Jewish Studies: A Story of an Academic Discipline - AHZ500022E

• Title: Jewish Studies: A Story of an Academic Discipline
• Guaranteed by: International Office (21-ZO)
• Faculty: Faculty of Arts
• Actual: from 2023
• Semester: summer
• Points: 0
• E-Credits: 6
• Examination process: summer s.:
• Hours per week, examination: summer s.:1/1, Ex [HT]
• Capacity: unknown / unknown (15)
• Min. number of students: unlimited
• 4EU+: no
• Virtual mobility / capacity: no
• State of the course: taught
• Language: English
• Teaching methods: full-time
• Teaching methods: full-time
• Is provided by: AHZ500022
• Note: course can be enrolled in outside the study plan; enabled for web enrollment; priority enrollment if the course is part of the study plan
• Guarantor: doc. PhDr. Pavel Sládek, Ph.D.; doc. PhDr. Daniel Boušek, Ph.D.
• Class: A – Mezioborová nabídka VP: Historické vědy; Exchange - 08.3 History; Exchange - 08.9 Others-Humanities

Annotation

English

Last update: Mgr. Lenka Kristenová (12.02.2024)

The aim of this course is to introduce students to the story of the emergence and development of the academic study of Jewish history and culture. We will discuss how the first attempts at understanding the Jewish culture were linked to inter-religious polemics of late Antiquity and later Middle Ages. In the early modern period, the interest in Judaism occurred in the context of the early forms of ethnography and was closely intertwined with the formulation and propagation of many anti-Judaic stereotypes, which later nourished the modern forms of anti-Semitism. Not surprisingly, the first truly modern study of Jewish history and culture was promoted by Jewish scholars themselves. But the adherents of the Wissenschaft des Judenthums – Science on Judaism, flourishing mostly in German speaking countries, were at the same time involved in the theological and political debates within Jewish society, which resulted in the split of one Rabbinic Judaism into various branches, all of which have different attitudes toward academic study. We will also trace the painful story of the animosity of the Western universities against institutionalization of Jewish Studies as an autonomous discipline and the emergence of modern Jewish rabbinical seminars with important research activities, such as the Juedisch-Theologisches Seminar in Breslau and later the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Hebrew Union College, and the Yeshiva University. We will talk about the first attempts to establish chairs in Jewish Studies in England, USA, and the project of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the Mandate Palestine between the two world wars. With regards to the post-WWII development, we will concentrate not only on the major institutions and research trends in the West (Israel, USA, UK) but we will also include a description of the situation in the East-Central Europe on the examples of Czechoslovakia and Hungary. The course will also deal with the recent trends and the challenges faced by the discipline in Czech Republic and elsewhere.

Czech

Last update: Mgr. Lenka Kristenová (12.02.2024)

See the English version.

Course completion requirements

Last update: Mgr. Lenka Kristenová (12.02.2024)

 

Literature

Last update: Mgr. Lenka Kristenová (12.02.2024)

Julius Carlebach (ed.), Wissenschaft des Judemtums. Anfaenge der Judaistik in Europa, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesselschaft, 1992. 

Ismar Schorsch, Leopold Zunz. Creativity in Adversity, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016. 

Ismar Schorsch, From Text to Context. The Turn to History in Modern Judaism, Brandeis University Press, 1994. 

Steven M. Lowenstein, The Berlin Jewish Community. Enlightenment, Family and Crisis, 1770–1830, Oxford, 1994. 

Nils Roemer, Jewish Scholarship and Culture in Nineteenth-Century Germany. Between History and Faith, The University of Wisconsin Press, 2005. 

Moshe Pelli, The Age of Haskalah. Studies in Hebrew Literature of the Enlightenment in Germany, Lanham et al: University press of America, 2006. 

Anne O. Albert et al (eds.), Frontiers of Jewish Scholarship: Expanding, Origins, Transcending Borders, Philadelphia: Upenn, 2022.