Kiddush Hashem in Jewish History and Thought

Catalog description

This course examines the evolution of the concept of Jewish Martyrdom, from its Biblical roots until the Holocaust. Based primarily upon close reading of primary sources, students will follow the manner in which changing circumstances and challenges affected and fashioned the legal and extra-legal modes of martyric conduct. These will be examined in light of discrete analyses of specific historical events: The Babylonian Exile (586-536 BCE), The Antiochine Persecutions (167 BCE), The Great Revolt Against Rome (66-73 CE), The Hadrianic Persecutions (130-135 CE), The First Crusade (1096 CE), The Spanish Persecutions (1391 CE), The Chmielnicki Revolt (1648-149 CE), the Holocaust (1933-1945 CE).