NHISTORY 283 JEWISH STUDIES 235 JEWS IN MODERN TIMES

Syllabus erman/Modern/283syllabus.html

History 299c Films Tuesday 4-6:30 Skinner 0200 “Birthplace” 47 minutes

How Do You Spell It?

Semitism 19th-century linguistic term: Semitic linked to ethnography -- description is generalized into categorization predictable patterns of behavior hierarchies of ethnicities pro- and anti-

Racial Argumentation linked to arguments for race defining nation –what other categories were available? Darwinism/Social Darwinism determined nature of “scientific” racism

Definitions anti-Semitism is a 19th-cen. terminological invention linked to categories of “scientific” anthropology and physiology that are activated by romanticist nationalist arguments of the period easily adapted for other tasks and easily absorbs earlier anti-Jewish rhetorics

(Jewish) Popular Perceptions & Scholarly Approaches “Antisemitism” “halakha -- Esav sonè et Yaakov” -- it is a God- given principle that gentiles hate Jews this turns anti-Semitism into a meta-historical explanatory force instead of a historically bound pattern of meaning and action is Slezkine anti-Semitic? (generalized categories; content vs function)

Jewish Nationalisms

Continuity or Rupture? nationalism is a modern idea linked to the emergence of the centralized political state has the power to impose identity has the need to do so why? an (almost) exclusive legitimizing rhetoric

Suggested Reading Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (1983) Eric Hobsbawm, The Invention of Tradition (1983) Bernard Lewis, History Remembered, Recovered, and Invented (1975)

Role of Secularization powerful rhetoric adopted in reaction to the secularization of the Jewish experience co-optation of religious terminology note the changing attitude of the Orthodox

Multiple Forms Diaspora Nationalism –historical: Simon Dubnow –socialist: Bund Zionism political: Herzl cultural: Ahad ha-Am (Asher Ginzberg) Zionism wins. When and why?

The Jewish Problem physical, economic, legal, political, elephants!! need/craving for self-definition and self- expression

Diaspora Nationalism late 19th and early 20th centuries –attempts to define minority rights within multi- national empires –nations are defined where none had existed before –criteria: language, faith, land –fall back on subjective values like common culture and common destiny

Jewish Minority Rights Versailles following W.W. I Jews given cultural autonomy and representation in many countries from Greece to Poland

Diaspora Nationalism give up claim to independent state in return for national status

Simon Dubnow Jewish people evolved from racial-ethnic to territorial-political to cultural-historical the last spiritual stage does not need the trappings of a state like land, language, and sovereignty the nation must redefine itself now thru secular institutions error of religious reformers to define the group religiously Volkspartei (People’s Party)

Bund Jewish socialists highly Russified aim to escape particularism and parochialism young socialists are shocked by popular anti-Semitism and its acceptance by the left –(“socialism of the masses”) Jewish masses suspicious of assimilationists Jewish interests are separate

Algemeyner Yidisher Arbeiter Bund in Lite, Poylin und Rusland (General Worker’s Union in Lithuania, Poland and Russia) est Russia as with most modernizing movements in the East, it is associated with Vilna and Lithuania and then spreads reaction to decline of old Jewish craft guilds

Aaron Lieberman 1870s begins to spread Marxism in Yiddish tension between internationalism of socialism and of these Jews and their Jewish orientation Russian language gives way to Yiddish recognition of separate interests and political needs

Bund and Nationalism relations with other socialist organizations cooptation Polish Bund 1914 Yiddishist movement CySHO schools

Zionism precursors religious messianism Moses Hess -- Rome and Jerusalem 1862 romanticism solution to split identity Theodore Herzl

Hovevei Tziyon & Bilu organized help for settlers impact of pogroms on migration ; 1881 Leon Pinsker, Auto-Emancipation! (1882) –territorialism BILU First Aliya ( ) –Alliance Israelite Universelle; Rothschild

Herzl Dreyfus trial 1896 Jewish State 1896 First Zionist Congress 1897 in Basle Israel Zangwill, territorialism

Spiritual Zionism Smolenskin Ahad Ha’Am (Asher Ginzburg)