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Article: Jews and Blacks in the Early Modern World.(Book review)
- Article from:
- American Jewish History
- Article date:
- September 1, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 American Jewish Historical Society. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Jews and Blacks in the Early Modern World. By Jonathan Schorsch. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. xi + 546 pp.
In 1642, the Venetian rabbi and scholar Leon Modena (1574-1648) received the last news he heard directly from his son Isaac, who had emigrated to Brazil. By his own report, Isaac had become a rich merchant possessing more than "four thousand reals, as well as Black slaves" (125). (1) This father-son exchange encapsulates two important points of Jews and Blacks in the Early Modern World: 1) the emergence of an American way of life for Jews where, "as unpolitically correct as it might appear to us now, the de facto rule of several Caribbean ...