Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya

Five courses are being offered in the Posen Project. They are Judaism and Jews in the Cradle of Modernism, What is Judaism, and Who are the Jews - From Spinoza and Mendelsohn to Kaplan and Levinas: History and Thought, The Formation of a Secular Culture: Festivals and Carnivals in Eretz Israel and in Israel, The Hebrew Folk-Legend: From Traditional Values to Subversive Tendencies, and Jews and Other Minoriites: Nationalism, Migration and Ethnic Identity in Modern Times.

Judaism and Jews in the Cradle of Modernism

Course Outline:

1. Introduction
The concepts of Judaism and of the Jewish people undergo a deep transformation in modern times.
One precursor of the changes to come is the philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) who, as the" first secular Jew", formulated in the seventeenth century an interpretation of Judaism and of the historical survival of the Jewish people based on categories of thought different from those of religious tradition (Jewish as well as Christian) of the time.
Bibliography:
- Spinoza, B., Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (Hebrew), Magnes, Jerusalem, 1962, Chapter 3;
- Yerushalmi, Y. H., Spinoza on Jewish People (Hebrew), Divrei Akademia ha-leumit ha-israelit le-madayim, VI, 10, Jerusalem, 1983, pp. 179-180; 182-184; 191-187.
- Yovel, Y., Spinoza and Other Heretics (Hebrew), Sifriat ha-Poalim, Tel Aviv, 1988, pp. 196-228.
- Schweid, E., A History of Modern Jewish Religious Philosophy (Part I) (Hebrew), Am Oved, Tel Aviv, 2001, Chapter 1.

2. The Jewish condition in the Enlightenment.
In seventeenth century Germany, the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786) attempted to reformulate the Jewish religion and the right of Jewish people to participate in emancipation according to the rational principles of the Enlightenment and to his own ideal of religious tolerance.
Bibliography:
- Mendelssohn, M., Jerusalem (Hebrew), Legvulam and Mossad Bialik, Ramat-Gan, 1977, pp. 91-93; p. 95; pp. 106-107; pp. 130-135; pp. 136-143.
- Feiner, Sh., Moses Mendelssohn (Hebrew), The Zalman Shazar Center, Jerusalem, 2005, pp. 122-146.
- Schweid, E., A History of Modern Jewish Religious Philosophy (Hebrew), Part I, Chapter 2.

3. Feminine participation in the cultural ferment between the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries, and the longing for a "Jewish -German symbiosis".
An analysis of the salons of Jewish salonières in Berlin, with particular focus on Rachel Varnhagen (1771-1833), together with Hannah Arendt's observations on the Jew as a "pariah" or a "parvenu".
Bibliography:
- Selected passages from Varnhagen's letters (translated from German into Hebrew by Marina Arbib for the IDC students);
- Arendt, H., Rahel Varnhagen. The Life of a Jewess, ed. L. Weissberg, The John Hopkins University Press 1997, chapters 12-13.

4. Struggle and conquest of Jewish emancipation in Germany and a review of its consequences in German speaking areas.
Between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, we witness a weakening of Jewish religious tradition and the emergence of a new existential situation, which will be examined on the basis of testimonies from some remarkable personalities, such as S.Freud (1856-1939), F.Kafka (1883-1924), W.Benjamin (1892-1940), G.Scholem (1897-1982).
Bibliography:
-Volkov, Sh., Between Uniqueness and Assimilation: The German Jews 1780-1918 (Hebrew), The Open University of Israel, Tel Aviv, 2003 (selected passages);
- Yerushalmi, Y. H., Freud's Moses: Judaism Terminable and Interminable, Jerusalem, Shalem 2006, Chapter 1;
- Kafka, F., Tagebuecher (1910-1914); (1914-1923) (Hebrew), Jerusalem, 1978; 1979 (selected passages);
- Scholem, G., Walter Benjamin, die Geschichte einer Freundschaft (Hebrew), Am Oved, Tel Aviv, 1987(selected passages);
- Scholem, G., Von Berlin nach Jerusalem (Hebrew), Am Oved, Tel Aviv 1982 (selected passages);
- Mosès, S., Walter Benjamin and the Spirit of Modernity (Hebrew), Resling, Tel Aviv 2003 (selected passages).

5-6. Freud: Between "Terminable" and "Interminable" Judaism.
Freud, starting from his criticism of religion in his work, The Future of an Illusion, interprets Judaism anew in Moses and Monotheism. The meaning of the latter work will be investigated with the help of Yosef Hayyim Yerushami's book Freud's Moses: Judaism Terminable and Interminable.
Bibliography:
- Freud, S., Die Zukunft einer Illusion (Hebrew) in: Ha-tarbut ve ha-dat, Sifriat Poalim, Tel Aviv, 2000, pp. 48-74;
- Freud, S., Der Mann Moses und die monotheistischeReligion:Drei Abhandlungen (Hebrew), Dvir, Tel Aviv 1979, Part III, Chapter 2.
- Yerushalmi, Y.H., Freud's Moses: Judaism Terminable and Interminable, Jerusalem, Shalem 2006, Chapter 3.

7. The Components of modern day Judaism through Kafka's eyes.
A deeper examination of Kafka's personal testimonies (diaries, letters) on the problematic nature of the Judaism of his time offers an opportunity to discuss the following components of modern day Judaism: nationality, religion, cultural affiliation, historical and existential situation.
Bibliography:
- Kafka, F., Tagebuecher (1910-1914); (1914-1923) (Hebrew), Jerusalem, 1978; 1979 (selected passages);
- Kafka, F., Brief and den Vater; Briefe an Milena (Hebrew), Schocken, Jerusalem, 1997 (selected passages);
- Arbib C., M., "Images of the Jew and Judaism: Kafka and the 'Prager Kreis'", in: The Jewish Self-Portrait in European and American Literature, eds. H.J. Schrader, E.M. Simon, Ch. Wardi, Max Niemayer, Tuebingen 1996, pp. 109-122.

8-9. Kafka's literary work as a stimulus for a vast variety of interpretations, Part 1.
Kafka's work - open to interpretations par excellence - has stimulated interpretation from all sorts of Jewish authors.
While analyzing The Castle, we will refer to the interpretations of Max Brod and Hannah Arendt.
Bibliography:
- Kafka, F., Das Schloss (Hebrew), Schocken, Jerusalem, 1978 (selected passages);
- Arendt, H., The Jew as Pariah: Jewish Identity and Politics in the Modern Age, Grove Press, New York, 1978 (selected passages);
- Brod, M., The Castle, Secker and Warburg, London, 1947, Postscript, pp. 310-320.

10-11. Kafka's literary work as a stimulus for a vast variety of interpretations, Part 2.
While analyzing The Trial, we will refer to the interpretations of Max Brod and Gershom Scholem, and to the criticism levied against them by Walter Benjamin.
Bibliography:
- Kafka, F., Der Prozess (Hebrew), Schocken, Jerusalem 1992 (selected passages)
- Benjamin, W., The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin (1910-1940), edited and annotated by G. Scholem and Th. Adorno, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1994 (selected passages).

12. Judaism of modern times re-examined in the light of scientific study of Jewish mysticism.
Judaism is broken down into its various components by the Kabbalah historian Gershom Scholem, who reflects on the Jewish people and religion in modern times.
Bibliography:
- Scholem, G., Explications and Implications Writings on Jewish Heritage and Renaissance (Hebrew), vol. I; vol., II, Am Oved, Tel Aviv 1976; 1989 (selected passages)
- Arbib C., M., "Gershom Scholem's interpretation of Kafka" (Hebrew), Mehqarei Yerushalyim be-mahshevet Israel (will be published in February 2007), pp. 107-124.

13. Review of the themes discussed during the course and comparison of the various authors' positions regarding Judaism in modern times.


What is Judaism, and Who are the Jews - From Spinoza and Mendelssohn to Kaplan and Levinas: History and Thought

Course Outline:

The two central questions characterizing modern Jewish thought – which began with Baruch Spinoza and Moses Mendelssohn – are 'what is Judaism?', and 'who are the Jews?' In the modern world, whose gates began to open for the Jewish people as well, the question of belonging to the Jewish people became a key issue, and the various answers to it shaped the complexity of the Jewish world in the new era. Some thought that the Jews are sons of a shared religion. Others believed themselves to be a national minority, spread across the nations of the world. Yet others saw themselves as the continuation of a historic group, which must redefine itself nationally and culturally, faced with the new global reality.

Taking into account Spinoza's and Mendelssohn's early opposed solutions, the various ideas will be examined in the light of the development of modern secularism, the change in the role occupied by religion in the new era, the ideas of the French revolution and the development of national and historic thinking.

1. Was Baruch Spinoza the first secular Jew? Studies of the third chapter of his 'Tractatus Theologico Politicus' on the election of the Hebrews and the nineteenth chapter about the separation between state and religion.

2. Main points of Moses Mendelssohn’s approach to the Jewish existence in modern world by reading from his book 'Jerusalem'. Judaism as a historical truth and not as eternal truth which means founding a pluralistic point of view concerning religions. Mendelssohn as the father of Jewish Enlightenment.

3. The Philosophy of Immanuel Kant, the idea of the moral autonomy of man and his book 'Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone'. Kant's influence on the shaping of modern Judaism in Europe. Salomon Maimon as Kant's reader and the first example of philosophical denial by east European 'Talmid Hacham'; reading special fragments from his autobiography 'My Life'.

4. Judaism as Ethics. Reading 'The essence of Judaism', by Shmuel David Luzato, selected fragments from Herman Cohen's 'Religion of Wisdom' and from the writings of Immanuel Levinas. The inner connections between understanding Judaism as culture and understanding Judaism as Ethics.

5. The 'Wissenschaft der Judentum' group (Zunz, Steinschneider, Geiger and others) and the birth of a critical scholarly approach to Jewish culture. The development of The History of the Jewish People by Nachman Krochmel, Zvi Graetz and Simon Dubnov. The understanding of Jewish history itself as the essence of Judaism.

6. Romanticism, Nationalism, Modern Jewish existence after the emancipation and the awareness to the history of the Jewish people as sources of the birth of Jewish Nationalism and Zionizm. Reading selected writings of Zionist thinkers: Moses Hess, Theodor Herzl, Max Nordau, and Jacob Klatchkin.

7. Ahad Ha'am and his criticism against political Zionism. His demand to found cultural center in Palestine. The meaning of Ahad Ha’am's Jewish culture and Berdichevsky's criticism of him.

8. Socialist-Zionism and its attitude to religion and tradition. (Syrkin, Borochov, Gordon, Katzenelson and Ben Gurion).

9. Radical and militant secularism from Joseph H. Brenner to the Knaanite movement and its ideas.

10. 'I and Thou' - The dialogical philosophy of Martin Buber. His understanding of Ahad Ha’am's demands and his interpretations of the Bible and the Hasidic doctrines. Buber's non-Halachik religiosity in comparison to HaRav Kook's halachik mysticism.

11. Mordechai Kaplan and his approach to Judaism as culture. Reading selected chapters from his book: The Meaning of God in Modern Jewish Religion. The establishment of Jewish community centers as implementation of cultural approaches of Judaism.

12-14. Contemporary trends in modern Jewish thought and culture. The culture of memory and the meaning of the holocaust in modern Jewish life (From Eli Vizel to Aron Appelfeld); The various aspects of Jewish feminism; The challenge of modern Jewish fundamentalism; The Jewish renewal and the contemporary interest in the Jewish library and its meaning.


The Formation of a Secular Culture: Festivals and Carnivalls in Eretz Israel and in Israel

Course Outline:

In this course we will discuss the renewal process of festivals and carnivals, that are part of the yearly cycle, during the first Aliyot to Eretz Israel. We will explore the reformation of the holidays’ symbolic systems, and the way they accelerated the formation of the national secular identity of Jewish ideological groups in Eretz Israel. We will examine the changing characteristics of the yearly cycle to the present day in modern Israel.

1. Historical review of the first Aliyot to Eretz Israel.
The ideological national map and the formation process of national identity beginning with the first Aliya and the national and secular identity through the second and third Aliyot.

2. The role of folk culture within the renewal process in Eretz Israel. The formation of ‘official folk culture’ in the first Aliyot.

3. A theoretical discussion in the functions that festive public events and their symbol system may fulfill in the renewing national/secular reality. The role of rituals, festivals and carnivals from the Jewish yearly cycle in the evolving Eretz Israel reality.

4-5. Historical holidays that have been adapted to Eretz Israel’s reality in the periods of the first, second and third Aliyot: Hanukkah, Passover and Lag b’Omer.

6-7. Holidays with strong agriculture themes that were renewed in Eretz Israel in urban settlements and in agriculture settlements: The Feast of Booths, The New Year for The Trees, Passover, The Feast of Weeks, 15 of Ab.

8-9. Purim as a Diaspora holiday that was renewed in Eretz Israel. The central reference will be to Purim in Little Tel Aviv.

10. Guest lecture: Ran Aldema tells about his father, Avraham Aldema, the initiator of Purim’s parades in little Tel Aviv.

11-12. The Jewish holiday yearly cycle in Israel since the state was founded to this day. Among others we shall discuss the formation of Independence Day, and the changes that the holiday events went through in light of the changing socio- historical correlations in Israel.

13. Guest lecture: Binyamin Yogev, manager of “Shitim” archive, about holidays in the Kibbutzim in modern Israel.

14. Summary.

Select Bibliography:

Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities. London-New York 1992.

Aryeh-Sapir, Nili. The Formation of Urban Culture and
Education: Stories of and about Ceremonies and Celebrations in Tel Aviv in its First Years. Dor Ledor, XXVI, 2006.

Aryeh-Sapir, Nili. “ Carnival in Tel Aviv: Purim in the First Hebraic City”. Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Folklore, 22 (2003). Pp. 99-122.

Aryeh-Sapir, Nili. “The Light Procession: Hanukkah as a National Holiday in Tel Aviv in the Years 1909-1936”. Cathedra, 103 ( Nisan 2003). Pp. 1310150.

Carmiel, Batia. Tel Aviv in Costume and Crown- Purim’s Celebrations in the Years 1909-1935. Eretz Israel Museum, Tel Aviv . Tel Aviv 1999.

Gaster ,Theodor H. Festivals of the Jewish Year. New York 1972.

Hobsbawm, Eric and Ranger, Terence (eds.). The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge-London-New York 1983.

Rash, Yehoshua (ed.). Regard and Revere- Renew without Fear- The Secular Jew and His Heritage. Tel Aviv 1987.

Shavit, Yaakov. “Supplying the Missing System- Between Official and Unofficial Popular Culture in the Hebrew National Culture in Eretz Israel”. Studies in the History of Popular Culture. Benjamin Z. Kedar (ed.). Jerusalem 1996. pp. 327-345.

Zeira, Moti. Rural Collective Settlement and Jewish Culture in Eretz Israel during the 1920s. Jerusalem 2002.


The Hebrew Folk-Legend: From Traditional Values to Subversive Tendencies

Legend is society's sacred history, which shapes its identity and culture. The greatest cultural work of Ancient Israel – the Hebrew Bible – is a sacred history: its literary materials were taken from the oral culture of the tribes of Israel, and shaped in various and fascinating ways. The Hebrew Bible later became the basis of Jewish culture: The midrashic imagination as a central component of Jewish mentality. In modern Israel central Jewish myths as, martyrology, the Masada myth, the belief in the saints, the afterlife, became part of many debates, and reflect the status of Israel between the Western World and the culture of the Middle East.

Legend was opposed to the "official" forms of Jewish religion since biblical times. Its foreign sources and tendency toward pagan ideology posed a threat to the monotheistic, legal Judaism. However, myths and legends appear in almost all Jewish writings since the Hebrew Bible: Apocryphal literature, the Talmud and Midrash, medieval literature of all genres and in Early-Modern Jewish folklore. In the course will be read a selection of texts from all the range of Jewish literature, with special emphasis on their oral, folkloric character, their essential messages and the tension between these "informal" texts and the "official" forms of Judaism. Jewish myths and legends provide another important source of understanding Jewish culture. They are the main vehicle that the Jewish "folk" – not the leaders and thinkers – chose to express their mentality, fears and hopes.

Readings:

1. "Myth, Jewish", Encyclopedia Judaica, Jerusalem 1972.
2. Dan Ben-Amos (ed.), “Jewish Folktales: An Encyclopedic Survey”, Jewish Folklore and Ethnology Review 14 (1992), pp. 3-25.
3. Louis Ginzberg, "Jewish Folklore: East and West", in Louis Ginzberg,
Jewish Law and Lore, Philadelphia 1955, pp. 61-73.
4. Glenda Abramson (ed.), Modern Jewish Mythologies, Cincinnati 1999, pp. 1-15, 37-56, 107-135.
5. Elliot Oring, Israeli Humor: The Content and Structure of the Chizbat of
the Palmah, Albany 1981, pp. 23-38; 122-130.
6. Lord Raglan, “The Hero of Tradition”, in: Alan Dundes (ed.), The Study of Folklore, Prentice-Hall Inc. 1965, pp. 143-157.
7. R. G. Marks, “Dangerous Hero: Rabbinic Attitude Toward Legendary Warriors”, Hebrew Union College Annual 54 (1983), pp. 181-194.
8. Michael Fishbane, “‘The Holy One Sits and Roars’: Mythopoesis and the Midrashic Imagination”, In: M. Fishbane (ed.), The Midrashic Imagination, Albany 1993, pp. 60-77.
9. Eli Yassif, The Hebrew Folktale: History, Genre, Meaning, Bloomington and Indianapolis 1999, pp. 10-15, 321-342, 429-460.
10. Yael Zerubavel, Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition, Chicago 1995, pp. 39-78.
11. Aliza Shenhar and Tamar Katriel, “I was There: ‘Tower and Stockade’ Personal Experience Stories”, Jewish Folklore and Ethnology Review 14 (1992), pp. 32-43.
12. Haya Bar-Itzhak, Jewish Poland: Legends of Origin, Detroit 2001, pp. 133-158.
13. Eli Yassif, "The Man who Never Swore an Oath: From Jewish to Israeli Oikotype", Fabula 27 (1987), pp. 216-236.
14. Jacob Lassner, Demonizing the Queen of Sheba, Chicago 1993, pp. 9-35.
15. Galit Hasan-Rokem, Web of Life: Folklore and Midrash in Rabbinic Literature, Stanford 2000, pp. 39-66.
16. Hagar Salamon, The Hyena People: Ethiopian Jews in Christian Ethiopia, Berkeley and Los Angeles 1999, pp. 97-104.
17. Raphael Patai, The Hebrew Goddess, New York 1978: "Lilith", pp. 180-225.


Jews and Other Minorities: Nationalism, Migration and Ethnic Identity in Modern Times

The modern era, from the late 18th century on, has seen major upheavals in the history of world populations. Alongside processes of industrialization, migration and urbanization, new ideologies of identity emerged, first and foremost that of modern nationalism. Like other minorities, Jews – religious communities in agrarian societies – were obliged to redefine their identity in the face of pressures previously unknown. This course covers the history of places where Jewish communities were found, focusing on the events and processes that molded these communities, the new conditions to which minorities had to adapt and the status of Jews under these new conditions. We will follow the different focal points of change, from American immigrant society to revolutionary France; from there, to the Empires of continental Europe, Russia and Austria where most of the world’s Jews lived at the start of the modern era; and on to the lands of Islam, the Ottoman Empire and colonial North Africa. In each of these regions we will consider the changes affecting demography and patterns of migration, and the question of ethnic and national identity. In this framework, we will look at the situation of the Jews in comparison with other minorities. The course concludes with the development of nationalism and ethnic identities in the State of Israel.

Program:

The End of the 18th Century: [2 Lessons]
Blacks and Jews after American Independence (1777)
The French Revolution (1789): The National “Deal” with the Jews (1791)

19th-Century Europe [6 Lessons]
Empires, Nationalism and Minorities: Russia and Austria
Organic Nationalism and Modern Anti-Semitism: The Case of Germany
Jews and other Migrants: Europeans Flocking to the New World

The Ottoman Empire [2 Lessons]
Greeks, Armenians and Jews, 1826-1918

French North-Africa [1 Lesson]
Jews in Colonial Society

The State of Israel [3 Lessons]
Zionism as a “Diaspora Nationalism”
Ashkenazim, Sephardim, Mizrahim: Internal Jewish Ethnic Identities
Arabs: A National Minority in the Hebrew State

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