Big Blows on a Small Stage: Records of Violence in Jewish communal registers, Altona 1765-1776

The incidents of interpersonal violence discussed here were recorded in semi-private registers kept by communal scribes across a period of approximately a decade during the second half of the eighteenth century in the Ashkenazic community of Altona. The Ashkenazic “triple” community, AHW, whose center was Altona, then under the Danish crown, is richly represented by surviving internal and archival records for the early modern period. The questions explored address the meaning of this level of physical violence and the means by which it was addressed. Was violence tolerated as a way of keeping disputes within the community? How did it compare to earlier records and to the larger population in this area? Does it indicate a lack of faith in the Jewish judicial system? Did people resort to violence as the swift and immediate rebuke their opponents deserved but would not get in a judicial venue? Was physical violence in this period as a means of resolving disputes primarily based on class? Was violence primarily the response of lower classes who couldn’t afford to litigate disputes? Did women in engage in the same level of physical violence as men, and if not, how did its expression differ