Divine Struggles: Writing Histories of the Jewish Experience that Are Sensitive to Religious Sensitivities*

Abstract

How can historians untangle the dynamics between intentional religious belief, inherited cultural practices and the numerous contexts (social, cultural, political) that outline relationships between religious majorities and religious minorities? This paper uses the exceptionally complex past of east central Europe in the modern period (and the 1930s/1940s in particular) as a laboratory to study how religious cleavages served as a basis for “everyday” interactions between Jews and Others. Drawing on the thinking of William Sewell and various narratives by historians of east central Europe, this paper isolates the concept of religious sensitivities (as opposed to racial, ethnic and national sensitivities) to explore how an awareness of believed rituals, ideas about perceived authority, notions of otherness and the contours of communal belonging illuminate four categories of historical actors. Religious sensitivities did and did not inspire rabbis, caregivers, “polite” anti‐Semites and “neighbours” to make decisions, live their lives alongside “Others” and construct their world views. This review of both published and original sources demands us to concede that historical context drives the production and articulation of religious sensitivities, even those that appear timeless.