Rural and Urban Jewries between Tradition and Modernity
The dichotomy of ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’ characterizes our image of Jewish history and culture to this day. The dualism of “land equals stagnation” and “city equals modernization” is a common scholarly pattern that needs to be questi-oned. The relationship between city and countryside has mostly been seen as a one-way street and as an “either/or”, either city or country. This raises the question: is this dichotomy tenable in light of recent research on transformation processes? What happened in-between city and countryside and in movements that headed in both directions?