Syllabus
Course Schedule:
Week 1
Introduction and team-building: students` personal experience with Jewish life in the U.S.A. American Jews: the largest Jewish community in the world - its history and present.
Week 2
Historical variety of the Jewish Diaspora: Oriental, Sephardi, Ashkenazi Jews, and other minor Jewish communities; the variety of Jewish identities and its impact on the social and cultural environment in the present day State of Israel.
Introduction to the history and culture of Central European countries; the Holy Roman Empire; the primary role of German language and culture in Central Europe to 1945; the beginnings of Ashkenazi settlement in Rhineland and its movement eastwards; Yiddish: the vernacular of Ashkenazi Jews; Yiddish literature and Yiddish authors in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Week 3
Beyond the Diaspora diversity: the origins of the Jewish nation in Ancient Palestine; the Hebrew Bible as a foundational text of Jewish religion.
Beyond the Diaspora diversity: the rise of Rabbinic Judaism after 70CE; the Talmud: another foundational text of Jewish religion.
Week 4
The Jews of Andalusia - a vanished world of Muslim Spain.
Maimonides a prominent Jewish philosopher of the Muslim world.
Week 5
Jews in medieval Christian Europe: social and economic contexts.
Christian medieval anti-Judaism: its social and religious basis.
Week 6
Jewish communities in Bohemia and Moravia up to the 19th century.
FILM - House of Life: The Old Jewish Cemetery in Prague .
Week 7
EXCURSION - the Jewish cemeteries of Prague.
Czechs and Jews at the turn of the 20th century.
Week 8
MIDTERM EXAM; planning integrative projects.
Spring break
Week 9
The Jews of Poland: the Jewish past of Cracow.
FILM: Schindler`s List.
Week 10
Chassidism: a religious and social revolution of East European Jewry.
Jewish Enlightenment: between the general Enlightenment philosophy and Jewish accents; Moses Mendelssohn: his life and philosophy.
Week 11
Emancipation of Jews in the Austrian Empire and Prussia; the French revolution and Jews.
Jewish assimilationist tendencies in the 19th century; Heinrich Heine, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud: their relation to Judaism.
Week 12
Zionism: From Theodor Herzl to the rise of the State of Israel.
Legal and social persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1941.
Week 13
EXCURSION: Franz Kafka Museum
Week 14
The Wannsee conference and the "Final solution of the Jewish question".
Week 15
Contemporary right extremist scene in the Czech Republic: FILM: The Beclouded Democracy.
Can Central Europe be a habitable place for Jews?: a discussion about matters of religious tolerance, racism, democracy and totalitarian regime.
Week 16
Presenting students` integrative projects and FINAL EXAM.
Annotation
Today, most Jews living in the U.S. (the largest Jewish community in the world) trace their descent to Central or Eastern Europe. The course explores Jewish presence primarily in the history of Central Europe and the ambiguous character of Jewish experience fated not only by prejudice, contempt, and suffering, which culminated in Holocaust but also rich in the undeniable contribution of Jews to the life and culture of the countries.
The course pursues the following objectives. First, the students acquaint themselves with the variety of the Jewish Diaspora identities, and then proceed to study the religious and cultural heritage accumulated by generations of Jews living in Germany, Austria, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and above all in Bohemia and Moravia. We dwell in the history of the Ashkenazi Jews from the Medieval to Modern Times, and study their social organization and position in medieval Christian society. We pay particular attention to Enlightenment and the impact it exerted on Central European Jews at the close of 18th century and thus launched significant social and culture transformation that culminated in the emancipation of Jews and their integration into the modern society. The course also analyzes various factors that led to Holocaust, among them anti-Semitism and nationalism, sustained by the 19th century philosophy of Romanticism. Students benefit from an excursion to the Jewish cemeteries of Prague and a three day trip to Cracow, once one of the most vibrant centers of Jewish life in Central Europe.