 337, p. 567. See, similarly, Gans, Ẓemaḥ David, 87. He noted signs in the heavens and that many died. See Spangenberg, Sächsische Chronica, cap. 360, pp. 603–605.

128. Gans, Ẓemaḥ David, 333; cf. Spangenberg, Sächsische Chronica, cap. 235, p. 404.