Leonard B. Glick recounts the history of the Ashkenazic Jewish experience in medieval western Europe from the fifth to fifteenth centuries, focusing on interaction between Jews and Christians during this vital formative period.

He demonstrates that Ashkenazic Jewish culture was profoundly shaped and conditioned by life in an overwhelmingly Christian society. Drawing on diverse Christian documents, he portrays Christian beliefs about medieval Jews and Judaism with a degree of detail seldom found in Jewish histories. Emphasizing social, political, and economic history, but also discussing religious topics, Glick describes the evolution of a complex, inherently
unequal relationship.

Because the Ashkenazic Jews of medieval Europe were ancestral to almost the entire Jewish population of eastern Europe, their historical experience played a major role in the heritage of most Jewish Americans.