Jewish History III: 1789-1948 (203-3-1)

Instructors

Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern
847/467-3399
Harris Hall - Room 317
YPS is the Crown Family Professor in Jewish Studies at History Department. He edited eight and authored seven books, four of them award-winning. He taught as a visiting professor at various universities in Israel, Russia, Poland, Germany, Ukraine, and USA. Currently he is finishing a book-length project "Fantasis: A History of Modern Laughter."

Meeting Info

Harris Hall L28: Mon, Wed 9:30AM - 10:50AM

Overview of class

Modernity has dramatically changed the profile of Western Civilization and had a major impact on the European Jews. The course will take students from French Revolution that started integrating the Jews into the fabric of European society to the establishment of the State of Israel. It will highlight the plurality of models of Jewish integration and acculturation, the formation of new Jewish identities, the split of the traditional community under the impact of Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment), the rise of Liberal and Orthodox trends within Judaism, and the spread of Jewish political movements such as socialism and nationalism. Based on a plethora of English-language documents, the course will introduce students to those problems of interaction between the general society and the Jewish minority that pointed toward the twentieth century transformation of modernity. In sum, the course will explore the fascinating response of Jews to modernity on political, societal, theological, and cultural levels.

Learning Objectives

• Acquire knowledge on the transformation of Jews from a marginalized and segregated diasporic ethno-religious group into an emancipated modern political nation, the process manifested in the political, philosophical, intellectual, economic, cultural and social contexts of major European and non-European empires (British, German, Russian, Austrian, Ottoman), colonial countries (Palestine, Northern Africa), and nation-states (Czechoslovakia, Poland, Lithuania, Turkey, Argentina) and considering the Jewish people top-down (Germany) and bottom-up (Italy, England, USA) forms of integration and acculturation in their specific socio-political contexts (e.g., late 18th century France, united post-1870s Germany, post-colonial Poland, socialist USSR) and organized thematically around key aspects of modernity (urbanization, emancipation, upward mobility, antisemitism, liberal arts, mass violence) through the in-depth investigation of verbal, visual, and auditory primary sources and by engaging the most updated secondary sources (historiography). • Develop critical skills including the framing of questions, delving into documentary analysis, and mastering contextualization; become acquainted with debates about models of Jewish integration and emancipation, balance the issues of grassroots and group agency and the role of political institutions of the state, evaluating historical evidence regarding the reasons for mass emigration to South Africa, Argentina, and the US, problematizing the established chronology of the Holocaust, and creating historical hypothesis to explain, e.g., the anti-imperial struggle of the Jews in Palestine for the establishment of the post-colonial state. • Appreciate the impact of political formulas (such as Abbe Gregoire statements on the Jews in National Assembly) on the forms and methods of Jewish social integration; acquire historical perspective on the rise of the scholarly study of Jews, Judaism, and Jewish civilization in the 19th century Germany and France; consider agency and subjectivity of Jews as a marginal group and marginal groups among the Jews (radical socialist youth, proletarian Zionists, financial tycoons, self-hating Jews, feminist Marxists, avant-gardist artists) and discuss ways to understand their choices and itineraries through a historical reconstruction; introduce the ways to modify grand historical narratives (e.g., "Jews left East Europe because of pogroms;" "Holocaust was planned in 1933," "all Bolsheviks were Jews") by using specific comparative contexts (e.g., ethnic minorities in the leftist movements) and analyzing newly discovered documents as one of the effective tools to reconstruct empiric reality and critically assess the ups and downs of modern historiography. • Problematize various forms of historical chronology (such as "the beginning of emancipation" or "the end of modernity"), explain regional and social differences in the processes of modernization, acculturation, and integration, and discuss various forms of counter-modernity (Jewish and non-Jewish) that complicate the conceptualization of "modern Jewish history." • Help students effectively to express the results of their research in written (response papers and a final paper), oral (class discussion, discussion groups) and visual forms (power-points, short in-class intervention on the basis of visual sources such as political posters and artwork), engage in a well-balanced debate with creators of newest historical narratives, and analyze hidden and explicit agendas, rhetorical tools, and audience of the historical documents of the past.

Teaching Method

Lecture
Class participation
Writing assignments
Discussion

Evaluation Method

Very short 1-2 question-based in-class quizzes, final take-home paper

Class Attributes

Historical Studies Foundational Discipline
Global Perspectives on Power, Justice, and Equity
SoC Individual and Social Behavior Distro