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In recent decades, research has pointed to an early modern period, in which great transformation took place. By focusing on local studies, scholars have recognized that Jews and Christians residing in Europe interacted with one another, sharing daily experiences as well as important cultural developments. The Jews living in Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries experienced many changes, first and foremost among them demographic migrations. Developments such as the Renaissance, the Protestant and Catholic Reformations, the Scientific Revolution, and the invention of moveable type altered life for Jews and Christians of Europe alike. Further research in this field should include social history, as well as the transregional connections between Jews living in different regions.
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Between the Bridge and the Barricade explores how translations of non-Jewish texts into Jewish languages impacted Jewish culture, literature, and history from the sixteenth century into modern times. Offering a comprehensive view of early modern Jewish translation, Iris Idelson-Shein charts major paths of textual migration from non-Jewish to Jewish literatures, analyzes translators’ motives, and identifies the translational norms distinctive to Jewish translation. Idelson-Shein reveals for the first time the liberal translational norms that allowed for early modern Jewish translators to make intensely creative and radical departures from the source texts—from “Judaizing” names, places, motifs, and language to mistranslating and omitting material both deliberately and accidently. Through this process of translation, Jewish translators created a new library of works that closely corresponded with the surrounding majority cultures yet was uniquely Jewish in character.