Course Description:
Until the modern period, Jews in Western Europe formed a distinct corporate entity. Jews considered themselves as the bearers of a unique revelation and were satisfied living within their own culture and with a collective political identity. Once Jews began to question these values as self-explanatory, we may speak of Jewish modernity.
This course will present a variety of options that Jews chose and still choose in the modern period. The choices Jews made were not purely individual but were also determined by internal Jewish debates and the perception of the Jewish minority by the non-Jewish majority. These include conversion, assimilation and Zionism – the most radical options – as well as religious reform. The various factors involved in the particular choices made by individuals will be examined by means of theological treatises and autobiographical material.
In conclusion, the choices that Jews have made will serve as comparative material for present-day discussions concerning immigration and integration and the dilemmas with which both majority and minority groups are confronted in Europe today.
Course objectives:
By the end of the course, the students should be able to identify: – the major choices that Jews have made in modernity as well as the internal and external factors that have played a role in the making of these choices; – the various elements involved in the terms assimilation and integration; – some of the similarities (and differences) between the present-day situation of minorities in Europe and that of the Jews in 19th c. Europe.
Teaching methods:
The course will consist of several introductory historically oriented lectures, supplemented by the analysis of source material based on the works and thoughts of an important figure in the 19th-early 20th c. to be presented by the students themselves.
Testing methods:
The student will be expected to: – give one or more talks on a specific topic and/or individual to be selected from a list of source material distributed by the lecturer at the beginning of the course – write a paper at the end of the course related to and embellishing upon the talk presented during the semester while making use of the required reading.
Time table
See time table Master Religious Studies
Seminar overview and assignments:
Weekly meetings (12 × 3 hours)
Weekly reading assignments (11 × 6 hours)
Presentations (2 × 30 hours)
Required reading:
H. MacLeod, Secularisation in Western Europe, 1848-1914 (MacMillan Press: Basingstoke-Londen 2000).
J. Katz, Tradition and Crisis. Jewish Society at the End of the Middle Ages (Schocken: New York 1961 en later).
D. Sorkin, The Transformation of Germany Jewry 1780-1840 (Oxford University Press: NY-Oxford 1987 en later).
R. Cohen, “Self-Image through Objects: Toward a Social History of Jewish Art Collecting and Jewish Museums”, in J.Wertheimer, The Uses of Tradition. Jewish Continuity in the Modern Era (The Jewish Theological Seminary of America: New York 1992) 203-242.
D. Sorkin, “The New ‘Mosaik’. Jews and European Culture, 1750-1940”, in H. Berg en J. Frishman (eds.), Dutch Jewry in a Cultural Maelstrom, 1880-1940 (Aksant: Amsterdam 2007).