When the Study of Judaism Entered History

The Journal of Medieval History set out to become an all-embracing and unspecialised venue for works on European history ‘between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance’. However, during the first two decades of its existence, the journal published remarkably few articles on Jewish topics, with but a handful of essays, mostly on the issue of religious polemics. It was only in the late 1990s that essays speaking to Jewish experiences and involving Jewish sources began regularly to appear. This shift also brought about a wealth of contributions in subfields of Jewish Studies – law, liturgy, literature and visual arts–that until then had not found a place in the journal. This Comment is part of a Special Issue marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Journal of Medieval History.