Jewish materialism: the intellectual revolution of the 1870s

A paradigm-shifting account of the modern Jewish experience, from one of the most creative young historians of his generation.

To understand the organising framework of modern Judaism, Eliyahu Stern believes that we should look deeper and farther than the Holocaust, the establishment of the State of Israel, and the influence and affluence of American Jewry.

Against the revolutionary backdrop of mid-19th-century Europe, Stern unearths the path that led a group of rabbis, scientists, communal leaders and political upstarts to reconstruct the core tenets of Judaism and join the vanguard of 20th-century revolutionary politics.