Antisemitism and Resistance in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa

Catalog description

In this course, we will not only analyze some of the key antisemitic texts and ideas of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but also consider the impact of antisemitism on Jewish lived experience in the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe and the ways in which Jewish people and communities have responded to and confronted antisemitism in all three regions. Antisemitism permeates the histories of nationalism, colonialism, and religion in ways that cross borders and cultures. Often, predominantly European phenomena – from the myth of ritual murder to fascist racism – have meaningfully informed Middle Eastern and North African antisemitism. Jewish resistance movements in all three regions, meanwhile, have relied and built upon one another: Middle Eastern Jews called upon European Jewish leaders to help them confront the anti-Jewish policies of colonial bureaucracies, and North African Jewish partisans rescued European Jewish refugees during World War II. These regions, however, are typically studied in isolation from one another. In this course, we will seek to arrive at an understanding of the interconnectedness of these histories. Over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Jewish life in these regions was radically transformed. Many longstanding Jewish communities – whole worlds of culture and human life – were ultimately destroyed. In our own time of rampant, well-documented antisemitism, it is especially important to learn about not only the history of antisemitism itself, but also the myriad successes and failures of those who, at every moment, found ways to resist. By learning about the past, we inherit the collective wisdom of those who have engaged with these issues before us; this may, in turn, help us to make well-informed, thoughtful decisions in the present and for the future