This course is a survey of Jewish civilization from the origins of Ancient Israel to 1500 C.E.  All materials are in English translation. The course is taught primarily from the standpoint of Religious Studies and Jewish Studies, in the sense that the course will address both the history of Jews during this long period, and the most influential writings produced during that time.  There will be some focus on the persons and writings that have been most influential for Jewish Civilization over time, including into the modern world.  This course is the first half of a two-semester sequence, and another course taught regularly in Spring semester addresses Jewish Civilization from 1492 to the present. 

The course will be organized according to an overarching thematic image of “Crisis and Response.”  Jewish Civilization over the time period we study, from origins in the later part of the second millennium B.C.E., to the end of the 15^th century C.E., encountered key crises including a memory of enslavement in its sacred sources, the need for sovereignty, the loss of sovereignty and a state of exile, and then continued existence only within larger empires for over two millennia.  Responses to these crises were varied. 

In early legends, centuries of slavery were followed by liberation as The Exodus and the establishment of covenantal law (addressed in Unit 1). 

Later, the need for sovereignty brought the establishment of monarchy and centralized worship at a temple by the kings David and Solomon, and then a continuous period of sovereignty for over four centuries.  This sovereignty ended in 587 B.C.E. and initiated the need for continued existence in exile as well as in Persian and Hellenistic polities (addressed in Unit 2). 

The first century C.E. brought a new crisis with the end of Temple worship due to Roman conquest, and then the most enduring and productive response for Jewish Civilization was the legal and other innovations of Classical Rabbinic Judaism (addressed in Unit 3).  

In the Middle Ages, the rise of Christian and Muslim empires brought new contexts for Jewish communities, but also new degrees of persecution, and these crises were intimately connected with responses in intellectual and religious life, including the development of philosophy and the mysticism of Kabbalah (addressed in Unit 4).  

Grading:

• Three short papers, 2 pages each; each 15% of the course grade (45% total)
• Midterm exam, closed-book, in-class (20%)
• Final Exam, closed book, in-class (20%)
• Class Participation (15%)

Required Books: (available at the University Co-Op Bookstore):

• Alexander, ed., Textual Sources for the Study of Judaism
• Jewish Publication Society (JTS), TaNaKh: The Holy Scriptures
• Robert Seltzer, Jewish People, Jewish Thought

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Imagining Genocide in Post-1945 American Culture

            The Holocaust, a single word used to describe one of the most horrific and complicated set of events in history, has by now become a byword for ultimate evil and a lens through which we view genocidal acts that have occurred all too frequently since the end of World War II in 1945. So shocking were accounts of Nazi actions that led to the murder of more than five million European Jews and close to one million Roma and Sinti, as well as newsreels and photographs taken at the liberations of various concentration camps, that only after a decade or more did historians and popular writers and filmmakers attempt to make sense of all that had happened.

            Our course will track the development of Holocaust memory and interpretation in a unique manner, tracking two major themes from 1945 on directly related to American culture. First, in a more traditional manner, we will see the ways in which an American vision of the Holocaust emerged and the ways the ways in which it has been depicted in novels, the arts, feature film, documentaries, and television. In doing so, we will see the ways in which those representations challenged and reflected American cultural values.

            As important, we will see the ways in which study of the Holocaust has shaped and been shaped by events in American history, e.g. the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War, the liberalization of book and film censorship, and questions of American policy during World War II. At the same time, more recently, we will track the ways knowledge of Holocaust history has raised questions about the relationship of pre-Holocaust events in America can be related to the development of Nazi racial doctrine, e.g. how the wars of decimation against Native Americans, the rise of Eugenics, and most of all the treatment of African-Americans, were seen as precedents and examples used in Nazi thinking.   

Reading and Viewing Assignments:

Required Books:

Robert Abzug, Inside the Vicious Heart: Americans and the Liberation of Nazi Concentration         Camps.

Robert Abzug, America Views the Holocaust: 1933-1945 (supplied for free as a pdf).

Philip Roth, The Ghostwriter 

Other Required Readings: Various articles and creative works posted on Canvas or presented in class, including complete films or excerpts from films, dance, painting, and other visual arts. 

Evaluation of Student Work:

Faithful attendance and participation in class discussions

Weekly short papers about the reading or viewings

Term paper on topic of choice (12-15 pages)

Please note: “Introduction to the Holocaust” is an upper-division history course with a substantial reading and writing component.

This course on the Holocaust examines the mass killing of Jews and other victims in the context of Nazi Germany’s quest for race and space during World War II.  Using sources that illuminate victim experiences, perpetrator perspectives, and bystander responses, we investigate the Nazi racial state, the experiments in mass killing, the establishment of a systematic genocidal program, collaboration and complicity, resistance and rescue, as well as the memory of the Holocaust in western culture.

Doris Bergen, War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust (2nd edition)

Marion Kaplan, Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany

Lianna Millu, Smoke over Birkenau

Gitta Sereny, Into that Darkness: An Examination of Conscience

Attendance and Participation: 20%

Tests incl. final exam: 35%

Essays: 45%

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Description:

The events of the Holocaust changed Western culture in fundamental ways. Not only was a great part of Jewish culture in Europe destroyed, the circumstances of the Nazi genocide as a modern, highly rationalized, efficient form of mass murder which took place in the heart of civilized Europe changed the conception of the progress of modernity and the Enlightenment in fundamental ways. This course explores the historical, political, psychological, theological, and cultural fall-out, as well as literary and cinematic responses in Europe and the U.S. to these events as they first became known, and as one moved further away from it in time and came to understand its pronounced and often problematic after effects. Central to our inquiry is the realization that the events of the Holocaust have left indelible traces in European and U.S. culture and culture production, of which a closer look (first decade by decade, then moving on to a number of themes and questions), reveals profound insights into current day culture, politics, and society.

Required Texts:

Levi and Rothberg, The Holocaust: Theoretical Readings; Art Spiegelman, Maus I ⅈ Ruth Klüger, Still Alive: a Girlhood Remembered; Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz;  Elie Wiesel, Night; Additional  course packet

Films: Nuit et Brouillard; Holocaust (excerpts); Shoah (excerpts); Schindler's List (excerpt)

Grading Policy:

Attendance/participation 15%

Response papers (2) 10%

Class presentation 10%

Presentation paper 15%

Midterm exam 20%

Final research paper 30% (proposal, bibliography, outline + 1st, 5% each, paper: 15%)

This course focuses on Jewish communities throughout the globe and over time, including, but not limited to: Jewish life in Latin America, the Middle East, North Africa, Asia, and Europe. The conceptual frame for understanding the multiple migrations and settlement of Jewish populations is the “Spatial Turn” emerged in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century which has transformed the understanding of the way space, place and landscape is produced, perceived, and experienced. In order to illuminate each of these conceptually, in the first unit of the course, we will consider global Jewish culture is spatialized. In the process of learning about spatializing culture, students will also see how it may be applied to Jewish spatial experiences at diverse geographic scales. These are included, but not limited to: spatial components of assimilation, exclusion, and antisemitism resulting in ghettoization, expulsion, migration, exile, “wandering,” and genocide; Enduring ideas of Israel as Holy Land, homeland, and realized in the construction of nationhood, territory and return, and the State of Israel; Global support and global critiques of Zionism, and the spatial components of settlement, dispute and occupation the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The first 8 weeks, or 50% of the course is dedicated to the spatialization of Global, Jewish culture.

Readings will be drawn from a combination of The People Space and Place Reader, edited by Jen Jack Gieseking and William Mangold, with Cindi Katz, Setha Low, and Susan Saegert (Routledge, 2014), and A Historical Atlas of the Jewish People by Eli Barnavi (Schocken 2003). In-class activities will involve small teams of students considering in greater depth historical and contemporary role of various non-US Jewish communities around the globe, their social and spatial relationships to one another, and how they have shaped (or are not recognized as shaping), Jewish culture as a whole. Each team's research and reflection will culminate in short in-class presentations.

During weekly, in-class, free-writing and sharing assignments over the course of the first two units, students will be given writing prompts that involve considering their own cultural beliefs, practices, and experiences in relation to those of non-U.S. Jewish communities. Prompts might include questions such as: “Local place-making practices are evident in Jewish homes, houses of worship, community centers, neighborhoods, and cultural enclaves. What local place-making practices represent the values of your community?”; “What are the spatial components of assimilation, exclusion? How have you witnessed them in your own life? Describe them, and how they are similar or different to than those in the reading?” “The importance of Jewish community spatial cohesion in preserving identity was argued throughout the text. Are you part of a religious, cultural or political community that requires spatial cohesion? What activities or events enable this cohesion to take place? What threatens the cohesion?”