The House of Hannover: Gezeirot Tah in Modern Jewish Historical Writing

Source: Jewish History, Vol. 17, No. 2, Gezeirot Ta"h: Jews, Cossacks, Poles and Peasants in 1648 Ukraine (2003), pp. 179-206 his essay traces the development of modern Jewish historiography on the events of 1648-1649. It focuses mainly on treatments of the events in single volume and multi-volume general histories of the Jews, and on entries in encyclo pedias. Immediate historical memory, as exemplified by the Hebrew chronicles and liturgical poetry composed soon after the events, was transformed into history in the writings of the modern Jewish historians of the 19th and 20th centuries. In the process, the chronicle of Nathan Hannover dominated modern perceptions, for the most part uncritically accepted, albeit not on all counts. The major features of the modern historiography of the Gezeirot Tah ve'Tat are surveyed by discussing the causes of the attacks, their results, the number of victims, and the ways in which all three were incorporated in the larger Jewish historical scheme. Recently, some long-held approaches and conclusions have been revised, which suggests directions for future research.
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