University Press of New England: . Softcover. Brand new book. As a historian Katz is fully in charge - controlling his sources shaping them into meaningful patterns and presenting them in such a way as to illuminate their larger significance." �Commentary Eminent social historian Jacob Katz examines the rise and transformation of Jewish communal leadership in Central Europe. It is a story of fragmentation and polarization that sheds light on the tensions within the 19th-century Jewish community in Central Europe as it struggled to respond to the promises and perils of modernization. University Press of New England: paperback