The Merchant
The Merchant
The second chapter drops from the top of the social pyramid to near the bottom, to a Yiddish-speaking Jewish immigrant from Poland. Ráfáel Kästenbaum came to Hungary as a young man and worked as a merchant and moneylender in northeastern Hungary. Kästenbaum left behind few biographical documents. But when he died, his will showed him to be much wealthier and much more generous than anyone had suspected. A reconstruction of Kästenbaum's life shows the precarious position of Jews in provincial Hungary, just as his will's surprising bequests reveal the era's faith in education and the importance of local political coalitions (in this case the county nobility and Jewish elites) to achieve change.
Keywords: Ráfáel Kästenbaum, Galicia, Zemplén County, Jews, Jewish schools, merchants, history of education, nobility
Stanford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
