Muhlenberg College

Muhlenberg College is introducing three courses, the core course, Jewish Experience in a Secular Age: A History of Modern Jewish Identity, and two peripheral courses, American Jewish Life and Culture and Jewish Nationalism: Conceptions of Jewish Identity in the Age of the Nation-State.

Jewish Experience in a Secular Age: A History of Modern Jewish Identity

This course will explore secular Jewish experiences in the modern west. We will examine how traditional Jewish society has been transformed by new ideas and new social realities by exploring the many and multifaceted ways that Jews have constructed modern, secular identities in the wake of those transformations. Using a variety of primary and secondary sources, as well as film and literature, this course will consider the ways in which Jewish identity has been defined and redefined in the modern period across Europe and the United States. Particular attention will be paid to questions of gender and the ways that men and women each experienced processes of modernization and secularization.

Course Outline:

1. An introduction to the themes of the course; discussion of how we understand who is a Jew and of what we mean by “secularization.”
• Talal Assad, “The Question of Secularism: An Introduction,” in Formations of the Secular, Stanford University Press, 2003.
• Rabbi Daniel Freedman, “Conversation Two: Jews Without Judaism,” in Jews Without Judaism: Conversations with an Unconventional Rabbi, Prometheus Books, 2002.

2. Pre-Modern Jewish Society.
• Jacob Katz, Tradition and Crisis (Part I), Syracuse University Press, 2000.
• F. Carsten, “The Court Jews: Prelude to Emancipation,” LBIY III (1958)
• Rachel Biale, Women in Jewish Law, Schocken Books, 1995. (selected sections)
• The Memoir of Glueckel of Hameln, Schocken Books, 1977. (selected sections)

3. Challenges to Tradition Jewish Identity
• Baruch Spinoza, Theologico-Political Treatise (selected sections)
• Jacob Katz, Tradition and Crisis (Part II), Syracuse University Press, 2000.
• The Memoir of Glueckel of Hameln, Schocken Books, 1977. (selected sections)

4. The Emergence of a “Neutral Society”
• Emmanuel Kant, “What is Enlightenment?”
• Voltaire, “Reflections on Religion”
• John Toland, “Reasons for Naturalizing the Jews in Great Britain and Ireland,” in The Jew in the Modern World (TJMW), Paul Mendez-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz, eds. Oxford University Press, 2000.
• Christian Wilhelm von Dohm, “Concerning the Amelioration of the Civil Status of the Jews,” in TJMW
• Johann David Michaelis, “Arguments Against Dohm,” in TJMW.
• Moses Mendelssohn, “Response to Dohm,” in TJMW.
• Moses Mendelsohn, “Response to Dohm,” in TJMW.
• Abbe Gregoire, “An Essay on the Physical, Moral and Political Reformation of the Jews,” in TJMW.

5. Moses Mendelssohn and the “Jewish Enlightenment”
• Moses Mendelsohn, Jerusalem (selected sections)
• Michael Meyer, “Moses Mendelsohn: The Virtuous Jew,” in The Origins of the Modern Jew, Wayne State University Press, 1967.
• Gothold Ephraim Lessing, “A Parable of Toleration,” in TJMW.

6. The Haskalah
• Solomon Maimon, an Autobiography (selected sections)
• Michael Meyer, “An Ephemeral Solution,” and “Dilemmas of a Disciple,” in The Origins of the Modern Jew, Wayne State University Press, 1967.

7. Political Emancipation and the Modern Nation
• Rogers Brubaker, “The French Revolution and the Invention of National Citizenship,” in Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany, Harvard University Press, 1992.
• Paths of Emancipation, Pierre Birnbaum and Ira Katznelson, eds. Princeton University Press, 1995. (selected chapters)
• “Debate on the Eligibility of Jews for Citizenship,” French National Assembly, in TJMW.
• Berr Isaac Berr, “Letter of a Citizen to his Fellow Jews,” in TJMW.
• “Imperial Decree calling for an Assembly of Jewish Notables,” in TJMW.
• “Napoleon’s Instructions to the Assembly of Jewish Notables,” in TJMW.
• “Answers to Napoleon,” in TJMW.

8. Wissenschaft des Judentums – Scholarship by/about Jews
• Michael Meyer, “Leopold Zunz and the Scientific Ideal,” in The Origins of the Modern Jew, Wayne State University Press, 1967.
• Eduard Gans, “A Society to Further Jewish Integration,” in TJMW.
• Martin Buber, “Jewish Science: New Perspectives,” in TJMW.
• Immanuel Wolf, “On the Concept of a Science of Judaism,” in Ideas of Jewish History, M.A. Meyer ed. Wayne State University Press, 1987.
• Heinrich Graetz, “Judaism Can Only be Understood Through its History,” in Ideas of Jewish History, M.A. Meyer ed. Wayne State University Press, 1987.

9. Religious Reform
• Michael Meyer, “Religious Reform and Political Reaction,” in The Origins of the Modern Jew, Wayne State University Press, 1967.
• Michael Meyer, “Abraham Geiger’s Historical Judaism,” in New Perspectives on Abraham Geiger, J. Petuchowski ed.,
• Samson Raphael Hirsch, “Religion Allied to Progress,” in TJMW
• Zacharias Frankel, “On Changes in Judaism,” in TJMW.
• Benjamin Maria Baader, “At the Crossroads: Politics of Inclusion and Emancipation,” in Gender, Judaism, and Bourgeois Culture in Germany, 1800-1870, Indiana University Press, 2006.

10. Salon Society
• Hannah Arendt, Rachel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewess, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.
• Deborah Hertz, “Emancipation through Intermarriage? Wealthy Jewish Salon Women in Old Berlin,” in Jewish Women in Historical Perspective, Judith Baskin ed. Wayne State University Press, 1998.
• Marion Kaplan, “Jewish Women in Imperial Germany,” in Jewish Women in Historical Perspective, Judith Baskin ed. Wayne State University Press, 1998.

11. Haskalah in Eastern Europe
• Israel Bartal, The Jews of Eastern Europe, 1772 – 1881, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001. (selected chapters)
• Michael Stanislawski, For Whom Do I Toil? Judah Leib Gordon and the Crisis of Russian Jewry, Oxford University Press, 1988. (selected chapters)
• Iris Parush, Reading Jewish Women: Marginality and Modernization in Nineteenth-Century Eastern European Jewish Society, Brandeis University Press, 2004. (selected chapters)

12. Zionism, the Bund, and the Revival of Jewish Culture
• “The May Laws,” in TJMW.
• “The Massacre of the Jews at Kishniev,” in TJMW.
• Haim Nahman Bialik, “The City of Slaughter,” in TJMW.
• Peretz Smolenskin, “It is Time to Plant,” “Let us Search Our Ways,” and “The Haskalah of Berlin,” in The Zionist Idea, Arthur Hertzberg, ed. The Jewish Publication Society, 1997.
• Leo Pinsker, “Auto-Emancipation: An Appeal to his People by a Russian Jew,” in The Zionist Idea, Arthur Hertzberg, ed. The Jewish Publication Society, 1997.
• The Bund, “Decisions on the Nationality Question,” in TJMW.
• Paula Hyman, “East European Jewish Women in a Age of Transition,” in Jewish Women in Historical Perspective, Judith Baskin ed. Wayne State University Press, 1998.

13. Old World and New
• Film – “Image Before My Eyes.”
• Mary Antin, The Promised Land, Penguin Books, 1997.
• Hasia Diner, A New Promised Land: A History of Jews in America, Oxford University Press, 2003.
• Paula Hyman, “Gender and the Immigrant Jewish Experience in the United States,” in Jewish Women in Historical Perspective, Judith Baskin ed. Wayne State University Press, 1998.

14. Looking for Jewish Identity in America Today
• Film – “Everything is Illuminated.”
• Jon Papernick, The Ascent of Eli Israel
• CD – “Rooftop Roots”
• “Fag-Hags and Bu-Jews: Toward a (Jewish) Politics of Vicarious Identity” in Insider /Outsider: American Jews and Multiculturalism, Susannah Heschel, David Biale, Michael Galchinsky eds. University of California Press, 1998.
• Caryn Aviv and David Shneer, “From Diaspora Jews to New Jews,” in New Jews: The End of the Jewish Diaspora, NYU Press, 2005.


American Jewish Life and Culture

This course will offer a history of American Jewry and an exploration of the concerns and conditions that shaped Jewish communal life and identity in the United States. Using a variety of secondary texts, memoirs, film, and television, we will consider the different ways that American Jews have defined themselves and have made a place for Jewish life in America. We will discuss the differences between Jewish immigrant communities, and their struggles to work together, and we will consider the challenges faced by American Jews as they worked to build a distinctly American Jewish culture.

Course Outline:

1. American Jewish Life and Culture: An Introduction
• Jonathan Sarna, Introduction to The American Jewish Experience, Jonathan Sarna, ed.
• Jacob Rader Marcus, “The Periodization of American Jewish History,” Proceedings of the American Jewish Historical Society, March 1958.
• American Jewish Population Estimates, 1660-2000, in Jonathan Sarna, American Judaism.

2. Jewish Life from the Colonial Era to the 1820’s
• Hasia Diner, The Jews of the United States, Part I: The Earliest Jewish Communities.
• Jonathan Sarna, “The Impact of the American Revolution on American Jews,” in The American Jewish Experience, Jonathan Sarna, ed.Memoirs of American Jews, 1775-1865, Vol. 1, Jacob R. Marcus, ed.
• Ellen Smith, “Portraits of a Community: The Image and Experience of Early American Jews” in American Jewish Women’s History, Pamela Nadell, ed.
• Uriah Phillips Levy, “Stormy Petrel of the Navy,” in Memoirs of American Jews.
• Mordechai Manuel Noah, “Ebullient Politician,” in Memoirs of American Jews.
• Raphael Jacob Moses, “A Southern Romantic,” in Memoirs of American Jews.

3. Jewish Merchants and the Civil War
• Hasia Diner, Introduction, and Chapters 1 &2, in A Time for Gathering.
• Barry E. Supple, “A Business Elite: German-Jewish Financiers in Nineteenth Century New York,” in The American Jewish Experience, Jonathan Sarna, ed.
• Joakim Isaacs, “Ulysses S. Grant and the Jews,” in The American Jewish Experience, Jonathan Sarna, ed.
• Heyman Herzberg, “The Civil War Adventure of a Georgia Merchant,” in Memoirs of American Jews, 1775-1865, Vol. 2, Jacob R. Marcus, ed.
• Pember, Phoebe Yates Levy, A Southern Women’s Story (selected sections)

4. The “German Period:” Building Community
• Henry Feingold, “German Jews and the American Jewish Synthesis” in German-Jewish Identities in America, Christof Mauch and Joseph Salmons, eds.
• Anke Ortlepp, “Give to the Poor! Yourself You’ll Bless!” Jewish Charities in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1850-1914,” German-Jewish Identities in America, Christof Mauch and Joseph Salmons, eds.
• Tobias Brinkmann, “We are Brothers! Let Us Separate”: Jewish Immigrants in Chicago between Gemeinde and Network Community before 1880,” German-Jewish Identities in America, Christof Mauch and Joseph Salmons, eds.
• Cornelia Wilhelm, “Shaping the American Jewish Community: The Independent Order of B’nai B’rith, 1843-1914,” German-Jewish Identities in America, Christof Mauch and Joseph Salmons, eds.

4. The Great Migration: Eastern European Jews in America
• Gerald Sorin, A Time for Building: The Third Migration 1880-1920, (selected chapters)
• Pamela Nadell, “The Journey to America by Steam: The Jews of Eastern Europe in Transition,” in American Jewish History, part 3, vol.1 – East European Jews in American, 1880-1920: Immigration and Adaptation, Jeffrey S. Gurock, ed.
• Jonathan Sarna, “The Myth of No Return: Jewish Return Migration to Eastern Europe, 1881-1914,” in American Jewish History, part 3, vol.1 – East European Jews in American, 1880-1920: Immigration and Adaptation, Jeffrey S. Gurock, ed.
• Reena Sigman Friedman, “Send Me My Husband Who is in New York City: Husband Desertion in the American Jewish Immigrant Community,” in American Jewish History, part 3, vol.2 – East European Jews in American, 1880-1920: Immigration and Adaptation, Jeffrey S. Gurock, ed.

5. Downtown Jews: Life and Labor
• Daniel E. Bender, Sweated Work, Weak Bodies: Anti-Sweatshop Campaigns and the Languages of Labor (selected sections).
• Susan Glenn, Daughters of the Shetl: Life and Labor in the Immigrant Generation (selected sections).
• Daniel Soyer, “Landsmannshaftn and the Jewish Labor Movement: Cooperation, Conflict and the Building of Community,” in American Jewish History, part 3, vol.2 – East European Jews in American, 1880-1920: Immigration and Adaptation, Jeffrey S. Gurock, ed.
• Paula Hyman, “Immigrant Women and Consumer Protest: The New York City Kosher Meat Boycott of 1902,” in American Jewish Women’s History, Pamela Nadell, ed.
• Film – Section on the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire in Ken Burn’s America

6. Adaptation and Acculturation
• Diner, Hasia. Hungering for America (selected chapters)
• Heinze, Andrew, Adapting to Abundance: Jewish Immigration, Mass Consumption and the Search for American Identity, (selected chapters).
• Abraham Cahan, The Rise of David Lewinsky, (selected sections).

7. Uptown and Downtown: the Quest for Community
• Moses Richin, “Germans versus Russians,” in The American Jewish Experience, Jonathan Sarna, ed.
• Arthur Goren, New York Jews and the Quest for Community: The Kehilla Experiment 1908-1922 (selected chapters).
• Arthur Goren, “Paths of Leadership,” in The Politics and Public Culture of American Jews.
• Naomi Cohen, Not Free to Desist: A History of the American Jewish Committee, 1906-1966 (selected sections)

8. Immigration, Americanization and the First World War
• Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color, (selected chapters)
• Christopher Sterba, Good Americans: Italian and Jewish Immigrants During the First World War, (selected sections).
• Jacob Rader Marcus, “The Jewish Soldier (1918),” and “Lost: Judaism in the AEF (1919)” in The Dynamics of American Jewish History: Jacob Rader Marcus’s Essays on American Jewry, Gary P. Zola, ed.

9. At Home in America
• Deborah Dash Moore, At Home in America (selected chapters)
• Lloyd P. Gartner, “The Midpassage of American Jewry,” in The American Jewish Experience.
• Leo P. Ribuffo, “Henry Ford and the International Jew,” in The American Jewish Experience.
• Beth Wenger, “Budgets, Boycotts, and Babies: Jewish Women in the Great Depression,” in American Jewish Women’s History.

10. Facing a Holocaust
• Deborah Lipstadt, Beyond Belief (selected sections)
• David Wyman, The Abandonment of the Jews (selected sections)

11. American Jews at War
• Deborah Dash Moore, GI Jews
• Film – The Richie Boys
• Alex Grobman, Rekindling the Flame: American Jewish Chaplains and the Survivors of European Jewry, 1944-1948 (selected sections).

12. American Jews in the Post War World
• Deborah Dash Moore – To the Golden Cities, (selected chapters).
• Stuart Svonkin, Jews Against Prejudice: American Jews and the Fight for Civil Liberties, (selected chapters).

13. Jewish Women’s Identity in Contemporary America
• Paula Hyman, “Jewish Feminism Faces the Women’s Movement,” in American Jewish Women’s History.
• Riv-Ellen Prell, “Rage and Representation: Jewish Gender Stereotypes in American Culture,” in American Jewish Women’s History.
• Film – Sarah Silverman’s Jesus is Magic

14. Jewish Identities in Contemporary America
• TV – Curb Your Enthusiasm
• Heeb Magazine


Jewish Nationalism: Conceptions of Jewish Identity in the Age of the Nation-State

This course will examine the varieties of Jewish nationalism that have developed in Europe and the United States since the mid-nineteenth century. The readings focus on crucial texts of Zionist and Jewish nationalist thought. Through these texts, we will examine different conceptions of Jewish “nationhood” in relation to theories of nationalism, historical context, and changing ideas of Jewish identity.

Course Outline:

1. What is a nation?
• Ernst Renan, “What is a Nation?”
• Anthony Smith, “The Origin of Nations.”
• Clifford Geertz, “Primordial and Civic Ties.”
• Anthony Giddens, “The Nation as Power Container.”
All of the above from the Oxford Reader on Nationalism, John Hutchinson and Anthony Smith eds.

2. Theories of Nationalism
• Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, (selected sections)
• Ernest Gellner, “A Typology of Nationalisms,” in Nations and Nationalism.
• Liah Greenfeld, “Types of European Nationalism,” in Oxford Reader.
• Partha Chatterjee, “National History and it’s Exclusions,” in Oxford Reader

3. The Origins of Jewish Nationalism – Moses Hess
• Moses Hess – Rome and Jerusalem (selected sections)
• Walter Laqueur, “Out of the Ghetto,” in A History of Zionism.
• Jacob Katz, “The Jewish National Movement,” and “The Forerunners of Zionism,” in Jewish Emancipation and Self-Emancipation.
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4. The Origins of Jewish Nationalism in Eastern Europe
• Readings by Peretz Smolenskin, Moshe Lillienblum, and Leo Pinsker in The Zionist Idea, Arthur Hertzberg, ed.
• Shlomo Avineri, The Making of Modern Zionism: Intellectual Origins of the Jewish State. (chapters on Smolenskin, Lillienblum and Pinsker)
• David Vital, The Origins of Zionism. (selected sections).

5. Theodore Herzl and Political Zionism
• Theodore Herzl, The Jewish State and selections from Old New Land
• Carl Schorske, “Politics in a New Key: An Austrian Trio,” in Fin-de-Siecle Vienna

6. Zionism and the New Jew
• Max Nordau – Degeneration (selected sections) and “Jewry of Muscle,” in The Jew in the Modern World
• George Mosse, “Max Nordau: Liberalism and the New Jew,” in Confronting the Nation: Jewish and Western Nationalism.
• Michael Stanslawski, Zionism and the Fin de Siècle: Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism from Nordau to Jabotinsky. (selected sections)

7. “Ahad Ha’am” and Cultural Zionism
• Ahad Ha’am, Selected Essays by Ahad Ha’am (selected sections)
• Steven Zipperstein, Elusive Prophet: Ahad Ha’am and the Origins of Zionism (selected sections)
• David Vital, The Origins of Zionism (selected sections).

8. Zionism and the Left – Syrkin, Borochov and Gordon
• Readings by Nahman Syrkin, Ber Borochov, and Aaron David Gordon in The Zionist Idea, Arthur Hertzberg ed.
• Shlomo Avineri, The Making of Modern Zionism: Intellectual Origins of the Jewish State. (chapters on Syrkin, Borchov, and Gordon)
• Ze’ev Sternhell, The Founding Myths of Israel: Nationalism, Socialism and the Making of the Jewish State (selected sections).

9. Assessments of the Diaspora
• Readings by Micah Joseph Berdichevski, Joseph Hayyim Brenner, and Jacob Klatzkin in The Zionist Idea, Arthur Hertzberg ed.
• Yitzchak Baer, Galut
• David Myers, “History as Ideology: The Case of Ben Zion Dinur, Zionist Historian “Par Excellence,” in Modern Judaism, May 1988.

10. Simon Dubnow and Diaspora Nationalism
• Simon Dubnow, Nationalism and History: Essays on Old and New Judaism. (selected sections)
• David Weinberg, Between Tradition and Modernity: Haim Zhitlowski, Simon Dubnow, Ahad Ha-Am, and the Shaping of Modern Jewish Identity. (selected sections).
• Sophie Dubnov-Erlich Life and Work of S. M. Dubnov: Diaspora Nationalism and Jewish History. (selected sections).

11. Zionism in Western Europe
• Martin Buber and Hermann Cohen, “A Debate on Zionism and Messianism,” in the Jew in the Modern World.
• Hashomer Hatzair, “Our World View,” in the Jew in the Modern World.
• The Conjoint Committee of Brith Jewry, “An Anti-Zionist Letter,” in the Jew in the Modern World.
• Michael Berkowitz, Zionist Culture and West European Jewry Before the First World War. (selected chapters)
• Jehuda Reinharz, “Ideology and Structure in German Zionism, 1882 – 1933, in Essential Papers on Zionism.
• Elkana Margalit, “Social and Intellectual Origins of the Hashomer Hatzair Youth Movement, 1913 – 1920,” in Essential Papers on Zionism.
• Hagit Lavsky, “German Zionist and the Emergence of Brit Shalom,” in Essential Papers on Zionism.

12. Zionism in America
• Naomi Cohen, “The Maccabean’s Message: A Study in American Zionism Until World War I,” in American Jewish History, Vol. 8 – American Zionism: Mission and Politics, Jeffrey Gurock, ed.
• Ben Halpern, “The Americanization of Zionism,” in American Jewish History, Vol. 8 – American Zionism: Mission and Politics, Jeffrey Gurock, ed.
• Ben Halpern, A Clash of Heroes: Brandeis, Weizmann, and American Zionism.

13. American Zionism
• The Journal of Israeli History, Special Issue: Abba Hillel Silver and American Zionism.
• Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver, “Towards American Jewish Unity,” in the Zionist Idea.
• Melvin Urofsky, “A Cause in Search of Itself: American Zionism After the State,” in American Jewish History, Vol. 8 – American Zionism: Mission and Politics.

14. Contemporary Debates
• Daniel Boyarin, “Masada or Yavneh: Gender and the Arts of Jewish Resistance,” in Jews and Other Differences: The New Jewish Cultural Studies, Daniel Boyarin and Jonathan Boyarin, eds.
• Todd Endelman, “The Legitimization of the Diaspora Experience in Recent Jewish Historiography,” in Modern Judaism, May 1991
• Caryn Aviv and David Shneer, New Jews: The End of the Jewish Diaspora. (selected chapters)
• Tony Judt, Israel: The Alternative, The New York Review of Books, October 23, 2003, and “The Country that Would Not Grow Up,” Haaretz, November 30,2006.

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