This lecture aims to reorient Jewish history by outlining a comprehensive account of the process by which Jews became citizens with civil and political rights. Ranging from the mid-sixteenth century to the beginning of the twenty-first, it will tell the ongoing story of how Jews have gained and kept, lost and recovered rights in Europe, Israel, North Africa, the Middle East, and the United States. Emancipation was not a one-time or linear event, but a complex, multi-directional and ambiguous process, characterized by deflections and reversals, defeats and successes, triumphs and tragedies.
