S. D. GOITEIN. A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, vol. 2, The Community. Pp. xvi, 633. Berkeley, Cal.: University of California Press, 1972. $20.00

• Author: Franz Rosenthal
• DOI: 10.1177/000271627340500129
• Published date: 01 January 1973
• Date: 01 January 1973
• Subject Matter: Articles

174
To factors within Jamaica working for
turies allow Goitein and his readers to look
social change were added two great social
backward and forward in time and to the
convulsions with major impact on the is-
East and the Northwest and to be in-
land. These were the American Revolution
structed by comparison and contrast about
and the Haitian slave revolt generated by
other periods and regions.
the French Revolution.
The first com-
As the volume’s subtitle implies, it is
pelled Jamaica to look to itself for ways
concerned with the internal organization
of compensating for the loss of trade with
and workings of the Jewish community.
the North; while finding its destiny more
Thus it deals more than the earlier volume
closely tied to the mother country. The
with the elements that set the Jewish com-
second event compelled master and slave
munity apart from its Muslim neighbors.
alike to see themselves in a new light, and
Among its primary concerns is the degree
became a harbinger of things to come in
of connectedness and separateness that ex-
the island, including ultimate emancipation
ists between the minority group and the
in 1833.
majority. The administration of the vari-
The study deserves a wide reading among
ous Jewish communities, their sizes, the
social scientists, including not only his-
tensions within them, their charity system,
torians, but especially sociologists and an-
their social stratification and economic
thropologists.
status, their physical distribution within
LOWRY NELSON
the larger urban complexes are among the
Center for Advanced International
subjects dealt with, and many previous
Studies
views of Jewish history are shown to be
University of Miami
unfounded or unsupported by the authentic
Coral Gables
Geniza material. But even in this connec-
Florida
tion, Goitein’s findings contribute to a
better understanding of the larger picture
S. D. GOITEIN. A Mediterranean Society:
of Muslim society. This aspect of his work
The Jewish...