Microhistories of (economic) coexistence. Jews and Christians in the town of Sluck in the 17th Century
Maria Cieśla
Parkes Institute
In my talk, I will ask the question about the importance of Jewish economic activity in everyday Christian-Jewish interactions. I am interested in the social dimension of Jewish economic activity in the context of Christian-Jewish relations. The following questions will be asked: To what extent did the economic domination of the Jews cause a deepening of Christian-Jewish relations? Did the Jewish economic activity cause the creation of shared Jewish-Christian non-economic social spaces? What was the significance of anti-Jewish economic stereotypes in everyday Jewish-Christian encounters? I am using microhistory as a research method and focusing on single actors and their activities. I will present a case study of the town of Sluck in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, in the 17th Century. Sluck hosted one of the most important Jewish communities in the early modern Polish–Lithuania Commonwealth.
