University of Massachusetts - Amherst

Religion and state is at the forefront of world attention today. This primary course, Negotiating Religion and State: Jewish Secularism and the Emergence of European Modernity examines the global contemporary situation while looking at the emergence of modernity in European cultures, beginning with the 18th century.

The two peripheral courses are: World Jewish Cultures: Jewish Diaspora, Culture and People and Jews in Muslim Lands. 

Negotiating Religion and State: Jewish Secularism and the Emergence of European Modernity

Hotly contested issues such as the "right" to wear the veil in French public schools and the "right" to exhibit a massive sculpture of the Ten Commandments in an American Court of Law are just two examples of the eruption of "fundamentalist" religious claims upon the state in the West. Although the relations of Religion and State have been negotiated differently across national boundaries, this course will focus on the distinctive role of Jews and Judaism in shaping some of the basic terms of these negotiations. First in the Napoleonic "Sanhedrin," and then in the development of the so-called, "Jewish question" in the emergence of the modern nation-states, this negotiation will be examined, followed by the negotiation of the question of Religion and State in early modern philosophy and political thought and then the emergence of new forms of Jewish nationalism, including Zionism. The final segment will deal with the question of the separation/relation between Religion and State in the modern State of Israel and its consequences for both religious and secular forms of Judaism.

Course schedule:

I. Setting the Stage: The struggle for Emancipation and the Emergence of the Modern Nation-States

Introduction: Modernity and the Transformation of Jews and Judaism - the Emergence of Secularism and Judaism as Culture
Napoleon and the Question of Emancipation: Regulating Jews/Religion
The question of Jewish Emancipation and the relation of Religion and State in German Speaking lands

II. The role of Jewish political philosophy in the emergence of Modernity

Reinvisioning the Politico-Theological: Judaism, Christianity and the State
Mendelssohn's response to the question of the Relation of Religion and State, with special attention to Jews and Judaism
Mendelssohn's interpretation of Judaism as Legislation and its consequences for his understanding of the relations of Religion and State, with special reference to questions of marriage, gender, contract, and religious identity
Wissenschaft Des Judentums: the emergence of the Secular Study of Judaism

III. The Emergence of Modern Jewish Nationalism(s) and the renegotiation of the Relations of Religion and State

The Return of Jewish Nationalism After/Despite Marx
Zionism as a Political Response to the Return of the Jewish Question: Reevaluating Assimilation and Integration in light of the failure of Emancipation
Cultural Zionism
The Emergence of non-Zionist notions of Peoplehood and Ethical Nationalism around WWI
Prophetic or Ethical Zionism
Renegotiating the Boundaries between Religion and State: The Return of the Problem in Modern Israel

Readings will include:

Paul Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz, eds., "The Jew in the Modern World"
Baruch Spinoza, "Theologico-Political Treatise"
Moses Mendelssohn, "Jerusalem"
Moses Hess, "Rome and Jerusalem"
Martin Buber (ed. by Paul Mendes-Flohr), "A Land of Two Peoples"
Karl Marx, "On the Jewish Question" (coursepac)
Leo Pinsker, "Auto-Emancipation: An Appeal to his People by a Russian Jew" (coursepac)
Ahad Ha-Am, "A Spiritual Center," "Flesh and Spirit," "On Nationalism and Religion," and "The Jewish State and the Jewish Problem" (coursepac)
Yehoshua Leibowitz, "The Social Order as a Religious Problem," "The Crisis of Religion in the State of Israel," and "A Call for the Separation of Religion and State" (coursepac)


World Jewish Cultures: Jewish Diaspora, Culture and People

Jews across the world are connected to one another through the religious tradition they hold in common and through a shared sense of Peoplehood. Yet, over the past two millenia, Jewish peoples have also been shaped by their diaspora experiences. Scattered across the globe, their diverse histories and environments have given rise to a variety of Jewish religious, cultural and social forms.

This course employs the anthropological lens to focus on Jewish life in Eastern Europe, North Africa, Central Asia, Israel, the United States and India. These select case studies will not provide a comprehensive view of the great range of Jewish diaspora life. They will, however, provide a framework for understanding some of the critical issues at stake in the discussion of the Jewish Diaspora experience, including: cultural and religious adaptability, social boundary flexibility and maintenance, and ambivalence surrounding the question of where home is.

Readings will include:

Yoram Bilu, Without Bounds: The Life and Death of Rabbi Ya'akov Wazana
Barbara Myerhoff, Number Our Days

Course Schedule:

1. Introduction – Jewish culture and people around the world

2. Overview of Jewish diaspora history
Steven Lowenstein, Tapestry of Culture

3. The Vicissitudes of Diaspora Life
Lloyd Cabot Briggs, Ch. 1, “The People Fled” in No More For Ever: A Saharan Jewish Town

DIASPORA, MEMORY AND THE STUDY OF THE JEWISH PAST AND FUTURE

4. Salvage Ethnography
Mark Zborowski and Elizabeth Herzog, Life is With People

5. Remembering through texts
Selections from Jack Kugelmass, From a Ruined Garden: The Memorial Books of Polish Jewry

6. Remembering with visual cues
Selections from Zion Ozeri’s Yemenite Jews: A Photographic Essay
Selections from Catalogue from exhibit on Bukharan Jews, Israel Museum

7. Remembering through ritual
Barbara Myerhoff, Number Our Days

8. Remembering through re-creating the past
Visit to the National Yiddish Book Center

9. The limits of memory
Yoram Bilu, Without Bounds

NEGOTIATING DEFINITIONS OF JEWISH IDENTITY
10. Jewish identity in traditional societies

11. Jewish identity in the Soviet Union
Fran Markowitz, “A Bat Mitzvah among Russian Jews in America” Pp. 121-135 In Harvey Goldberg, ed. The Life of Judaism
Alanna Cooper “Looking out for ones own Identity: Central Asian Jews in the Wake of Communism” In Zvi Gitelman, ed. New Jewish Identities

12. Jewish identity in contemporary United States
Selections from National Jewish Population Survey

JEW AND NON-JEW: BLURRING & MAINTAINENCE OF SOCIAL BOUNDARIES

13. Danger at the Boundaries
Without Bounds

14. Without Bounds

15. Creating Social Boundaries
Film Screening: A Life Apart: Hasidism in America

16. Celebrating the permeability of social boundaries
Film Screening: Leap of Faith

CULTURE: JUDAISM IN PRACTICE
(case studies: marriage ceremony, and Passover)

17. What is Jewish Culture?
David Biale, “Preface: Toward a Cultural History of the Jews” In Cultures of the Jews

18. Case Study: Marriage
Harvey Goldberg, “Marriage,” In Jewish Passages: Cycle of the Jewish Life

19. Case Study: Marriage, cont.
Einat Ramon, “Tradition and Innovation in the Marriage Ceremony,” in The Life of Judaism, Harvey Goldberg, ed.
Lloyd Cabot Briggs, “The Ties that Bind” in No More For Ever

20. Case Study: Passover
Irene Awret, “Preparing Passover in North Africa” in The Life of Judaism, Harvey Goldberg, ed.
“Ritual Enactments of Indian-Jewish Identity” Nathan Katz and Ellen Goldberg In Studies of Indian Jewish Identity

21. Film Screening: The Last Marranos

DEFINING HOME IN THE DIASPORA CONTEXT

22. Ben Zvi, Izchak: Exiled and the Redeemed, Introduction (pp.v,vi,3-19)
Frederic Brenner, Selections from Diaspora at Home

THE TIES THAT BIND: JEWISH PEOPLEHOOD

23. Tudor Pafitt, Judaising Movements: Studies in the Margins of Judaism, Introduction and Ch. 1 “Judaising Movements and Colonial Discourse”
James Ross, Fragile Branches, “The Children of Menasseh”

24. Alanna Cooper, “Reconsidering the Tale of Rabbi Yosef Maman and the Bukharan Jewish Diaspora” Jewish Social Studies, 2004

25. Wrap up and Review


Jews in Muslim Lands: Responses to Modernity

Most Modern Jewish History courses focus on Jewish responses to the secularization of European society. Such responses include the Haskalah, the rise of the Reform, Orthodox and Conservative movements, the emergence of secular Judaism and the advent of political Zionism. This course focuses on the Modern era through the gaze of the Jews in Muslim lands. In this part of the world, processes of modernization and secularization were introduced by European colonial powers. As such, Jewish responses did not grow organically out of changes within the larger society as they did in Europe, but rather, they were a reaction to a process that was imposed from without. This course explores these reactions in a comparative context with a focus on the Jews of North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. Topics to be covered include: Travel and cosmpolitanism, religious responses to modernity, shifting gender roles, literary responses to the modern condition and mass migration.

Course Texts:

Norman Stillman, Jews of Arab Lands in Modern Times
Roya Hakakian, Journey from the Land of No: A Girlhood in Revolutionary Iran
Albert Memmi, Pillar of Salt

Course Schedule:

1. Introduction

2. Historical overview of the Sephardi/Mizrachi experience
From Heritage: Civilization and the Jews, Study Guide, Ed. William Hallo,
"Judaism and the Rise of Islam"
From Heritage: Civilization and the Jews, Source Reader, Ed. William W. Hallo, “The Pact of Umar,” “Nathan the Babylonian on the Installation of the Exilarch”
From The Jew in the Medieval World, “Jewish Autonomy in Babylon”

3. Historical overview, cont.
From Heritage: Civilization and the Jews, Study Guide, Ed. William Hallo, "Flowering of Jewish Civ. in Muslim Spain", "Decline and Expulsion of Spanish Jewry"
From Heritage: Civilization and the Jews, Source Reader, Ed. William W. Hallo, “Samuel Ha-Nagid’s Victory,” “Poetical Attack on the Jews of Granada,” “A Spanish Jewish Curriculum”

4. Defining the Modern Era
“Jews in the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East,” in A Short History of the Jewish People, Raymond Scheindlin
Stillman, JALMT , Ch.1: Nineteenth Century and the Impact of the West

5. Responses to Modernity: An Overview
Stillman, JALMT
Ch.2: Social Transformations

6. Colonization, Travel and Cosmopolitanism
Susan Gilson Miller, “Kippur in the Amazon,” in Sephardi and Middle Eastern Jewries
OR
Jael Silliman, “Introduction” and “Farha,” in Jewish Portraits Indian Frames

7. Colonization, Travel and Cosmopolitanism, cont.
Readings on Jews of Central Asia (handouts)

8. Religious responses to modernity
Stillman, Sephardi Religious Responses to Modernity

9. Religious responses to modernity, cont.

10. Shifting Gender Roles
Malino, Frances: The Women Teachers of the Alliance, In Judith R. Baskin (ed) Jewish Women in Historical Perspective
“The Emancipation and Reformation of Women,” in Images of Sephardi and Eastern Jewries in Transition, Aron Rodrigue

11. Literary Responses to the Modern Condition
Albert Memmi, Pillar of Salt

12. Literary Responses to the Modern Condition
Albert Memmi, Pillar of Salt

13. Literary Responses to the Modern Condition
Albert Memmi, Pillar of Salt

14. Literary Responses to the Modern Condition, cont.
Hakakian, Introduction and Ch. 1,2, 3

15. Literary Responses to the Modern Condition, cont.
Hakakian Ch. 4, 5, and 6

16. Looking toward Palestine/Israel
Ben-Arieh, Jerusalem in the 19th Century, Ch.1 and Ch.2

17. Looking toward Palestine/Israel (cont.)
Stillman, JALMT , Ch.4: "Zionism and the Jews of Arab Lands"

18. Challenges in Settling in Israel

19. Mass emigration
Silent Refugees: Jews from Arab Countries, Maurice Roumani
Mediterranean Quarterly, 2003

20. Mass Migration, cont.
Rupture and Return: Zionist Discourse and the Study of Arab Jews
Social Text 21.2 (2003) 49-74

21. Mass Migration
Film: Forgotten Refugees

22. Mass Migration

23. Wrap Up and Review

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