Hampshire College

Hampshire College is offering three courses foor 2007-08. These are the core course The Rise of Secular Jewish Culture, New Jewish Identities in Post-World War II American Culture, and Yiddish Literature and Culture.

The Rise of Secular Jewish Culture

Jewishness has always involved more than religion. Jewish identity, even in the pre-modern world, was expressed through language, work, music, food, and other cultural behaviors. Modernity brought with it even more possibilities, and a sense of radically different political, cultural, and artistic Jewish identities beyond religion began to emerge. This interdisciplinary course draws upon history, literature, political philosophy, and sociology in tracing the rise of a pluralistic, multifaceted modern Jewish culture in Europe and the U.S. between the seventeenth century and the Second World War. We begin with Spinoza, the most significant “heretical” Jewish thinker in the 17th century, and continue through the European Enlightenment, the rise of modern Jewish nationalist movements, and the emergence of secular Yiddish and Hebrew literature. Finally, we will address the crisis of Jewish modernity provoked by the Holocaust, and briefly survey secular Jewish identities today.

Required Texts:

Course Reader
Paul Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz, eds. Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History (2nd edition) (JMW)
Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism
Arthur Schnitzler, The Road Into the Open
Daniel Mendelsohn, The Lost

Suggested Texts:
David Biale, Cultures of the Jews
Judaism in a Secular Age: An Anthology
Jenna Weissman Joselit, The Wonders of America: Reinventing Jewish Culture, 1880-1950

Course Schedule:

1. Introduction: Defining terms

2. A Heretic and a Housewife:
“Writ of Excommunication Against Baruch Spinoza,” Spinoza, “Letter to Albert Burgh, “(JMW)
Rebecca Goldstein, “The Project of Escape” from Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity (OR)
Yermiyahu Yovel, from Spinoza and Other Heretics: “Epilogue: The First Secular Jew?” (OR)
*Spinoza, selections from Theological-Political Treatise (OR)

3. Glikl of Hamel, Books I and IV from Memoirs (OR)
Response Due

4. The European Enlightenment and the Jews
All Mendelssohn selections in JMW
Moses Mendelssohn, “Response to Lavater” (OR)
*Moses Mendelsohn, from Jerusalem (OR)

5. John Toland, “Reasons for Naturalizing the Jews in Great Britain and Ireland,”
“Declaration Protecting the Interest of Jews Residing in Holland,” “The Plantation Act,” , Christian Wilhelm Von Dohm, “Concerning the Amelioration of the Civil Status of the Jews,” Joseph II, “Edict of Tolerance,” Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, “A Parable of Toleration,” Other Selections from Section III, “The Process of Political Emancipation in Western Europe” (JMW)
Response Due

Film Screening, Jud Suss

6. The Haskala in the parlor
Wolfssohn, Silliness and Sanctimony (OR)
Y.L. Gordon’s “Tip of the Yud” (OR, link: www.huc.edu/faculty/faculty/pubs/StanleyNash/Kotso-shel-Yud.pdf)

7. Hannah Arendt, excerpt from Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewess (OR)
Pauline Wengeroff, excerpt from Rememberings: The World of A Russian Jewish Woman (OR)
*David Biale, “Eros and Enlightenment” from Eros and the Jews (OR)
*Paula Hyman, “Two Models of Modernity” from Jews and Gender (OR)
*Deborah Hertz, “Salonieres and Literary Women in Late Eighteenth Century Berlin,” New German Critique 14, 1978 (OR)
Response Due

8. The Science of Judaism
Borne, “Because I am a Jew I Love Freedom” (JMW)
From Section V, “Modern Jewish Studies” (JMW), including “Statutes for Society for the Culture and Preservation of the Jews,” Immanuel Wolf, “On the Concept of a Science of Judaism,” Samson Raphael Hirsch, “A Sermon on the Science of Judaism,” Martin Buber, “Jewish Scholarship: New Perspectives,” Simon Dubnow et. al., “Documenting Jewish History in Eastern Europe,” Gershom Scholem, “Science of Judaism, Its Achievement and Prospects”

9. Heinrich Heine: “A Ticket of Admission to European Culture” (JMW);
Selections from Concerning the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany
(OR) and Ludwig Borne (OR); selections from poetry: A Winter’s Tale, Hebrew Melodies (CR); “Jehudah ben HaLevy” (CR); “The Rabbi of Bacharach” (OR)
Heine and Ludwig Borne, “On Shylock” (OR)
Response Due

10. Rise of Jewish Nationalisms
Moses Hess, from Rome and Jerusalem (OR)
Theodor Herzl, “A Solution to the Jewish Question,” Max Nordau, “Jewry of Muscle,” Ber Borochov, “Program for a Proletarian Zionism,” Ahad Ha-am, “The First Zionist Congress” (all in JMW) Simon Dubnow, “Autonomism,” the Bund, “Decisions on the Nationality Question,” Manya Shohat, “The Woman in the Bund and in Poalei Zion”(JMW)
Chaim Zhitlowski, “The Jewish Factor in My Socialism” and “What is Jewish Secular Culture?” (OR)

11. Cultural Nationalism and the Rise of Modern Hebrew Literature
Y.L. Gordon, “For Whom Do I Toil?”, Bialik’s “City of Slaughter” (JMW)
Mendele Moykher Sforim, “Shem and Japhet on a Train” (OR)

12. Cultural Nationalism and the Rise of Modern Yiddish Literature
Itzik Manger, “Literature and Folklore” (OR)
I.L. Peretz, “Bontshe Shvayg,” “If Not Higher,” “Three Gifts” (OR)
Sholem Aleichem, “The Haunted Tailor” (OR)
Response Due

13. Critiques of Jewishness
Karl Marx, “On the Jewish Problem,” Otto Weininger, “The Jew Must Free
Himself From Jewishness,” Isaac Deutschter, “The Non-Jewish Jew;” Rahel
Varnhagen, “O How Painful to Have Ben Born a Jew!” additional selections from Section VI, “Jewish Identity Challenged and Redefined,” and Section VII, “Political and Racial Antisemitism” (JMW)

14. Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism
*Peter Gay, excerpt from A Godless Jew (OR)
Response Due

15. Jewish Ambivalence
Arthur Schnitzler, The Road Into the Open
Kafka, “My Father’s Bourgeois Judaism” (JMW)
Kafka, “Jackals and Arabs,” and “A Report to an Academy” (OR)
*Deleuze and Guattari, “What is Minor Writing?” (OR)

16. Jewish culture in the Soviet Union
Isaac Babel, “Gedali,” “My First Goose,” “The Rabbi’s Son” from Red Cavalry Tales (OR)
Excerpt from Isaac Babel’s Diary (OR)
“An Appeal by A Group of Soldiers of the Red Army to the Jewish Workers and Toilers,” “Birobidzhan: Jewish Autonomous Region” (JMW)
*David Schneer: “Engineers of the Soul: Soviet Yiddish Writers Envisioning the Jewish Past, Present and Future” (OR)
*Anna Shternshis, from Soviet and Kosher (OR)
Response Due

17. Jewish culture in the United States
Part one: Origins, Yiddish literature and radical politics in the U.S.
Selections from Section IX, “The American Experience” (JMW)
Lamed Shapiro, “The Cross” (OR)
Sweatshop poets, Inzikh manifesto (OR)

18. Emma Goldman, from Living My Life (OR)
Bund Haggada and Workmen’s Circle Haggada (OR)
Proletpen poets (OR)
Response Due

19. Jews and Popular Culture
Film Screening, The Jazz Singer
Samuel Raphaelson, “The Day of Atonement” (OR)
*Selections from Jeffrey Shandler, ed. Entertaining America (OR)
*Stephen Whitfield, “Declarations of Independence: American Jewish Culture in the Twentieth Century” (OR)
*Jenna Weisman Joselit, The Wonders of America (OR)

20. Holocaust: Foreshadowing and Remembering
Jacob Glatshteyn, “Goodnight World” (OR)
Selections from Section XI, “The Holocaust” (JMW)
Selections from Daniel Mendelsohn, The Lost

21. Selections from Daniel Mendelsohn, The Lost
Response Due

22. Conclusion: surveying contemporary secular Jewish cultures in Israel and the U.S.
1. The U.S.
Selections from David Schneer and Caryn Aviv, eds. Queer Jews and Schneer and Aviv, New Jews: The End of Jewish Diaspora (OR)
2. Israel
Ruth Gavison, “The Jewish State: A Justification”
Eli Yassif, “The ‘Other’ Israel: Folk Cultures in the Modern State of Israel,” in David Biale, Cultures of the Jews (OR)


New Jewish Identities in Post-World War II American Culture

Jewish experience, identities, and culture changed dramatically in the U.S. after the Second World War. Today’s “new Jews” can be secular or spiritual, radical or neo-conservative, Zionist or anti-Zionist, fans of Woody Allen, klezmer, Seinfeld, Tony Kushner, or Heeb Magazine. Jews moved into the middle class, into the Ivy League, and into the center of American public life. At the same time, they shed Yiddish, much ritual observance, and began experimenting with new ways to define Jewishness. For some, it became a matter of political or intellectual commitment; for others, a matter of taste in comedy, food, and music; and for others, a “sensibility,” or way of looking at the world. This course draws upon popular culture, film, television, literature, history, and sociology in exploring the new secular Jewish identities that emerge in the post-war era. We will explore such topics as: Jewishness and popular entertainment, Jewishness and political radicalism, Jewishness as rebellious non-conformism, Jewish ethnic and cultural revivals, Israel and American-Jewish identity, Jewish reformist spiritual movements, and a host of other surprising, “new-ish” Jewish phenomena.

Course Texts:

Stephen Whitfield, In Search of American Jewish Culture
Jack Kugelmass, ed. Key Texts in American Jewish Culture
Neil Jumonville, ed. The New York Intellectuals Reader
Philip Roth, Portnoy’s Complaint
Grace Paley, The Collected Stories
Michael Staub, ed. The Jewish 1960s: An American Sourcebook
Vincent Brook, ed. You Should See Yourself: Jewish Identity in Postmodern American Culture

Course Schedule:

PART ONE: Historical Overview

1. Introduction

2. Screening of “Chicago 10” at Academy of Music, 7 pm

3. Setting the Stage:
pp. 1-58 from Stephen Whitfield, In Search of American Jewish Culture, plus one more chapter of your choice

4. Introduction from Jack Kugelmass, ed. Key Texts
in American Jewish Culture, plus one section of your choice (if you choose the “Literature” section, you can skip the first piece, on The Rise of David Levinsky (1917). If you choose the “Religion” section, you can skip the second essay, titled “Kaplan’s Key.”)
(These first two texts should, later in the semester, serve as useful resources for you as you put together final projects)

Recommended: Watch the PBS three-part miniseries “The Jewish Americans”

Response: Looking over the thematic divisions of Whitfield and Kugelmass, do you have a sense of what interests you (this is of course preliminary)? What sections did you choose to read and why? Say more about why you signed up for this class. What are you hoping to learn?

5. New York Intellectuals
Selections from The New York Intellectuals Reader

6. Selections from The New York Intellectuals Reader

Response: Find a contemporary magazine/journal/website, either in print or online, devoted to questions of Jewish culture and identity: for instance: Heeb, Zeek, the Forward, Guilt and Pleasure, Reboot. You might also look at JBooks.com. Skim some issues and write down your immediate impressions. How do these journals compare to the organs of the New York intellectuals?

7. Radical Hollywood
Online readings: Jeffrey Shandler, Entertaining America, pp. 58-70; Paul Buhle, Radical Hollywood, pp. 369-436; film screenings (screening time and place tba): Force of Evil (1948), Salt of the Earth (1954); (optional: watch Gentleman’s Agreement or Crossfire (both 1947))

8. Discussion of Film(s): Either Force of Evil or Salt of the Earth

Response: What do these postwar films tell us about particular challenges, desires, and tensions for American Jews in this period? The postwar period is often discussed as the moment during which American Jews “moved into whiteness” (Recommended text on this topic: Karen Brodkin’s How The Jews Became White Folks). What does that mean? Is that reflected in Hollywood product? How do Jews become more or less “visible” or “legible”? Fast forward to today. Have things changed?

9. Nostalgia and Revival
Online readings: Zborowski and Herzog, Life Is With People, pp. 9-26, 409-430; Howe and Greenberg, “Introduction,” Treasury of Yiddish Stories

10. Discussion of Film Fiddler on the Roof (screening time and place tba); read Stephen Whitfield, “Fiddling with Sholem Aleichem” in Kugelmass, Key Texts in American Jewish Culture

Response: In-class writing

11. Rise of the Rebels
Online readings: Selections from The Essential Lenny Bruce; audio selections in class

12. Celebration of Grace Paley at National Yiddish Book Center

13. Selections from Grace Paley, Collected Stories

14. Discussion of Grace Paley, Collected Stories, 7 pm at Book Center, led by Deborah Gorlin and Ellie Siegel

In lieu of response: attend both Grace Paley events

15. The Jewish 1960s
Introduction, sections 1-6,8 of The Jewish 1960s

16. Sections 7,9,10,13 of The Jewish 1960s

Response: Proposal for final project

17. The Jewish 1960s
Philip Roth, Portnoy’s Complaint

18. Meir Shalev, Main Lecture Hall

19. The Jewish 1960s
Portnoy’s Complaint, continued, with sections 11, 12 of Jewish 1960s

Response: Revised proposal plus annotated critical bibliography

20. Jews and Postmodern Culture
Introduction, plus two sections of your choice, in Brook, ed. You Should See Yourself

21. Read another three sections of your choice in Brook, ed. You Should See Yourself

Response: Outline your plan for class discussion (remember that you may be responsible for part, not all, of class meeting time: don’t be TOO ambitious). What are your larger aims? What do you want the class to learn from your materials? What are the readings/viewings you will distribute? Will you distribute questions for thought beforehand? How will you lead discussion? What questions will you ask and in what order?

22. Online readings: American Jewish Identification Survey (2001); Steven Cohen and
Ari Kelman, The Continuity of Discontinuity: How Young Jews Are Connecting, Creating, and Organizing Their Own Jewish Lives (Suggested: American Religious Identification Survey (2001))

23. Advising day

PART TWO:
Theorizing Contemporary Jewish American Identities and Cultures through Independent Projects

(Note: the expectation in these next three weeks is that every Thursday you will hand in a section/draft of your final project. You will receive comments as quickly as possible. Rachel and I will schedule frequent meetings with you)

24. Student-led Discussion


Yiddish Literature and Culture

Yiddish was the language of European Jewry for nearly 1,000 years, which produced a rich legacy of folklore, legend, music, drama, poetry, fiction, and film. Recently in the United States and elsewhere we have seen an effort to recuperate, recover, and even re-define this “lost world:” in the resurgence of Eastern European “klezmer” music, in the creation of the National Yiddish Book Center, in Yiddish courses on college campuses, and in “Queer Yiddish.” This interdisciplinary course will introduce students to the broad and rich range of Yiddish cultural production, concentrating on literature, drama, and film. We will dip into Yiddish folklore and popular culture, performance and theatre, modernism and radicalism, kitsch and high art, and reflect upon the complicated emotions of mourning, memory, sentimentality, nostalgia, political resistance, fantasy, and desire that fuel today’s Yiddish revival. No knowledge of Yiddish language is required.

Course Texts:

S.Y. Abramovitsh, Tales of Mendele the Book Peddler
Sholem Aleichem, Tevye the Dairyman and the Railroad Stories
I.L Peretz Reader, Ruth Wisse, ed.
I.B. Singer, Satan in Goray
Esther Kreitman, Deborah

Course Readings and Discussions:

1. Introduction
Orientation to the Book Center and to the history of Yiddish

2. Satire and Modernity
Mendele Moykher Sforim, The Brief Travels and Adventures of Benjamin the Third

3. Brief Travels, continued
(Recommended critical reading: Introduction to Tales by Dan Miron)

4. Jewish Pastoral
Sholem Aleichem, Tevye the Dairyman

5. Tevye, continued

Film Screening: Tevye

6. Re-Writing Traditional Folktales
Online readings: Selection of traditional folktales (from Beatrice Weinreich collection), selection of tales from Nakhman of Bratslav

7. I. L Peretz Reader
“What Is the Soul,” “A Musician’s Death,” “The Pious Cat,” “The Shabbes Goy,” “Bontshe the Silent,” “The Dead Town,” “If Not Higher,” “Between Two Mountains,” “Stories,” “The Magician,” “Three Gifts”
(Recommended critical reading: read Ruth Wisse’s Introduction in the Peretz Reader)

8. First Short Paper Due

9. The Yiddish Stage: Between Worlds
Online Reading: Sholem Asch, God of Vengeance

10. God of Vengeance, continued

Film Screening: Yidl Mitn Fidl

11. The Yiddish Stage: Between Worlds
Online Reading: S. An-ski, The Dybbuk

12. The Dybbuk, continued

Film screening: The Dybbuk

This week: Celebration of Grace Paley at the National Yiddish Book Center (Wednesday evening and Thursday evening)

13. Imagining the Past, Imagining the Shtetl
I.B. Singer, Satan in Goray

14. Satan in Goray, continued

15. Second Short Paper Due

Spring Break

16. At Home in America?
Online reading: American-Yiddish poetry:
‘Sweatshop” poets: Morris Rosenfeld, “The Sweatshop” (or, “Corner of Pain and Anguish”), “My Little Son,” “Walt Whitman;” David Edelshtadt, “To the Muse,” “My Testament”
Poets of “Yiddishkayt”: Yehoash, “Amid the Colorado Mountains,” “Rachel’s Tomb,” “Lynching,” “Woolworth Building,” “Yang-Ze-Fu;” Avrom Reisn, “To a Woman Socialist,” “A Prayer,” “Future Generations”
Poets of Di Yunge: Y.Y. Schwartz, excerpt from “Kentucky;” Mani Leyb,” Hush,” “I Am,” “To the Gentile Poet;” Moyshe Leyb Halpern, “Memento Mori,” “the Bird,” “In Central Park,” “Zlochow, My Home”

17. Meir Shalev Talk, Main Lecture Hall

18. Poetry, continued
Online reading:
Poets of Inzikh: Manifesto (Glatstein et. al.), Aron Leyeles, “New York,” “Manhattan Bridge,” “Fabius Lind’s Days,” Jacob Glatstein, “1919,” “Evening Bread,” “Turtledoves,” “Autobiography,” “Jewish Kingdoms,” “We the Wordproletariat”
“Proletpen” poets: “Speaking of Scottsboro” (cluster), “United in Struggle” (cluster), some poems on the Spanish Civil War
(Recommended critical reading: Online: Benjamin Harshav, selections from “American Yiddish Poetry and Its Background;” Dovid Katz, “The Days of Proletpen in American Yiddish Poetry”)
Proposal for Final Project Due

19. At Home in America?
Online reading: American-Yiddish Prose
Excerpts from “The Bintl Brief,” Malka Lee, “Through the Eyes of Childhood,” Avrom Reisn, “Equality of the Sexes,” Lamed Shapiro, “The Cross,” “New Yorkish,” Yente Serdatzky, “Unchanged,” Celia Dropkin, “A Dancer,” Miriam Raskin, “At A Picnic,” David Ignatov, “The Newcomers: New York in the 1890s,” Joseph Opatoshu, “Moishe Liar”
20. Prose, continued
Online reading:
Isaac Raboy, excerpt from The Yiddish Cowboy, Shea Tenenbaum, “Among the Indians in Oklahoma,” Isaac Bashevis Singer, “Gimpel the Fool,” “The Cafeteria”
In addition, read:
Opatoshu, “Yiddish Literature in the United States”
Bashevis, “Problems of Yiddish Prose in America”
Preliminary Bibliography for Final Project Due

Film Screening: Uncle Moses

21. Klezmer: readings tba

22. Advising Day: No Class

23. Re-evaluating the “Canon”: Women and Yiddish Literature
Esther Kreitman, Deborah (with Anita Norich’s afterword)

24. Deborah, continued
Online reading:
Excerpt from Bashevis, In My Father’s Court (“My Sister”)
Poetry by women: selections from Anna Margolin, Rokhl Korn, Malka Heifetz-Tussman
(Recommended Critical Reading: Online: Irena Klepfisz, “Queens of Contradiction: A Feminist Introduction to Yiddish Women Writers,” Anita Norich, “Afterword” to Deborah
Revised Proposals with Bibliographies Due

Film Screening: Man Without a World

25. Khurbn in Yiddish literature
Online reading:
Chronicles and Poems from the Ghettos (translations from David G. Roskies, The Literature of Destruction)
Selections from Yizker-bikher (“Memorial Books”; translations taken from Jack Kugelmass and Jonathan Boyarin, eds. From A Ruined Garden)
(Recommended Critical Reading: Online: Introduction to From a Ruined Garden)

26. Khurbn, continued
Online reading:
Writers in America mourn:
Jacob Glatstein, “Goodnight World,” “Wagons,” “Here I Have Never Been,” “Without Jews,” “Resistance in the Ghetto,” “The Joy of the Yiddish Word”
Kadya Molodowski, “My Paper Bridge,” “Merciful God,” “Letter from the Ghetto,” “A Poem to the Paper Bridge,” “Only King David Remained,” Isaac Bashevis Singer, “The Last Demon”

Draft Treatments of Final Project Due

27. Remembrance, Nostalgia, and Revival
Online readings:
Excerpts from Chaim Grade, My Mother’s Sabbath Days, Bashevis, In My Father’s Court, I.J. Singer, Of a World That is No More: A Tender Memoir
Cynthia Ozick, “Envy; Or, Yiddish in America”

28. Revival, continued
Online reading:
Barbara Kirschenblatt-Gimblett, “Sounds of Sensibility,” Alicia Svigals, “Why We Do This Anyway: Klezmer as Jewish Youth Subculture,” Jeffrey Shandler, “Postvernacular Yiddish: Language as a Performance Art,” Marilyn Halter, “Longings and Belongings: Yiddish Identity and Consumer Culture,” Janet Hadda, “Yiddish in Contemporary American Culture,” “Imagining Yiddish”

Film Screening: Hester Street

29. Portfolios Due by 3:30 pm in my office

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