Early modern European Jews lived lives shaped by discrimination, hostility, and harassment. They faced severe restrictions on their legal and civil rights, restrictions that made them, in effect, people without a country, permanent aliens with no fixed citizenship. Moreover, legal discrimination against Jews was the formal, codified expression of deeply ingrained popular prejudice. European Christians from across the social spectrum embraced malicious stereotypes of Jews as embodiments of greed, dishonesty, and guile. The combination of widespread hostility and the absence of legal protections made Jews easy scapegoats for Europe’s various problems and discontents, a pattern that continued from the Middle Ages until modern times.

And yet, as Glückel of Hameln’s story makes clear, the Jewish community was not destroyed by centuries of oppression. Denied membership in the larger society and forced to live a precarious and contingent existence, European Jews found a measure of collective stability and security in the very beliefs and practices that defined them as Jews. As you read the documents included in this activity, think about the strategies European Jews employed to survive, and even prosper, in a hostile world. How did Glückel see the relationship between Jews and Christians? What individual and community resources did she and her family draw on to help cope with the challenges of Jewish life in the early modern era?