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University of California - DavisIn a sequence of an introductory survey leading to an exploration of the philosophical, political and cultural aspects of secular Judaism, three primary courses and a peripheral course will be offered. Introduction to Religious and Secular Jewish Cultures will distinguish between secular and religious cultures. Secular Jewish Thinkers will examine the history of Jewish secular thought and The Making of Secular Jewish Culture will analyze how secular Jewish thought has been mobilized by ideological movements, such as Yiddishism, territorialism, Zionism and Hebraism. Among the peripheral courses, Jewish Identity and Visual Culture will demonstrate the ways Jews in different ages have challenged the presumed religious prohibition on "graven images" and Modern Yiddish Literature will survey modern Yiddish literature. Other peripheral courses will be Modern Hebrew Literature and Hollywood Jews: Cinema and the American Jewish Experience.
Introduction to Religious and Secular Jewish Cultures
There is no one Jewish culture. As Jews have lived all over the world in many and varied environments their cultures have differed. Jewish cultures have developed both by adapting to and resisting the cultures around them. In these many Jewish cultures, religious teaching was just one important component. This course will examine the wide variety of Jewish cultures in the modern world, and then survey the history of Jewish cultures from Late Antiquity to the modern period.
Required readings:
Raymond Scheindlin, A Short History of the Jewish People
David Biale (ed.), "Cultures of the Jews"
Course reader
Course Calendar
Part 1: Jewish Cultures of the Modern Period
Introduction: What is Jewish culture?
Reading: David Biale, “Preface,” Cultures of the Jews
The Culture of Jewish scholarship
Reading: Rabbi Yohanan and Reish Lakish (reader)
Modern Varieties of Judaism
Reading: Sylvia Barak Fishman, “Coalescing American and Jewish Values,” in Jewish Life and American Culture, State University of New York Press, Albany, 2000. Reprinted in reader.
Traditional and Creative Liturgy
Reading: Orthodox and Reconstructionist blessings, reader
Foundations of Modern Judaism
Reading: Richard I. Cohen, “Urban Visibility and Biblical Visions: Jewish Cultures in Western and Central Europe in the Modern Age,” Cultures of the Jews, 977-1001.
American Jewish Culture
Reading: Stephen Whitfield, “Declarations of Independence: American Jewish Culture in the Twentieth Century,” Cultures of the Jews, 1099-1142.
Sacred and Secular in American Jewish Culture
Reading: Lenny Bruce, “God Talk,” Leonard Cohen, “Who by Fire” (reader)
Contemporary Sephardic Culture
Reading: “Multicultural Visions: The Cultural Tapestry of the Jews of North Africa,” Cultures of the Jews, 887-932.
Israel and Hebrew Culture
Reading: Ariel Hirschfeld, “Locus and Language: Hebrew Culture in Israel, 1890-1990,” Cultures of the Jews, 1011-1062.
Sacred and Secular in Israel
Reading: Yehuda Amichai, “Tourists,” (reader)
Folk Cultures of Israel
Reading: Eli Yassif, “The “Other” Israel: Folk Cultures in the Modern State of Israel,” Cultures of the Jews, 1063-1098.
African Jewish Cultures
Reading: Hagar Salamon, “Religious Interplay on an African Stage: Ethiopian Jews in Christian Ethiopia,” Cultures of the Jews, 977-1010.
Part 2: The Variety of Jewish Cultures in History
Late Antiquity
The Beginnings of Post-Biblical Jewishness
Reading: Eric M. Meyers, “Jewish Culture in Greco-Roman Palestine,” Cultures of the Jews, 135-180.
Rabbinic Cultures of Learning and Authority
Reading: “Not in Heaven” (reader)
Byzantine Jewish Cultures
Reading: Oded Irshai, “Confronting a Christian Empire: Jewish Culture in the World of Byzantium,” Cultures of the Jews, 181-222.
Babylonian Rabbinic Cultures
Reading: Isaiah Gafni, “Babylonian Rabbinic Culture,” Cultures of the Jews, 223-266.
Middle Ages
Jewish Cultures in Medieval Christendom
Reading: Ivan Marcus, “A Jewish-Christian Symbiosis: The Culture of Early Ashkenaz,” Cultures of the Jews, 449-518.
Jewish Biblical Exegesis and the Christian World
Reading: Rashi on Genesis 22 (reader)
Jewish Cultures in Formative Islam
Reading: Reuven Firestone, “Jewish Culture in the Formative Period of Islam,” Cultures of the Jews, 267-304.
Spanish Jewry Between Christianity and Islam
Reading: Benjamin R. Gampel, “A Letter to a Wayward Teacher: The Transformations of Sephardic Culture in Christian Iberia,” Cultures of the Jews, 389-448.
Jewish Literature in Two Worlds
Reading: Poems by Ibn Ezra (reader)
Transitions to Modernity
Jewish Folklore
Reading: Shalom Sabar, “Childbirth and Magic: Jewish Folklore and Material Culture,” Cultures of the Jews, 671-725.
Eastern Europe
Reading: David Biale, “A Journey Between Worlds: East European Jewish Culture from the Partitions of Poland to the Holocaust,” Cultures of the Jews, 799-862.
Haskalah
Reading: Baruch Spinoza on the Interpretation of Scripture (reader)
Sephardic Transitions
Reading: Aron Rodrigue, “The Ottoman Diaspora: The Rise and Fall of Ladino Literary Culture,” Cultures of the Jews, 863-886.
The Communities of the East
Reading: Yosef Tobi, ”Challenges to Tradition: Jewish Cultures in Yemen, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Bukhara,” Cultures of the Jews, 933-976.
Secular Jewish Thinkers
Is it possible to be Jewish without believing in Judaism? Since the dawn of the modern age, secular Jewish thinkers have sought to construct identities beyond Judaism, that is, beyond the bounds of religion. This course will trace the history of secular Jewish thought from the seventeenth-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza to the twentieth century. Some of the thinkers who will be considered, such as Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud, rejected religion altogether, while others, including Spinoza, Franz Kafka, and Gershom Scholem, redefined religion and theology in new, often radically subversive ways. The course will examine secular redefinitions of Judaism, such as those of certain Zionist thinkers and writers like Ahad Ha’am, Micha Yosef Berdichevsky, and Hayim Nahman Bialik. Finally, the course will look at American Jewish and feminist thinkers who have challenged common conceptions of Judaism. This is a course not only for those interested in modern Jewish thought, but in modernity itself.
Assigned books
Peter Gay, A Godless Jew: Atheism and the Making of Psychoanalysis. Yale University Press 0-300-04608-1
Benedict Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise. Hackett. 0-87220-607-6
Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion. Norton. 0-393-00831-2
Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism. Knopf. 0-394-70014-7
Course Reader
Course Calendar
1. Introduction: Is Secularism a part of Judaism?
Book of Numbers 16
Babylonian Talmud, Baba Metzia 59b
2. Medieval Precursors: Part I
Moses Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed, I:55, I:58
David Biale, “Philosophy and Exegesis in the Writings of Abraham Ibn Ezra,” Comitatus
3. Medieval Precursors: Part II
Moses Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed, III:26 and III:32
4. Baruch/Benedict Spinoza: Part I
Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, intro, 1-47
The Writ of Excommunication Against Baruch Spinoza
Isaac Deutscher, “The Non-Jewish Jew,” in Judaism in a Secular Age, 205-212
5. Spinoza: Part II
Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, 48-115
Yermiyahu Yovel, Spinoza and Other Heretics, vol. 1, 3-39
6. Spinoza: Part III
Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, 165-230
Yermiyahu Yovel, Spinoza and Other Heretics, vol. 1, 172-209
7. Psychoanalysis as Jewish Heresy: Part I
Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion
Peter Gay, A Godless Jew, 1-68
8. Psychoanalysis: Part II
Sigmund Freud,Moses and Monotheism, Parts I and II
Gay, A Godless Jew, 69-114
9. Psychoanalysis: Part III
Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism, Part III
Gay, A Godless Jew, 115-156
10. Solomon Maimon, Karl Marx and Otto Weininger: Heretics or Self-Hating Jews?
Solomon Maimon, “My Emergence from Talmudic Darkness,” in The Jew in the Modern World, 214-218
Karl Marx, “On the Jewish Question,” in Karl Marx: Early Writings, 3-40
Otto Weininger, “The Jew Must Free Himself from Jewishness,” in The Jew in the Modern World, 233-236
11. Moses Hess: Between Religion, Race and Nation
Moses Hess, The Holy History of Mankind, 92-93
Moses Hess, Rome and Jerusalem, 58-61, 96-105, 211-216
Shlomo Avineri, "Moses Hess: Socialism and Nationalism as a Critique of Bourgeois Society," in The Making of Modern Zionism, 36-46
12. Secular Nationalism: Part 1
Simon Dubnow, Nationalism and History in Judaism in a Secular Age 79-89
Ahad Ha-am, "The People of the Book," and "the Supremacy of Reason," in Judaism in a Secular Age, 113-116
Ahad Ha-am, "Priest and Prophet," and "Flesh and Spirit," in Selected Essays, 125-158
Haim Zhitlovsky, "Death and Rebirth of Gods and Religion" and "The National Poetic Rebirth of the Jewish People" in Judaism in a Secular Age, 90-95
Shlomo Avineri, "Ahad Ha-am," in The Making of Modern Zionism, 112-124
13. Secular Nationalism: Part II
Max Nordau, "The Conventional Lies of Our Civilization," in Judaism in a Secular Age, 100-104
Shlomo Avineri, "Nordau," in The Making of Modern Zionism, 101-111
Micha Yosef Berdichevsky, "Wrecking and Building," "Two Directions," "The Question of Culture," and "On Sanctity," in The Zionist Idea, 290-302
Ahad Ha-am, "Transvaluation of Values," in Selected Essays, 217-241
Joseph Hayyim Brenner, "And This is Our Nationalism!" in Judaism in a Secular Age, 127-133
Joseph Hayyim Brenner, "Self-Criticism," in The Zionist Idea, 305-312
Jacob Klatzkin, "Boundaries," in The Zionist Idea, 314-327
14. Language and Secularism
Saul Tchernikhovsky, "Facing the Statue of Apollo"
Hayyim Nahman Bialik, "Revealment and Concealment in Language"
15. Weimar Heretics
Gershom Scholem, "Revelation and Tradition as Religious Categories in Judaism" in Messianic Idea, 282-303
Gershom Scholem, "Letter to Zalman Schocken" in David Biale, Gershom Scholem: Kabbalah and Counter-History
Franz Kafka, "Before the Law"
Franz Kafka, "My Father's Bourgeois Judaism"
Nahum N. Glatzer, "Franz Kafka and the Tree of Knowledge"
16. The Jewess as Pariah
Hannah Arendt, “The Jew as Pariah,” in The Jew as Pariah, 67-90
Eichmann in Jerusalem: Exchange of letters with Gershom Scholem, in ,i>The Jew as Pariah, 240-251
17. American Heretics
Mordecai Kaplan, Judaism as a Civilization, 303-331
Horace Kallen, “Is There a Jewish View of Life” and "Judaism at Bay" in Judaism in a Secular Age, 165-172
Richard Rubinstein, After Auschwitz, 83-90, 131-142, 227-241
18. Feminist Heretics
Cynthia Ozick, “"Notes Towards Asking the Right Question" in Susannah Heschel, On Being a Jewish Feminist, 120-151
Rachel Adler, "In Your Blood Live: Re-Visions of a Theology of Purity," in Tikkun 8:1: 38-41
Bibliography
Avineri, Shlomo, The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx
Avineri, Shlomo, The Making of Modern Zionism
Biale, David, Gershom Scholem: Kabbalah and Counter-History
Carlebach, Julius, Karl Marx and the Radical Critique of Judaism
Cuddihy, John Murray, The Ordeal of Civility : Freud, Marx, Lévi-Strauss, and the Jewish Struggle with Modernity
Eisen, Arnold, Chosenness in America
Fischman, Dennis K., Political Discourse in Exile : Karl Marx and the Jewish Question
Gilman, Sander, Jewish Self-Hatred : Anti-Semitism and the Hidden Language of the Jews
Hertzberg, Arthur, The Zionist Idea
Koltun-Fromm, Kenneth, Moses Hess and Modern Jewish Identity
Levene, Nancy, Spinoza's Revelation: Religion, Democracy, and Reason
Nadler, Steven, Spinoza: A Life
Nadler, Steven, Spinoza’s Heresy
Robert, Marthe, From Oedipus to Moses
Seeskin, Kenneth, Jewish Philosophy in a Secular Age
Seeskin, Kenneth, Searching for a Distant God: The Legacy of Maimonides
Seigel, Jerrold, Marx's Fate : The Shape of a Life
Yerushalmi, Yosef Hayim, Freud's Moses : Judaism Terminable and Interminable
Zipperstein, Steven, Elusive Prophet: A Biography of Ahad Ha-am
The Making of Secular Jewish Culture
The transition from tradition to modernity in modern Jewish life has manifested itself in a number of different ways, often including serious challenges to and changes in traditional forms of Jewish practice, belief and identity. Focusing on four geographical regions (Central Europe, Eastern Europe, the United States, and Israel), this class will explore a variety of Jewish movements and ideologies that have emerged over the past two centuries and been largely responsible for creating modern, secular expressions of Jewish culture, politics, and identity. Topics will include: the origins of modernization and secularization in the European Jewish world, varieties of Jewish socialism and nationalism in Eastern Europe, Jewish literature in the Soviet Union, Jews and radical politics in the U.S., transformations of tradition in contemporary Israeli society.
Required Reading
The Jew in the Modern World, ed. Paul Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz
Zvi Gitelman, A Century of Ambivalence
Course Outline
1. Introduction
Isaac Deutscher, from “The Non-Jewish Jew”
2. Precursors: Baruch Spinoza
“The Writ of Excommunication against Baruch Spinoza (57)
Baruch Spinoza “Letter to Albert Burgh” (58-60)
excerpts from Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (CR 1-4)
3. Moses Mendelssohn and the Berlin Haskalah
Van Dohm, “Concerning the Amelioration of the Civil Status of the Jews” (28-36)
Mendelssohn, “The Right to be Different” (68-69) “On the Curtailment of Jewish Juridical Autonomy” (87-89) “Judaism is the Cornerstone of Christianity (96-7) “Judaism as Revealed Legislation” (97-99)
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, “A Parable of Tolerance” (64-67)
Naphtali Herz Wessely, “Words of Peace and Truth” (70-74)
4. The Science of Judaism
Joel Abraham List, “A Society for the Preservation of the Jewish People” (211-213)
The Society for the Culture and Science of the Jews, “Statutes” (213-214)
Eduard Gans, “A Society to Further Jewish Integration” (215-218)
Immanuel Wolf, “On the Concept of a Science of Judaism” (219-221)
Leopold Zunz, “On Rabbinic Literature” (221-230)
Moritz Steinschneider, “The Future of Jewish Studies” (230-233)
5. Intellectual Revolution: The Haskalah in Eastern Europe
S.J. Fuenn, “The Need for Enlightenment” (381-383)
J. L. Gordon, “Awake, My People!” (384)
Maskilim to Governors of the Pale, “A Jewish Program for Russification” (385)
Society for the Promotion of Culture Among Jews, “Program” (401-402)
Isaac Dov Levinsohn, “Yiddish is a Corrupt Jargon” (402-403)
Peretz Smolenskin, “Hebrew - Our National Fortress” (403)
Mendele Moykher Sforim, “My Soul Desired Yiddish” (404)
Zvi Gitelman, A Century of Ambivalence Chapter 1
6. Secular Varieties of Jewish Nationalism: Zionism
Theodor Herzl “A Solution to the Jewish Question” (533-538)
Ber Borochov, “The National Question and Class Struggle” (CR 29-33); Program for Proletarian Zionism (552)
Jacob Klatzkin, “Boundaries” (CR 22-28)
Micah Berdichevski, selections (CR 15-21)
Ahad Ha’am, “The Jewish State and the Jewish Problem,” “The Negation of the Diaspora” (CR 5-14)
David Weinberg, Between Tradition and Modernity “Ahad Ha-am: Culture and Modern Jewish Identity”
7. The Emergence of Modern Hebrew Literature
Hameassef “The Stream of Besor,” “We Shall Not Be Deterred” (80-85)
J.L Gordon, “For Whom do I Toil?” (386)
Eliezer Ben-Yehudah, “Letter of Ben-Yehudah” (CR 34-37)
S.Y. Agnon, “Hill of Sand” (CR 45-63)
Robert Alter, Modern Hebrew Literature: “Introduction” (CR 38-44)
8. Diaspora and Linguistic Nationalism
Chaim Zhitlowsky, “The Jewish Factor in My Socialism” (CR 64-70)
Simon Dubnow, “Autonomism” (417-419)
The Bund, “Decisions on the Nationality Question” (419-423)
Czernowitz Conference of the Yiddish Language (424-425)
David Weinberg, Between Tradition and Modernity “Haim Zhitlowski: Language, Political Radicalism, and Modern Jewish Identity” 83-144
9. I.L Peretz and The Rise of Modern Yiddish Culture
I.L. Peretz: “Bontche Shvayg,” “The Shabbes Goy,” “Bryna’s Mendl” (CR 71-83)
10. Jewish Life in the Soviet Union
V. I. Lenin, “Critical Remarks on the National Question” (428-430)
Joseph Stalin, “The Jews Are Not a Nation” (430-432)
Emancipation Decree, April 1917 (432-433)
Yevsektsiya, “Liquidation of Bourgeois Jewish Institutions” (433-436)
Birobidzhan: Jewish Autonomous Region (446-448)
Zvi Gitelman, A Century of Ambivalence Chapter 2
11. Yiddish and the Creation of Soviet Jewish Culture
Poems by Izi Kharik, Leyb Kvitko, Itsik Fefer, Dovid Hofshteyn (CR 84-105)
Zvi Gitelman, A Century of Ambivalence Chapter 3
12. The Jewish Labor Movement in the US
Abraham Cahan, “The Russian Jew in America” (474-476)
Julia Richman, “Women Wage-Workers” (478-480)
Charles Bernheimer, “Sweatshops in Philadelphia” (481-482)
Forverts, “The ILGW and the American Labor Movement” (485)
Poems by Morris Rosenfeld, David Edelshtot
13. Secular Yiddish Culture in the US
Chaim Zhitlowksy, “Our Future in America” (491-492); “What is Jewish Secular Culture?”
“The Beginnings of Secular Jewish Schools” (502-504)
Irena Klepfisz “Secular Jewish Identity: Yidishkayt in America”;
selected poems
Excerpts from the Workmen’s Circle Cultural Seder Hagaddah
14. Yidishkayt and the Klezmer Revival
Listening: The Klezmatics
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett “Sounds of Sensibility”
Alicia Svigals “Why We Do This Anyway: Klezmer as Jewish Youth Subculture”
15. Israel and the Invention of the New Jew
Hashomer Hazair “Our World-View” (577-579)
Ahdut Haavodah “Proposal to the General Assembly of the Workers of Eretz Israel” (585-589)
A. Shlonsky, “Toil,” “Tiller of the Ground,” “Work” (73-75)
Rachel, “Perhaps” (76)
Yael Zerubavel, from Recovered Roots (CR 77-109)
Gershon Shaked, "Shall We Find Sufficient Strength? On Behalf of israeli Secularism"
16. New Locations of Jewish Identity: The Kibbutz
David Frankel “Kibbutz Haksharah: A Memoir” (598-599)
Haim Hazaz “The Sermon” (619-622)
Moshe Shamir “Till Daylight” (CR 110-121)
Amos Oz “Before His Time” (CR 122-131)
Selections Spiro, Kibbutz: Venture in Utopia (CR 132-157)
17. Wrestling With Tradition
Selected poems, Yehuda Amichai (CR 158-175)
18. “Media Judaism” and the new cultural Jew in America
Norman L. Friedman. “Jewish Popular Culture in Contemporary America” (CR 176-190)
Jeffrey Shandler “Is There a Jewish Way to Watch Television?” (CR 191-194)
S. Glenn, “In the Blood? Consent, Descent, and the Ironies of Jewish Identity” (CR 195-208)
19. Media Judaism continued: The Seinfeld Effect (CR 209-234)
Jewish Identity and Visual Culture
What is "Jewish art?" How does "Jewish art" grapple with the Second Commandment? How do Jewish artists portray their Jewish identity? How do depictions of Jews by Jews differ from those created by non-Jews? This class will explore the significance of the visual arts for the study of Jewish history and identity. Among the topics considered are the implications of the connection between visual cultural and religious observance, the creation of the anti-Semitic stereotype, the relationship between art and Jewish involvement in political movements, the connection between Jewishness and abstraction, and the challenges faced by artists grappling with the Holocaust.
Syllabus:
1. Introduction. The Second Commandment and Jewish Aniconism
2. Methodological Questions
Joseph Gutmann, "Is there a Jewish Art?" in The Visual Dimension: Aspects of Jewish Art
Jules David Prown, "Mind in Matter: An Introduction to Material Culture Theory and Method"
3. Jews and Visual Culture in the Ancient World
Steven Fine, Art and Judaism in the Greco-Roman World
4. Art and the Ritual Object: The Haggadah and the Ketubah
Marc Epstein, Dreams of Subversion in Medieval Jewish Art and Literature
Shalom Sabar, "Introduction" Ketubbah: Jewish marriage contracts of the Hebrew Union College Skirball Museum and Klau Library
5. Imagining Jews
Richard Cohen, "The Visual Image of the Jew and Judaism: From Symbolism to Realism" from Jewish Icons: Art and Society in Modern Europe
Sander Gilman, "The Jewish Foot" and "The Jewish Nose" from The Jew's Body
6. Jewish Artists in Western and Central Europe
Paula Hyman, "Acculturation of the Jews in 19th Century Europe," Larry Silver, "Between Tradition and Acculturation: Jewish Painters in 19th Century Europe," from The Emergence of Jewish Artists in Nineteenth Century Europe
Ismar Schorsch, "Art as Social History: Moritz Oppenheim and the German Jewish Vision of Emancipation" in Danzig, Between East and West: Aspects of Modern Jewish History ed. Isadore Twersky
7. Art and Politics
Art and Politics: The Russian Revolution Avram Kampf, "The Quest for a Jewish Style in the Era of the Russian Revolution," in The Jewish Experience in the Art of the Twentieth Century, S. Hadley
Marc Chagall, selections from Marc Chagall: On Art and Culture, Ed. Benjamin Harshav
Art and Politics: Zionism; Michael Berkowitz, "Art in Zionist Popular Culture," from Zionist Culture and West European Jewry Before the First World War
Art and Politics: America. Matthew Baigell, "From Hester Street to 57th St.: Jewish American Artists in New York" in Painting a Place in America: Jewish Artists in New York 1900-1945, ed Chevlowe and Kleeblatt
Diana Linden, "Ben Shahn's New Deal Murals: Jewish Identity in the American Scene," in Common Man, Mythic Vision: Paintings of Ben Shahn
Art and Politics: Feminism. Judy Chicago, "The Dinner Party"
Lisa Bloom, "Etthnic Notions and Feminist Strategies in the 1970s: Some Work by Judy Chicago and Eleanor Antin," in Jewish Identity in Modern Art History, Ed. Catherine M.Soussloff
8. Is Abstraction Jewish?: Critics and Artists
Clement Greenberg, selected essays
Margaret Olin "Clement Hardesh and Comany: Formal Criticism and Jewish Identity" in Too Jewish: Challenging Traditional Identities
Matthew Baigell "Barnett Newman's Stripe Paintings and Kabbalah: A Jewish Take" American Art
9. The Challenges of Holocaust Representation
James Young, "Introduction" and "Sites Unseen: Shimon Attie's Acts of Remembrance" from At Memory's Edge
James Young, "Memory and Counter-Memory: Towards a Social Aesthetic of Holocaust Memorials" in After Auschwitz: Responses to the Holocaust in Contemporary Art
10. Photography and Memory: Imagining Jewish spaces
Susan Sontag, from On Photography, Jeffrey Shandler, "The Time of Vishniac: photographs of pre-war East European Jewry in post-war contexts."
Deborah Dash Moore, "Photographing the Lower East Side" in Remembering the Lower East Side; American Jewish Reflections Ed. Hasia Diner, Jeffrey Shandler, and Beth S. Wenger.
11. Hipsters, Heebs, and Hasidim: Encounters with New Media
The Modiya Project: www.nyu.edu/its/pubs/connect/spring05/pdfs/halpern_modiya.pdf
Jeffrey Shandler, "The Virtual Rebbe" in Entertaining America: Jews, Movies and Broadcasting
Modern Yiddish Literature
This course will survey modern Yiddish literature through readings of Yiddish prose and poetry. Reading classic works of Yiddish literature as well as avant-garde poetry from writers in Eastern Europe and America, we will explore how Yiddish writers responded to and participated in the transformation of traditional Jewish society. Topics will include: the role of storytelling within Yiddish culture, the shtetl as a key site of Jewish memory, the development of secular Yiddish culture in the Soviet Union, the American urban landscape in Yiddish poetry, literary responses to the Holocaust.
Required Reading
Sholem Aleichem, Tevye the Dairyman and The Railroad Stories
I.L. Peretz, The I.L. Peretz Reader
I.B. Singer, Gimpel the Fool and Other Stories
Syllabus
First Day of Instruction: Introduction to Course Themes
The Emergence of Modern Yiddish Literature
Mendele Mokher Sforim, “The Town of the Little Men”
Dan Miron, “The Discovery of Mendele Moykher-Sforim and the Beginnings of Modern Yiddish Literature”
Mendele Mokher Sforim, The Brief Travels of Benjamin III
Sholem Aleichem, Tevye the Dairyman
Sholem Aleichem, continued.
I.L. Peretz, “Monish,” “Bryna’s Mendl,” “The Shabbes Goy,” “Bontshe Shvayg,” “The Dead Town”
I.L. Peretz, continued. “If Not Higher,” “Between Two Mountains,” “The Magician,” Yom Kippur in Hell.
Between Two Worlds
S. Ansky “The Dybbuk”
Transformations of Tradition
Itsik Manger, selections from Itzik’s Midrash and Songs of the Megillah
Challenging Yiddish Culture: The Russian Revolution
Moyshe Kulbak “Monday” (
Soviet Yiddish Culture: Poems
Dovid Hofshteyn, Leyb Kvitko, Peretz Markish, Izi Kharik, Itsik Fefer
David Shneer “Engineers of the Soul: Soviet Yiddish Writers Envisioning the Jewish Past, Present, and Future.”
Yiddish Writing and American Labor
Asch “A Quiet Garden Spot”; The Sweatshop Poets: Morris Rosenfeld and David Edelshtadt
Modern Yiddish Poetry in America, I
Mani Leyb, Moyshe-Leyb Halpern, Zishe Landau
Impressionism in Yiddish Literature
Lamed Shapiro. “Smoke,” “The Rebbe and the Rebbetsin” “Eating Days”
Modern Yiddish Poetry in America, II
A Leyeles, Jacob Glatshteyn, H. Leivik
Gender and Yiddish poetry
Poetry by Anna Margolin, Celia Dropkin, Kadya Molodowsky, Malka Heifetz-Tussman
Irena Klepfisz “Queens of Contradiction: A Feminist Introduction to Yiddish Women Writers”
A Star Emerges
Bashevis Singer, Gimpel the Fool
Bashevis Singer, Gimpel the Fool continued
Modern Hebrew Literature
This survey of modern Hebrew literature and its major developments in the past 100 years includes selections of fiction and poetry by a range of authors from Europe and Israel. We will explore Hebrew literature from its early formation as a modernist, European, ideological discourse during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, to its transformation within the newly founded State of Israel. Through close textual analysis, we will consider such issues as attitudes toward the diaspora past and present, ideas of "home" and "homeland", responses to the Holocaust, and images of “the Other.”
Required Reading:
Robert Alter, ed. Modern Hebrew Literature
A. B. Yehoshua, Mr. Mani
Syllabus:
1. Introduction/Yehuda Amichai, "National Thoughts"
2. The Contexts of Modern Hebrew Literature
Required Reading: ”; J.L. Gordon, “For Whom Do I Toil?” [CR 1] Mendele Mokher Seforim, “Shem and Japheth in the Train” [Modern Hebrew Literature, pp. 15-38]
3. Writers of the Hebrew Renaissance
Required Reading: H.N. Bialik, “I Didn’t Win Light in a Windfall,” “On the Slaughter,” “Take Me Under Your Wing”; M.Y. Berdichevsky, “Without Hope.” [CR 2-10]
4. Transitions
Required Reading: Y.H. Brenner, “The Way Out,” [in Modern Hebrew Literature, pp. 141-161] and “Travel Notes;” Dvorah Baron, “Sunbeams” and “Bill of Divorcement” [CR 11-27]
5. Continuity and Tradition: S.Y. Agnon
Required Reading: S.Y. Agnon, “Agunot,” “Forevermore,” “At the Outset of Day,” [in Modern Hebrew Literature, pp. 179-249]; “Hill of Sand” [CR 28-46]
6. Pioneers, Aliyah, and the Kibbutz
Required Reading: Hayim Hazzaz, “The Sermon” [in Modern Hebrew Literature, pp. 267-287]; Avraham Shlonsky, “Toil”; Rachel, “To My Country,” “Was It Only a Dream”; Leah Goldberg “Tel Aviv, 1935”; Aharon Megged, “Tears”; Savyon Liebrecht, “Apples from the Desert” [CR 47-59]
7. War and Independence
Required Reading: Natan Alterman, “The Silver Platter”; S. Yizhar, “The Prisoner” [in Modern Hebrew Literature, pp. 191-310]; Haim Heffer, “The Paratroopers are Weeping”; Yehuda Amichai, “The Radius of the Bomb; When I was Young the Country was Young Too”; “Jerusalem 1967”. Dalia Ravikovitch, “Hovering at a Low Altitude”; Etgar Keret, “Cocked and Locked”
8. Encountering the Arab
Required Reading: A.B. Yehoshua “Facing the Forests” [in Modern Hebrew Literature, pp. 353-392]; Amos Oz, “Nomad and Viper” [CR 76-85]
9. Responses to the Holocaust
Required Reading: Aharon Appelfeld, “Badenheim, 1939;” Yehuda Amichai, “The Times My Father Died” [in Modern Hebrew Literature, pp. 313-325]; Dan Pagis, “Sealed Car,” “Europe, Late”; Etgar Keret, “Shoes” [CR 86-107]
10. Diverse Communities
Film: Ephraim Kishon: Sallah
Required Reading: Ella Shohat, “Zionism from the Perspective of its Jewish Victims” [CR 108-142]
11. (New) Writing by Israeli Women
Required Reading: Orly Castel Bloom, “The Woman Who Went Looking for a Walkie-Talkie,” “The Woman Whose Hand Got Stuck in a Mailbox, “A Thousand Shekels a Story”;” Yona Voloch, “Hebrew,” Rahel Chalfi “ ‘I Went to Work as an Ostrich’ Blues” Agi Mishol, “Estate,” “In the Supermarket” Maya Bejerano “Poetry,” “War Situations;” Bracha Serri “Illiterate.” [CR 143-157]
12. Conversations
Required Reading: A.B. Yehoshua Mr. Mani
Hollywood Jews: Cinema and the American Jewish Experience
This course will examine representations of Jews in American popular film from the birth of the motion picture through the present day. It will also examine the role Jews themselves played in the entertainment industry and how film provided them with an arena in which they could address important questions of American Jewish identity. Specific topics will include, the significance of the Hollywood "moguls," Jews and blackface minstrelsy, representations of gender and relationships between Jewish men and women, antisemitism on the silver-screen, the relation between ethnic stereotyping and Jewish humor, and the presentation of the Holocaust in film.
Texts:
Neal Gabler, An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood
Arthur Hertzberg, The Jews in America: Four Centuries of an Uneasy Encounter
Syllabus:
1. Introduction to Themes
2. Jews and the Movies: Origins
Independent Viewing: “Hollywoodism” (1998) 98 min
Required Reading: Neal Gabler, An Empire of Their Own, 11-119
Hertzberg 1-4, 140-183
3. Blackface and Jewish Identity
In-ClassViewing: “The Jazz Singer” (1927) 88min
Required Reading: Michael Rogin, "Blackface, White Noise: the Jewish Jazz Singer finds His Voice” (Course Reader 1-31)
Hasia Diner, "Trading Faces" (CR 32-36)
Hertzberg, 184-204
4. Yiddish Film in America
In-Class Viewing “Uncle Moses” (1930) 88min
Required Reading: Joseph Cohen, "Yiddish Film and the American Immigrant Experience" (CR 37-50)
Eric A. Goldman, "The Jazz Singer and its Reaction in the Yiddish Cinema" (CR 51-56)
Hannah Berliner Fischthal, "Uncle Moses," (CR 57-64)
5. Hollywood Confronts the “Jewish Problem”
Independent Viewing: “Gentleman’s Agreement” (1947) 118min
Required Reading: Henry Popkin, "The Vanishing Jew of Our Popular Culture" (CR 65-74)
Sam Levenson, "The Dialect Comedian Should Vanish" (CR 75-77)
Hertzberg, 225-241, 289-303
6. Screening the Holocaust
Independent Viewing: “The Pawnbroker” (1965) 116min
Required Reading: “The Vanishing Act: A Typology of the Jew in Contemporary American Film” (CR 78-87)
James Baldwin, “Negroes Are Anti-Semitic Because They’re Anti-White” (CR 88-93)
Norman Podhoretz, “My Negro Problem - and Ours” (CR 94-101)
Cheryl Greenberg, “Pluralism and Its Discontents: The Case of Blacks and Jews” (CR 102-118)
7. Jewish Humor/Jewish Men
In-Class Viewing: “Annie Hall” (1977) 93 min
Required Reading: Esther Romeyn and Jack Kugelmass, "The Nature of Jewish Humor," (CR 1-11)
Gerald Mast. “Woody Allen: The Neurotic Jew as American Clown” (CR 12-20)
8. Jewish Women: Gender and Relationships
In-Class Viewing: “Crossing Delancey” (1986) 97 min
Required Reading: Letty Cottin Pogrebin, “From Marjorie Morningstar to Dirty Dancing” (CR 21-28)
Joseph Greenblum: “Does Hollywood Still Glorify Jewish Intermarriage?” (CR 29-53)
9. Embracing Religious Roots: Orthodoxy on Screen
Independent Viewing “The Chosen” 108 min
Required Reading: from Robert Eisenberg, Boychiks in the Hood: Travels in the Hasidic Underground (CR 54-66)
Jack Kugelmass, “Jewish Icons: Envisioning the Self in Images of the Other” (CR 67-78)
10. Jewish Self-Hatred?
In-Class Viewing “The Believer” (2001) 98 min
Required Reading: David Kraemer, “Self-Criticism in Public” (CR 89-96)
Sander Gilman “Jewish Self-Hatred” (CR 97-109)
11. Conclusions
Back to Sample Course Descriptions
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