History, Politics and Culture of Central European Jewry - JPM550

• Title: History, Politics and Culture of Central European Jewry
• Guaranteed by: Department of Political Science (23-KP)
• Faculty: Faculty of Social Sciences
• Actual: from 2023
• Semester: summer
• E-Credits: 7
• Examination process: summer s.:
• Hours per week, examination: summer s.:1/1, Ex [HT]
• Capacity: unlimited / unlimited (20)
• Min. number of students: unlimited
• 4EU+: no
• Virtual mobility / capacity: no
• State of the course: not taught
• Language: English
• Teaching methods: full-time
• Teaching methods: full-time
• 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: Hana Kubátová, M.A., Ph.D.
• Teacher(s): Hana Kubátová, M.A., Ph.D.
• Class: Courses for incoming students
• Is interchangeable with: JMMZ043

Annotation

Last update: PhDr. Petr Bednařík, Ph.D. (22.11.2021)

This course explores histories of (East-)Central European Jewry. It introduces and critically examines selected core themes that formed histories and cultures of the Jews from the eighteenth until the twenty-first century. Topics include traditional Jewish society, enlightenment, emancipation, racial antisemitism, Jewish nationalism and Zionism, Holocaust and the rebirth of Jewish life after 1945.

Readings include both primary and secondary sources. All students are required to have read the assigned weekly reading before attending the class. Apart from that, students will be given occasional in-class readings (in the form of handouts).

Literature

Last update: PhDr. Petr Bednařík, Ph.D. (22.11.2021)

viz sylabus

Syllabus

Last update: PhDr. Petr Bednařík, Ph.D. (07.12.2021)

History, Politics and Culture of Central European Jewry

Course Schedule

 

Introductory Class and Syllabus Reading

Traditional Jewish Society

Salo Baron, “Ghetto and Emancipation,” reprinted in Leo W. Schwartz, ed. The Menorah Treasury (Philadelphia 1964): 50 - 63.

Enlightenment and the Haskalah

Jacob Katz, Out of the Ghetto: The Social Background of Jewish Emancipation (New York 1978): 42-103. (Focus on pages 42-56) 

Emancipation 

Hillary L. Rubinstein, Dan Cohn-Sherbok, “Enlightenment and emancipation in continental Europe, 1750-1880,” in The Jews in the Modern World: A History since 1750 (London 2002), 15-42.

Origins of Racial Antisemitism 

Jacob Katz, From Prejudice to Destruction: Anti-Semitism, 1700-1933 (Cambridge 1980): 1-10, 245-300

Theodor Herzl and Political Zionism 

Isaiah Friedman, “Theodor Herzl: Political Activity and Achievements,” in Israel Studies, vol. 9, no. 3 (Fall 2004): 46-79.

Assimilation and Identity Crisis 

Marsha Rozenblit, “The Dissolution of the monarchy and the crisis of Jewish identity, October 1918 - June 1919,” in Reconstructing a National Identity: The Jews of Habsburg Austria during World War I (Oxford, New York 2004): 128-161.

The Holocaust 

Yehuda Bauer, Rethinking the Holocaust (New Haven and London 2002): 1-13, 39-67.

Final Paper Outlines Due / No Class

The Holocaust as a Communal Genocide

Omer Bartov, Wartime Lies and Other Testimonies, in East European Politics & Societies 25:3 (2011): 486-511.

Postwar Jewish-Gentile Experience

Jan T. Gross, Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz. Essays in Historical Interpretation (New York 2007): 81-117. 

Holocaust Memory and European Identity 

Karen Auerbach, Review Essay: Holocaust Memory in Polish Scholarship, in AJS Review 35:1 (April 2011): 137-150.

 

Course Requirements: 

Active participation: 30%

Final paper: 70%

 

Evaluation is performed in accordance with the Dean’s Provision.