Modern Jewish History

Catalog description

Modern Jewish history is a complex and fascinating story. Some scholars depicted it as a long period of suffering and isolation that culminated in the Holocaust and only ended with the founding of the state of Israel. In recent decades a more balanced perspective has found wide acceptance. Today scholars highlight Jewish agency and different conditions in the various places Jews settled without downplaying anti-Jewish prejudice and violence. A recurring theme in this course concerns the relationship between individual Jews and Jewish communities, and on a broader level, the perception and treatment of Jews by societies and states. As Jews in Western and Central Europe "left the Ghetto" around 1800 and became citizens of states, they redefined their relationship to Jewish communities in strikingly different ways. Some Jewish women and men emerged as agents of change, others resisted change. We will explore Jewish "responses to modernity," ranging from assimilation, Zionism, and socialism to migration. While many Jews in Western Europe and the United States prospered, the lives of Jews (and their neighbors) in Eastern Europe and the Ottoman Empire were shaped by social and economic crisis (albeit not constantly and not everywhere). For the twentieth century the course will concentrate on three major events that had a dramatic impact on Jews, especially in Europe: the First World War and the collapse of the large multiethnic Empires in Eastern Europe, the Holocaust and the founding of the first modern Jewish state, Israel.