In an era marked by traumatic expulsions, inquisitorial barbarism, and enforced ghettoization, Jews reinvented themselves. Through their international networks of trade, Jews learned how to negotiate with kings and to govern new, large urban communities in new lands. They took advantage of the printing press to reorganize their literary traditions of law, biblical studies and mysticism, and created new hierarchies of religious status. And they flocked to hear new kinds of enthusiast preachers, celebrating the man they saw as the messiah finally come. We will together explore the contradictory forces that ultimately gave birth to the modern Jew.