Vilna: A Jewish Cultural Metropolis

Catalog description

East European Jews referred to Vilna as the Jerusalem of Lithuania. This course will explore the history of Vilna Jewry from the middle of the eighteenth century through the Holocaust. The following will serve as the course's principle themes; traditional rabbinic culture, the battle between Hasidim and Mitnagdim, the Mussar Movement, the Haskalah, Zionism, Jewish socialism, Orthodoxy, the rise of modern Yiddish culture, and cultural life in the Vilna Ghetto during the Holocaust.