In an effort to lend their subject a firm theoretical basis, the editors present a jargon-filled definition of historical space and go to great lengths to explain how these essays fit into the various subcategories. I would have preferred it if they had said, as Karl Schlögel did, that the "spatial turn" in historical studies is an increased mindfulness of the spatial side of the historical world and then specified the four components of space: a) material-physical; b) social action and activities; c) a system of laws and social norms; d) and a system of symbols - which may be present in various permutations.

Apart from the fact that some of the articles are introduced with additional annoying argot, this collection is a fine example of how turning one's attention to space yields historical knowledge. The essays by Ruth Leiserowitz (about Litvak traders in Lithuania), Cornelia Aust (about Jews at fairs, in court, and notary offices), Maria Cieśla (about Jewish-Christian spaces in Słuck), Hanna Zaremska (the development of the Jewish settlement in Kazimierz) and Michael K. Schulz (about shared Jewish-Christian spaces in Gdansk) all face a fundamental question: How were Jews accommodated in what were Christian spaces?

The answers vary. In Aust's case, she notes that "the core of their business was done through closely-knit Jewish networks" (52). Yet these networks were perforce associated with Christian spaces. She shows how Christian authorities had to ease Jewish access to fairs because Jews were simply too economically important to be ignored. Courts had to make provision for Hebrew translators and notaries had to allow Jews to sign in Hebrew or, in case of illiteracy, to sign with three circles instead of crosses. These adjustments were made despite lingering anti-Jewish feelings on the part of Christians. Leiserowitz shows how Jews were poised to take advantage of the increased cross-border trade between Prussia and Russia because of the Polish partitions. The imperial trade policies and road improvements fostered Jewish activity while bureaucratic rules hindered it.

Schulz traces the increasing presence of Jews in the city of Gdansk with the French occupation of 1807 - 1814 and the subsequent application of the Prussian Emancipation Act of 1812 despite the resistance of the city leaders. The result: the anti-Jewish riots of 1819 and 1821. Within two decades, however, some Jewish merchants blended in with their Christian compatriots in the Gdansk stock market. Still, Jews could not claim the title Bürger. Its connotations created an exclusive imaginary space that could be inhabited by Christians only.

Cieśla demonstrates that while the municipal authorities gradually succeeded in restricting the Jews' residential area, shared economic interests created spaces in the market and at the court that were shared by Christians and Jews. She is careful to note that contact zones between the groups, such as in pubs, were no guarantee of real shared space. There is no record of Christians and Jews interacting there beyond the commercial relationship of customers or patrons (although that is an interaction worthy of exploration). In contrast, the market was a truly shared space where all merchants played by the same rules and respected an unwritten code of mutual trust. In court, everyone was familiar with procedures, and the Jews' oath contained no disparagement of their religion.

Zaremska shows how, despite opposition from the municipal and church authorities of Kazimierz, the Jews succeeded in establishing a new community there. The reason for this success was the king's desire to keep the Jews within the Kraków agglomeration area but outside the capital city. They could thus be close enough to do business but far enough away so as not to impinge on choice Christian space. This foreshadowed a general solution whereby cities obtained a privilegium de non tolerandis Iudaeis while Jews were permitted to reside in nearby settlements.

The takeaway of these six essays is that Christians clung to their prejudices and kept Jews from encroaching on their space. Yet, at the same time, economic interests dictated that they share space with the Jews. These articles set out various solutions to this conundrum. From the medieval expulsion sending them a short distance away to the modern full citizenship in all but name, with various compromises in between, there was a constant quest to benefit from the Jews economically without being exposed to them culturally and socially.

The essay by Małgorzata Hanzl analyzes the physical space of the traditional Jewish neighborhood in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She notes how the sacred and domestic spaces were directed inward, isolated from the gentile world in a warren of backyards, block interiors, and secluded spaces connected by a system of paths. This contrasted with economic and service activities that had to be integrated with the larger community in the marketplace. She observes that whereas outside observers often saw disorder, insiders were able to discern an order of social hierarchies and internal connections. This essay makes it easy to understand Jews' desire for self-segregation as long as their culture and society remained traditional. The essay by Agnieszka Pufelska tells the story of seven Polish Jews who were drawn to Berlin by the idea that they might meet Moses Mendelssohn and be introduced to the world of Enlightenment. All but one, Isaac Satanow, left after some years. As Shmuel Feiner has asserted, Mendelssohn, as a German-Jewish intellectual, was more interested in philosophy than in Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment). One by one the Maskilim (Jewish enlighteners) who were searching for a reform of Jewish tradition left Berlin, bitter and disappointed. The final essay, by Małgorzata A. Maksymiak, detects the origin of German prejudice against Polish Jews in the twin discourse of German Gentiles and German Jews. In the early 1770s, with the partition of Poland, a "demographic problem" emerged that centered on the Jewish population of the new German territories. Fears arose that, for example, Jews, who did not serve in the army and did not visit prostitutes, would overtake the native German population, whose men would die in battle or of syphilis. This fear of the Polish Jews continued to grow in subsequent generations. German Jews who were submitting to a process of acculturation soon latched onto the idea that they were superior to those who in the twentieth century were referred to as Ostjuden [literally, "eastern Jews"].

These last two essays deal with imaginary spaces. Pufelska describes a Berlin that existed in the Maskilims' fantasies, a space that was the gate to modernity, that would welcome them and facilitate their dreams of a new enlightened Judaism. Maksymiak shows Germans afraid of a Poland conceived of as "Asian," with a population "sinking in stupidity," its Jews set to overrun Germany. The belief in the former could not be sustained when reality made it clear that, as Goethe said of Isachar Falkensohn Behr, one could be either a German poet or a Jew, but not both. The latter continued to fester, reaching its apotheosis with Nazism.

The book suffers from a lack of maps. In essays that deal with spaces, it would seem obvious that maps are a necessity. Whether speaking of trade routes through Samogitia, the geography of Kraków and Kazimierz, or the suburbs vs the city of Gdansk with the Strawberry Market-when the argument is based on geography, readers may struggle to envision locations and distances and to follow the discussion without a map.

Moreover, this book cries out for a conclusion to pinpoint the significance of what we have read and give an interpretation that will tie it all together. It should challenge readers with something against which to pit their own opinions. However, that said, the spatial perspective offered here is somewhat of an antidote to the dominant historiographical trend of depicting the Jews as indeed integral to the premodern societies they inhabited. These essays make it clear that there was a limit to premodern integration. Jews could be tolerated for the economic benefit they bestowed, but never accepted, in fact or imagination, as part of society and culture.

Moshe Rosman