JHIS 1402: Modern Jewish History

Abstract

COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course is a survey of the history of the Jews and Judaism in the modern age, from 1650 to the present. The course will examine the very different ways in which Jews reacted to modernity in Western, Central and Eastern Europe, the Ottoman Empire, America, and Israel.¶ COURSE GOALS AND OBJECTIVES: After the completion of this course, students will have an understanding of the major events and movements that shaped Jewish history in the twentieth century. These events and movements include: World War One, the Russian Revolution and the pogroms of the Russian Civil War; the very different paths of Soviet and Polish Jewries during the interwar years; the Jews of Palestine under the British Mandate; the rise and spread of Nazism; the Holocaust; the rise of the State of Israel and the new state’s political, social, and cultural history; Stalinist repression of Soviet Jewry; trends in the post-war American Jewish community; the Six Day War and its aftermath, the polarization of American Jewry in the latter decades of the twentieth century. Through the written assignments, students will gain the skills to analyze both primary and secondary sources from an historical perspective.