Michael Hoberman: New Israel/New England: Jews and Puritans in Early America
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- Опубліковано 13 тра 2012
- -- Recorded 29 February 2012 at Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, MA --
Speaker: Michael Hoberman, Fitchburg State University
The New England Puritans’ fascination with the legacy of the Jewish religion has been well documented, but their interactions with actual Jews have escaped sustained historical attention. New Israel/New England tells the story of the Sephardic merchants who traded and sojourned in Boston and Newport between the mid-seventeenth century and the era of the American Revolution. It also explores the complex and often contradictory meanings that the Puritans attached to Judaism and the fraught attitudes that they bore toward the Jews as a people.
More often than not, Michael Hoberman shows, Puritans thought and wrote about Jews in order to resolve their own theological and cultural dilemmas. A number of prominent New Englanders, including Roger Williams, Increase Mather, Samuel Sewall, Benjamin Colman, Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards, and Ezra Stiles, wrote extensively about post-biblical Jews, in some cases drawing on their own personal acquaintance with Jewish contemporaries.
This is truly an awesome and enlightening presentation. I would contradict the speaker, however, that it was not a "fear" of Catholics, it was a total rejection of their doctrine. A rejection that was worth risking one's life or dying for. I do understand there was a component of fear for some Protestants after being persecuted by Catholics, but it was largely a stark theological rejection that was ESSENTIAL to saving one's soul.
Excellent and long-overdue research on Jews in early colonial America. Can't wait to get my copy of Hoberman's book. For more on colonial American Jews, visit patricia-osullivan
The new Israel are the new followers of God
23:30 sewall visited Jewish synagogue in London
Creating a text out of nowhere to convert someone? Sola Scriptura, Michael.