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Hebrew and Jewish Studies

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HEBR1004 - A Survey of Jewish History and Culture 1800 - present

Course code:	HEBR1004
Tutor:	Dr. François Guesnet
Mode of assessment:	Two 2,000-2,500 word essays
Taught:	In Term 2 (over 5 weeks)
Classes:	Wednesdays, 1100-1300 in Room 331, Foster Court Fridays 0900-1100 in Room 331, Foster Court

Course Summary

This section of the survey will explore the modern period in Jewish history, when traditional Jewish life was confronted with intensified transformation in all spheres of life: religion, economy, culture, society, politics. The starting point is the rationalization and secularization of Christian attitudes towards European Jewry, exemplified by the eighteenth-century Enlightenment Movement. At the same time, social and economic changes generated by emergent capitalism also transformed Jewish life in Europe. These phenomena set in motion the process of Jewish emancipation, and efforts to integrate Jews more closely into the host society. The result was a search for a new Jewish-Gentile relationship, expressed from the Jewish side in the Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment Movement.

Modernization, in all its guises, threatened the integrity of traditional Judaism by undermining old authorities and practices. The Jewish Reform Movement and its opponents represented divergent efforts to preserve the identity and integrity of Judaism. For some, the confessionalization of Judaism offered the option to integrate the Jews in the emergent nation states.

The apparent successes of Jewish emancipation were brought into question by the rise of popular and religious opposition to it. In the age of political mass mobilization, Antisemitism gained a prominent place as reactionary utopia, concomitant to the persistence of traditional prejudice and discrimination. Against this background there arose a variety of modern Jewish ideologies, including Zionism, and Jewish variants of socialism. These developments will be contrasted to the major shifts in the constitution of World Jewry in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, marked by the emergence of two new centers of Jewish settlement, North America and Palestine.

The course will conclude with a review of major trends in Jewish history in Europe before the Second World War, the catastrophe of the Holocaust, and the creation of the State of Israel.

Assessment

Students will be assessed through two 2,000 – 2,500 word essays, the details of which are listed below. Each essay will count one half of the total mark for the course. In order to pass the course, students must submit both essays and one reading summary, which will be marked pass/fail.

[Here a more detailed explanation about the summary needs to be included, after all survey lecturers have agreed on it]

Lecture Outlines and Readings

Students find below a list of lecture topics, all of which have assigned readings which should be read in advance of the class. Students find also a bibliography that is designed to give them an overview of recently published materials in the field of modern Jewish history and to provide reading material for the preparation of essays.

Office Hours:

During my office hours I am available to meet with students without an appointment. You may make an appointment to see me at other times through email at: f.guesnet@ucl.ac.uk.

Office Hours: Wednesdays 2-3 and (better) by appointment

Schedule of Lectures

All class lectures have assigned readings. These will be made available online with the beginning of the academic year, or distributed as xerox. The attached bibliography is designed to give students an overview of recently published materials in the field of modern Jewish history and to provide reading materials for the preparation of your essays.

LIST OF TOPICS

Wednesday 20 February 2013: Jews at the Borderlines of Modern History

Read:

François Guesnet, „The Turkish Cavalry in Swarzedz, or: Jewish Political Culture at the Borderlines of Modern History,“ in: Simon-Dubnow-Institute Yearbook 6 (2007), 227-248.

Friday 24 February 2013: The Emancipation of European Jewry

Read:

Geoffrey Alderman: English Jews or Jews of the English Persuasion? Reflections on the Emancipation of Anglo-Jewry. In: Pierre Birnbaum, Ira Katznelson, eds., Paths of Emancipation. Jews, States, and Citizenship. Princeton, NJ 1995, 128-56.

Wednesday 27 February 2013: Three Faces of Modernity? Haskalah, Hasidism, Orthodoxy

Read:

Michael Meyer, The Origins of the Modern Jew. Detroit 1967, 1-56.

Moshe Rosman, “Hasidism as a Modern Phenomenon – The Paradox of Modernization Without Secularization,” in: Simon-Dubnow-Institute Yearbook 6 (2007), 215-24.

Friday 1 March 2013: Religion and Community: Major trends in Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries

Read:

Silber, Michael K.: The Emergence of ultra-Orthodoxy. The Invention of a Tradition, in: Wertheimer, Jack (ed.): The Uses of Tradition. Cambridge 1992, S: 23-84.

Wednesday 6 March 2013: The Jews of Eastern Europe

Read:

Israel Bartal: The Jews of Eastern Europe, Philadelphia 2006, chs. 2, 3-7

Friday 8 March 2013: The Emergence and Dynamics of Modern Antisemitism

Read:

Shulamit Volkov, “Antisemitism as a Cultural Code – Reflections on the History and Historiography of Antisemitism in Imperial Germany,” in: Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 23 (1978): 25–46.

Avraham B. Yehoshua, “An attempt to Identify the Root Cause of Antisemitism,” in Azure 32 (2008), 48-79.

Wednesday 13 March 2013: The Era of Mass Politicization: Jewish Nationalism and Social Democracy

Read:

Frankel, Jonathan: “Crisis as a Factor im Modern Jewish Politics,” in: ibid.: Crisis, Revolution, and Russian Jews. Cambridge 2009, 15-31.

Friday 15 March 2013: From East to West (and South): Jews in the Americas and the aliyot to Palestine

Read:

Irving Howe: World of Our Fathers. New York 1976, ch. 2 (Departure and Arrival), 26-63.

Wednesday 20 March 2013: Holocaust and Statehood

Read:

Doris L. Bergen: War and Genocide. A Concise History of the Holocaust. ch. 4 (Open Aggression: In Search of War, 1938-1939) and 5 (Experiments in Brutality, 1939-1940), 79-133.

Friday 22 March 2013 : Final Discussion

Read:

Salo Baron, "Ghetto and Emancipation," reprinted in Leo W.

Schwartz, ed. The Menorah Treasury (Philadelphia, 1964): 50-63.

Essay Assessment

Essay Topics

Listed below are the general essay topics for this course and the appropriate due date. In order to allow a fortnight for completion of the essays, the last essay will be due shortly after the end of term. It is expected that all essays will be handed in on time, but make a special effort to do so with your first essay. You are welcome to discuss the assignment at greater length with me indidually.

All essays and the reading summary must be word-processed. Be sure to follow the guidelines provided by the Departmental Style Sheet--we are very strict on this. Hand in two copies of the essays and the reading summary to the Departmental Office, with a cover sheet, where they will be dated and registered. Please read the departmental guidelines on plagiarism, which require students to retain notes that they have used in the preparation of their essays. Please note that all essays must have footnotes or endnotes and a bibliography, and should not rely on encyclopedias, printed or virtual.

An electronic version of the Style Sheet and the cover sheet may be downloaded at:

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/silva/hebrewandjewishstudies/studentresources

It is departmental practice that all student work submitted on time should be returned to students within a fortnight. Late submissions do not fall within this rule.

Each essay counts one-third of the total mark for this class. All three essays must be submitted in order to pass the class. Students must miss no more than 2 sessions in order to pass the class.

Essay and Reading Summary Assignments

Essay 1: Due 6 March, 2013

Choose any European region or nation and discuss the impact upon the traditional Jewish community of religious diversification between the mit-18th and the mid-19th centuries.

Reading Summary: Due 22 March, 2013

Essay 3: Due 12 April 2013

Do you think there is a causal link between the emergence of political antisemitism in Europe in the late 19th century and Jewish nationalism? Discuss!

Bibliography

GENERAL

• Baron, Salo W. “Ghetto and Emancipation. Shall We Revise the Traditional View?” in Menorah Journal 14, 6 (1928): 515–526, reprint in: Leo W. Schwarz, ed., The Menorah Treasury: Harvest of Half a Century. Philadelphia: JPS, 1964: 50–63.
• Feiner, Shmuel. Haskalah and History. The Emergence of a Modern Jewish Historical Consciousness. [1995] Oxford, Portland: Littman, 2002.
• Frankel, Jonathan. “Assimilation and the Jews in Nineteenth-Century Europe: Towards a New Historiography?” in Idem, Steven J. Zipperstein, eds. Assimilation and Community. The Jews in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992: 1–37.
• Funkenstein, Amos. [Ch. 7] “The Threshold of Modernity,” in Idem. Perceptions of Jewish History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993: 220–256.
• Goodman, Martin, Cohen, Jeremy, Sorkin, David, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002: 376–395.
• Israel, Jonathan I. European Jewry in the Age of Mercantilism, 1550–1750. [1985] London, Portland: Littman, [3rdedition] 1998.
• Katz, Jacob. Out of the Ghetto. The Social Background of Jewish Emancipation, 1770–1870. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973.
• __________, ed. Toward Modernity. The European Jewish Models. New Brunswick, Oxford: Transaction, 1987.
• Michael Meyer, The Origins of the Modern Jew. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1967.
• __________. Response to Modernity: A History of the Reform Movement in Judaism. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1988.
• Paths of Emancipation. Jews, States, and Citizenship. Pierre Birnbaum, Ira Katznelson eds. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1995.
• Penslar, Derek J. Shylock’s Children. Economics and Jewish Identity in Modern Europe. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2001.

FRANCE

• Benbassa, Esther. The Jews of France. A History from Antiquity to the Present. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999.
• Berkovitz, J. R. The Shaping of Jewish Identity in Nineteenth-Century France.Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989.
• Graetz, M. The Jews in nineteenth-Century France: From the French Revolution to the Alliance Israélite Universelle. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996.
• Frances Malino. A Jew in the French Revolution: The Life of Zalkind Hurwitz. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996

ENGLAND

• Berkowitz, Michael. The Jewish Self-Image. American and British Perspectives, 1881–1939. London: Reaktion Books, 2000.
• Champion, Justin. “Toleration and Citizenship in Enlightenment England: John Toland and the Naturalization of the Jews, 1714–1753,” in Ole Peter Grell, Roy Porter, eds. Toleration in Enlightenment Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000: 133–156.
• Cesarani, David. ed. The Making of Modern Anglo-Jewry. Oxford: Blackwell, 1990.
• __________. “British Jews,” in Rainer Liedtke, Stephan Wendehorst, eds. The Emancipation of Catholics, Jews and Protestants. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999: 33–55.
• Endelman, Todd M. The Jews of Georgian England, 1714–1830. Philadelphia: JPS, 1979.
• Feldman, David. Englishmen and Jews: Social Relations and Political Culture, 1840-1914. New Haven, 1994.
• Ruderman, David B. Jewish enlightenment in an English key. Anglo-Jewry’s construction of modern Jewish thought. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000.

GERMANY

• Aschheim, Steven E. Brothers and Strangers. The East European Jew in German and German Jewish Consciousness, 1800–1923. [1982] Updated with a New Introduction. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999.
• Brenner, Michael, Jersch-Wenzel, Stefi, Meyer, Michael A. German-Jewish History in Modern Times 2: Emancipation and Acculturation 1780–1871. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.
• Hess, Jonathan M. Germans, Jews and the Claims of Modernity. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.
• Kaplan, Marion. The Making of the Jewish Middle Class. Women, Family, and Identity in Imperial Germany. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.
• _________. “Gender and Jewish History in Imperial Germany,” in Jonathan Frankel, Steven J. Zipperstein, eds. Assimilation and Community. The Jews in Nineteenth-Century Europe.
• Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992: 199–224.
• Lowenstein, Steven M., Mendes-Flohr, Paul, Pulzer, Peter, Richarz, Monika. German-Jewish History in Modern Times 3: Integration in Dispute 1871–1918. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.
• Richarz, Monika, ed. Jewish Life in Germany: Memoirs from Three Centuries. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991.
• Sorkin, David. The Transformation of German Jewry, 1780–1840. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.
• _________, “Emancipation and Assimilation: Two Concepts and Their Application to German-Jewish History,” in Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 25 (1990): 17–34.

THE HABSBURG MONARCHY

• Bernard, Paul P. “Joseph II and the Jews: The origins of the Toleration Patent of 1782,” in Austrian History Yearbook 4–5 (1968/1969): 101–119.
• Kieval, H. J. The Making of Czech Jewry: National Conflict and Jewish Society in Bohemia 1870–1918. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.
• McCagg, William O. A History of Habsburg Jews, 1670–1918. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989.
• Patai, R. The Jews of Hungary. History, Culture, Psychology. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1996.
• Rozenblit, Marsha L. The Jews of Vienna, 1867–1914. Assimilation and Identity. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983.
• Wistrich, Robert S. The Jews of Vienna in the Age of Franz Joseph. Oxford: Littman/Oxford University Press, 1989.

EASTERN EUROPE

• Baron, Salo W. The Russian Jew Under Tsars and Soviets. London: Collier Macmillan, [2nd rev./enlarged ed.] 1976.
• Bartal, Yisrael: The Jews of Eastern Europe, 1772-1881. Philadelphia 2005.
• Eisenbach, Artur. The Emancipation of the Jews in Poland, 1780–1870. [ed. Antony Polonsky] Oxford: Blackwell, 1991.
• Hundert, Gershon: Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century. A Genealogy of Modernity. Berkeley CA 2003, chs. 1-2, 21-56.
• Klier, John D. Russia Gathers Her Jews: The origins of the ‘Jewish Question’ in Russia, 1772–1825. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1986.
• __________. Imperial Russia’s Jewish Question, 1855–1881. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
• __________. Russians, Jews, and the Pogroms of 1881-1882. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2010.
• Lederhendler, Eli. The Road to Modern Jewish Politics: Political Tradition and Political Reconstruction in the Jewish Community of Tsarist Russia. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.
• Polonsky, Antony. The Jews in Poland and Russia. Vols 1, 2. Oxford, Portland Oregon: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2010.
• Slezkine, Yuri. The Jewish Century. Princeton, NJ; Princeton University Press, 2004.
• Stanislawski, M. For Whom do I Toil? Juda Leib Gordon and the Crisis of Russian Jewry.
• Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.
• _________. Tsar Nicholas I and the Jews: The Transformation of Jewish Society in Russia, 1825–1855. Philadelphia: JPS, 1983.
• Zipperstein, Steven J. The Jews of Odessa. A Cultural History, 1794–1881. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985.

JEWISH POLITICAL MOBILIZATION

• Avineri, Shlomo. The Making of Modern Zionism. The Intellectual Origins of the Jewish State. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1981.
• Berkowitz, Michael. Zionist Culture and West European Jewry Before the First World War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
• Frankel, Jonathan. Prophecy and Politics: Socialism, Nationalism & the Russian Jews,
• 1862–1917. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.
• Frankel, Jonathan. Crisis, Revolution, and Russian Jews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
• Mendelsohn, Ezra. Class Struggle in the Pale. Cambridge; Cambridge University Press; 1970.
• Ratzabi, Shalom. Between Zionism and Judaism. The Radical Circle in Brith Shalom, 1925–1933. [Brill’s Series in Jewish Studies 23] Leiden: Brill, 2002.
• Vital, David. The Origins of Zionism. Oxford: Clarendon, 1975.
• ___________. Zionism: The Formative Years. Oxford: Clarendon, 1982.
• ___________. Zionism: The Crucial Phase. Oxford: Clarendon, 1987.
• Zipperstein, Steven M. Elusive Prophet: Ahad Ha’am and the Origins of Zionism. London: Peter Halban, 1993.

MIGRATION

• Gartner, Lloyd: The Jewish Immigrant in England, 1870-1914. Detroit, MI 1960.
• Green, Nancy: Gender and Jobs in the Jewish Community: Europe at the Turn of the Twentieth Century. In: Jewish Social Studies 8 (2002), 39-60.
• Green, Nancy: A Tale of Three Cities: Immigrant Jews in New York, London and Paris, 1870-1914. In: Patterns of Migration, London 1994.
• Green, Nancy: The Pletzl of Paris: Jewish Immigrant Workers in the Belle Époque. New York 1986.
• Guesnet, François: Sensitive Travelers: Jewish and non-Jewish visitors from Eastern Europe to Palestine between the two World Wars. In: Journal of Israeli History 27 (2008) 2, 171-189.
• Howe, Irving: World of Our Fathers. New York 1976.
• Israel, Jonathan: Diaspora within a diaspora. Jews, Crypto-Jews and the world of maritime empires(1540-1740), Leiden 2002.
• Kuznets, Simon: Immigration of Russian Jews to the United States: Background and Structure. In: Perspectives in American History 9 (1975)
• Patterns of Migration, 1850-1914. London 1996.
• Rozenblit, Marsha: Die Juden Wiens 1867-1914. Assimilation und Identität. Wien 1989.
• Sarna, Jonathan: The Myth of No Return: Jewish Return Migration to Eastern Europe, 1881-1914. In: American Jewish History 71.1981, H.2, S.256-268.
• Shulvass, Moses: From East to West. The westward migration of Jews from eastern Europe uring the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Detroit 1971.
• Soyer, Daniel: Jewish Immigrant Associations and American Identity in New York, Cambridge, Mass. 1997.
• Szajkowski, Zosa: The European attitude to Eastern Euroepean Jewish immigration (1881-1893). In Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society 41 (1951), 127-160.
• Wertheimer, Jack: Unwelcome strangers. East European Jews in Imperial Germany. New York 1987.

ANTISEMITISM

• Katz, Jacob. From Prejudice to Destruction. Anti-Semitism, 1700–1933. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980.
• Lambroza, Shlomo, Klier, John D., eds. Pogroms: Anti-Jewish Violence in Modern Russian History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
• Pulzer, Peter. The Rise and Fall of Political Anti-Semitism in Germany and Austria. London: Halban, rev. ed. 1988.
• Reinharz, Jehuda, ed. Living With Antisemitism. Modern Jewish Responses. Hanover, London: Brandeis University Press, 1987.
• Schorsch, Ismar. Jewish Reactions to German Anti-Semitism, 1870–1914. New York: Columbia University Press, 1972.
• Wilson, Stephen. Ideology and Experience. Antisemitism in France at the Time of the Dreyfus Affair. [Littman Library of Jewish Civilization] London, Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1982.

SHOAH

• Améry, Jean. At the Mind’s Limits. Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and its Realities. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980.
• Bankier, David, ed. Probing the Depths of German Antisemitism. German Society and the Persecution of the Jews, 1933–1941. Jerusalem, New York, Oxford: Yad Vashem, LBI, Berghahn, 2000.
• Bauer, Yehuda. “Jewish Resistance and Passivity in the Face of the Holocaust,” in François Furet, ed. Unanswered Questions. Nazi Germany and the Genocide of the Jews. New York: Schocken, 1989: 235–251.
• Doris L. Bergen: War and Genocide. A Concise History of the Holocaust. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield 2009 (2nd edition).
• Browning, Christopher. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. London: Penguin, 2001.
• Levi, Primo. If this is a Man. London: Orion, 1959.
• Trunk, Isaiah: Judenrat: the Jewish Councils in Eastern Europe under Nazi occupation, Lincoln 1996, chs. 1-2, 1-35.