"The Jewish People ll: 
Jewish History from Medieval Times to the Present"

Judaic 102
Department of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies
University of Massachusetts at Amherst
Fall 2000

Professor: Dr. Aviva Ben-Ur
Tuesday and Thursday 11:15-12:30 p.m.
Classroom: TBA
Office: Herter Hall 731
Office Telephone: (413) 545-
Office Hours: Tuesday and Thursday 9:00-11:00
E-mail: aben-ur@judnea.umass.edu

Course Description

Jews have always comprised a fraction of the world population.  
Why are they worthy of study?  One of the reasons is their enormous and
disproportionate impact on the non-Jewish world.  Another is the
fascinating internal diversity of the Jewish people, both ideologically
and ethnically.  This course will explore Jewish civilization through the
often overlapping lenses of religion and ethnicity.  Throughout the
course, the Jews will also be considered as a culture and a civilization,
with the gendered experiences of both Jewish men and women emphasized.  
We will also consider the impact of Jewish communities on the non-Jewish
host societies in which they settled. Through primary and secondary source
readings, lectures, film clips, slide shows, and class discussions, this
course will cover the medieval through modern eras of Jewish history (315
CE to the present), and both the western and eastern hemispheres.

Course Requirements

1. While there are no prerequisites for this course, The Jewish People l
is recommended as prepatory background.

2. This is a reading-intensive course.  Readings average 60 pages per
week.  Some readings are lighter or easier (i.e. more fun) than others.  
Be sure to check the syllabus for the option to skim or read selectively
and for optional readings.  Keep in mind that some pages need not be read
since they include only footnotes.  For convenience, the approximate
number of pages for each class is calculated in square brackets (e.g.,
[approx. 29 pp.] Students will take five in-class quizzes on the readings
and lectures covered since the previous quiz.  These quizzes are composed
of terms to identify and short questions.  In addition to the quizzes,
students will complete a 5-page biographical essay (see attached form for
description) on an historical figure pertinent to medieval or modern
Jewish history, an in-class midterm exam, and an in-class final exam.

3. Think of this class as a job (you love).  Just as missing work days and
neglecting to complete office work efficiently will harm your chances of
promotion, so too will missing classes and not completing the assignments
adversely affect your grade for this class.  Likewise, regular attendance
and high quality performance on quizzes and assignments will bring you the
results you have earned.

4. Lectures are as important as readings.  Lectures reinforce the
readings, and also add new material for which students are responsible.
	
5. Students are expected to attend all class meetings.  Students arriving
late to class, after attendance is taken, are required to alert me to
their presence at the end of class.  Otherwise, they will be marked
absent.  Students are responsible for the classes they miss.  In case of
absence, a student should request the notes from another student.  Due
dates are listed in the syllabus; it is the students responsibility to
keep track of them.  If a student falls ill or has a personal emergency
that requires him/her to ask for an extension, h/she must submit to me a
letter from his/her doctor or from the Dean of Students Office.  In the
case that a student cannot avoid missing a class, that student is still
responsible for the material covered and for changes in the class schedule
announced during that class.  If a quiz is given during a students
unexcused absence, the student will receive a 0 for that quiz.

6. Students should bring reading materials assigned for that week to each
class.

7. Students with learning disabilities should alert me to them
immediately.

Required Texts

Aviva Ben-Ur, ed.  Course Packet for The Jewish Experience in America.  
Amherst, MA: Textbook Annex, 2000.  (Available at the Textbook Annex).  A
copy of the Course Packet is also available on reserve.  In this syllabus,
the Course Packet is designated as (CP)

William Hallo, David Ruderman and Michael Stanislawski, eds.  Heritage:
Civilization and the Jews, Source Reader.  New York: Praeger Publishers,
1984.  In this syllabus, this book is designated as (H)

Additional Texts
Optional readings are available on reserve and are marked (R) in this
syllabus.

Calculation of Grades
Five quizzes and attendance				25%
Mid-term take-home examination 				25%
Biographical paper					25%
Final exam						25%

Class Schedule With Assigned Readings

Note: readings listed under a date are due on that date!

Thursday, September 7: Introduction: The Jews: A People, A Religion, A
Civilization
No advanced readings required, except to read the syllabus in its
entirety.
 
Tuesday, September 12: Jews in the Roman Empire: Legal Status of the Jews
and the Development of the Jewish Community in Exile

The Shaping of Traditions (First to Ninth Centuries); etc., pp.63-top of
82.  (H)

The Barbarian Invasions of Europe: Fifth Century.  In Haim Beinart, Atlas
of Medieval Jewish History, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992, pp.13- top
of p.16.  (CP)

Yitzhak F. Baer.  The Origins of the Jewish Communal Organization in the
Middle Ages.  In Binah: Studies in Jewish History, vol. 1, ed. Joseph Dan,
New York: Praeger, 1989, pp.59-82; READ pp.59-67 ONLY!!!  (CP)  [approx.
29 pp.]

Thursday, September 14: Jews in the Islamic World

Under the New Order; and The Koran on the Treatment of The People of the
Book, etc.  In Norman A. Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands: A History and
Source Book, Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America,
pp.22-39; 149-151.  (CP)

The Jews of the Arabian Peninsula, etc.  In Atlas of Medieval Jewish
History, p.18-top of p.21.  (CP)

The Koran on the Children of Israel, pp.82-93.  (H)  [approx. 27 pp.]

Tuesday, September 19: The Golden Age and Its Golden Men: Jews in Muslim
Spain

The Golden Era.  In Jane S. Gerber, The Jews of Spain: A History of the
Sephardic Experience, New York: The Free Press, 1992, pp.60-89.  (CP)

Muslim Spain.  In Atlas of Medieval Jewish History, pp.35-36.  (CP)

The Assertion of Spanish Jewrys Independence Under Hasdai ibn Shaprut,
etc., pp.96-122.  (H)  [approx. 43 pp.]

Thursday, September 21: Masters and Mistresses of Their Modest Domain:
Jewish Autonomy in Medieval Europe

Quiz #1

David Biale.  Corporate Power in the Middle Ages.  In Power and
Powerlessness in Jewish History, New York: Schocken Books, 1986, pp.58-86.  
(CP)

Emily Taitz.  Womens Voices, Womens Prayers: The European Synagogues of
the Middle Ages.  In Daughters of the King: Women and the Synagogue, ed.
Susan Grossman and Rivka Haut, Philadelphia and Jerusalem: The Jewish
Publication Society, 1992, pp.59-71.  (CP)

The Ethical Wills of Judah ibn Tibbon and Eleazar of Mainz, etc.,
pp.139-top of 148.  (H)

[approx. 29 pp.]

Tuesday, September 26: Jewish Gender Roles and Ideals in Medieval Europe

Femminization and Its Discontents: Torah Study as a System for the
Domination of Women.  In Daniel Boyarin, The Rise of Heterosexuality and
the Invention of the Jewish Man, Berkeley: University of California Press,
1997, pp.151-185.  (CP)

Judith R. Baskin.  Jewish Women in the Middle Ages.  In Jewish Women in
Historical Perspective, ed. Judith R. Baskin, Detroit: Wayne State
University Press, 1991, pp.94-114.  (CP)  [approx. 26 pp.]

Thursday, September 28: Jews and the Crusades

Jewish Communities in Ashkenaz, etc.  In Atlas of Medieval Jewish History,
pp.38-42.  (CP)

The Crucible of Europe and The Charter of Bishop Rudiger of Speyer,
pp.95-96 and bottom of p.122-p.129.  (H)  [approx. 16 pp.]

Tuesday, October 3: Oppression and Creativity in Medieval Christian
Europe: Blood Libels, Expulsions and Jewish Vitality

The Jews of England Up to the Expulsion, etc.  Atlas of Medieval Jewish
History, pp.57-top 62; 64; 72-75; 111-112. (CP)

Jacob Rader Marcus.  The Passau Host Desecration, etc.  In The Jew in the
Medieval World: A Source Book: 315-1791, New York: Atheneu, 1975,
pp.121-136; 155-158.  (CP)

Cecil Roth.  The Medieval Conception of the Jew: A New Interpretation.  
In Essential Papers on Judaism and Christianity in Conflict From Late
Antiquity to the Reformation, ed. Jeremy Cohen, New York, 1991,
pp.298-308.  (CP)  [approx. 30 pp.]

Thursday, October 5:  Iberian Jews (Spain and Portugal): Forced
Conversion, Expulsion, and Exile

Quiz #2

Film clip: Song of the Sephardi

Rene Levine Melammed.  Sephardi Women in the Medieval and Early Modern
Periods.  In Jewish Women in Historical Perspective, ed. Judith R. Baskin,
Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991, pp.115-134.  (CP)

H.H. Ben-Sasson.  The Generation of the Spanish Exiles Considers Its Fate.  
In Binah: Studies in Jewish History, vol. 1, ed. Joseph Dan, New York:
Praeger, 1989, pp.83-98.  (CP)

Isaac Abravanel, Introduction to the Former Prophets,Andrs Bernaldez, How
the Jews Were Ejected From Spain, and The Edict of Expulsion (Spain).  In
The Expulsion 1492 Chronicles: An Anthology of Medieval Chronicles
Relating to the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain and Portugal, ed. David
Raphael, North Hollywood, California: Carmi House Press, 1992, pp.51-54;
69-73; 189-193.  (CP)

Atlas of Medieval Jewish History, pp.65-67; middle of p.74-top of p.77;
82-86.  (CP)  [approx. 34 pp.]

Optional:

David M. Gitlitz and Linda Kay Davidson, Preface, Introduction; Cooking
Medieval in a Modern Kitchen; and Juana Nezs Lechugas y Rbanas.  In A
Drizzle of Honey: The Lives and Recipes of Spains Secret Jews, pp.xiii-xv;
1-12; 13-18; 30-31.  (R)

Tuesday, October 10: New Christians in Exile: The Sephardic Jews of
Amsterdam

Joseph Kaplan.  From Apostasy to Return to Judaism: The Portuguese Jews in
Amsterdam.  In Binah: Studies in Jewish History, vol. 1, ed. Joseph Dan,
New York: Praeger, 1989, pp.99-117.  (CP)

Ibid.  Political Concepts in the World of the Portuguese Jews of Amsterdam
During the Seventeenth Century: The Problem of Exclusion and the
Boundaries of Self-Identity. Menasseh Ben Israel and His World. Yosef
Kaplan, ed. pp.45-62.  READ pp.49-62 ONLY!!!  (CP)  [approx. 17 pp.]

Thursday, October 12: Jews in the Ottoman Empire: Romaniote, Mizrahim and
Sephardim

Atlas of Medieval Jewish History, pp.70-top of p.72; 88-91.  (CP)

Bernard Lewis.  The Jews of Islam, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton
University Press, pp.120-top of p.148.  (CP)

Optional:

Avigdor Levy.  Jewish Settlement in the Ottoman Empire, and The
Ottoman-Jewish Symbiosis in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries.  In The
Sephardim in the Ottoman Empire, Princeton, New Jersey: The Darwin Press,
1992, pp.1-41.  (R)

Jacob Barnai.  On the History of the Jews in the Ottoman Empire, Sephardi
Jews in The Ottoman Empire: Aspects of Material Culture, ed. Esther
Juhasz, Jerusalem: The Israel Museum, 1990, pp.19-35.  (R)  [approx. 22
pp.]

Tuesday, October 17: The Kabbalah of Isaac Luria and Shabbetai Zvi

Atlas of Medieval Jewish History, pp. 93; 113-115.  (CP)

The Messianic Mood of Sixteenth-Century Safed, pp.180-top of 190.  (H)  
[approx. 15 pp.]

Thursday, October 19: Here We Stay: The Jews of Poland

Quiz #3

How Jews First Came to Poland: Three Legends.  In Diane K. Roskies and
David G. Roskies, The Shtetl Book, New York: Ktav Publishing House,
pp.xi-xiii.  (CP)

Antony Polonsky; Jakub Basista and Andrzej Link-Lencowski, eds.  The Jews
in Old Poland, 1000-1795, London: I.B. Tauris, 1993, pp.1-9; 45-62.  (CP)

The Beginnings of Jewish Settlement in Poland.  In Atlas of Medieval
Jewish History, pp.64-65.  (CP)  [approx. 17 pp.] Tuesday, October 24: The
Jews in Renaissance Italy

Howard Adelman.  Italian Jewish Women.  In Jewish Women in Historical
Perspective, ed. Judith R. Baskin, Detroit: Wayne State University Press,
1991, pp.135-158.  (CP)

The Significance of Leon Modenas Autobiography for Early Modern Jewish and
General European History.  In The Autobiography of a Seventeenth-Century
Venetian Rabbi: Leon Modenas Life of Judah, trans. and ed. Mark R. Cohen,
New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1988, pp.3-18.  (CP)

A Handbook of Hebrew Rhetoric in the Setting of Renaissance Italy, etc.,
pp.159-174.  (H)  [approx. 35 pp.]

Thursday, October 26

Midterm Examination

Tuesday, October 31: The Jews of Suriname, South America: Slaves, Sugar
and Salvation in the Context of the New World

lecture will include a 10-minute slide show

Introduction; and The Cultural and Intellectual Environment.  In Jews in
Another Environment; Surinam in the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century,
Robert Cohen, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1991, pp.1-10 and 94-123.  (CP)

Preface, Editors Introduction, The Jewish Community in Surinam: A
Historical Survey, David de Is. C. Nassy, Author of the Essai Historique
Sur Surinam; An Eighteenth-Century Prayer of the Jews of Surinam.  In The
Jewish Nation in Surinam, ed. Robert Cohen, Amsterdam: S. Emmering, 1982,
11-12; 13-16; 19-27; 65-73; 75-87.  (CP)

Jewish Plantations in Surinam, Atlas of Medieval Jewish History, p.102.  
(CP)  [approx. 45 pp.]

Thursday, November 2: Hasidim and Mitnagdim (Mystics and Anti-Mystics)  

Evyatar Friesel.  Atlas of Modern Jewish History, New York and Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1990, pp.50-51.  (CP)

Solomon Maimon, The New Hasidim, etc.  The Jew in the Modern World: A
Documentary History, compiled and edited by Paul Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda
Reinharz, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995, pp.387-393.  
(CP)

Shmuel Ettinger.  The Hasidic Movement-Reality and Ideals.  In Essential
Papers on Hasidism: Origins to Present, ed. Gershon David Hundert, New
York and London: New York University Press, 1991, pp.226-243.  (CP)

Martin Buber.  My Way to Hasidism.  In Essential Papers on Hasidism,
pp.499-510.  (CP)

Ada Rapoport-Albert.  On Women and Hasidism, S. A. Horodecky and The Maid
of Ludmir Tradition.  In Jewish History, Essays in Honour of Chimen
Abramsky, London: Peter Halban, 1988, pp.495-525.  (CP)  [approx. 31 pp.]

Optional:

Solomon Schechter.  The Chassidim.  Studies in Judaism, Philadelphia: The
Jewish Publication Society of America, 1896, pp.1-45.  (R)

Tuesday, November 7: Enlightenment and Emancipation

Jacob Katz, The Portents of Change.  In Out of the Ghetto: The Social
Background of Jewish Emancipation, 1770-1870, New York: Schocken Books,
1978, pp.28-41.  (CP)

Jane Gerber, The Jews of Spain, pp.229-241.  (CP)

The Process of Political Emancipation in Western Europe, 1789-1871.  In
The Jew in the Modern World, pp.112-136.  (CP)

Road From the Ghetto (1789-1914), etc., pp.213-top of p.222.  (H)  
[approx. 39 pp.]

Optional: 

Michael A. Meyer.  Where Does the Modern Period of Jewish History Begin?
Judaism 24:3 (Summer 1975): 329-338.  (R)

Salo Wittmayer Baron.  Newer Approaches to Jewish Emancipation.  
Diogenes: An International Review of Philosophy and Humanistic Studies 29
(Spring) 1960, pp.56-81.  (R)

Thursday, November 9: Origins of Jewish Denominationalism

Biography sources due

Religious Tendencies in Modern Judaism.  In Atlas of Modern Jewish
History, 52-57.  (CP)

Emerging Patterns of Religious Adjustment: Reform, Conservative,
Neo-Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox Judaism.  In The Jew in the Modern World,
pp.155-176; 197-206.  (CP)

[approx. 38 pp.] 

Optional 

Ismar Schorsch.  Zecharias Frankel and the European Origins of
Conservative Judaism, Judaism 30: 3 (Summer 1981), pp.344-354.  (R)

Jacob Katz.  The Possible Connection of Sabbatianism, Haskalah and the
Reform Movement.  (In Hebrew).  Studies in Jewish Religious and
Intellectual History Presented to Alexander Altmann, ed. Siegfried Stein
and Raphael Loewe, Alabama: University of Alabama Press, pp.83-100.  (R )

Tuesday, November 14: Wissenschaft des Judentums (Science of Judaism): A
New Way of Looking at Jewish History and Civilization

Michael Meyer.  The Emergence of Jewish Historiography: Motives and
Motifs.  History and Theory 27 (1988): 160-175.  (CP)

Ismar Schorsch.  Immanuel Wolf/On the Concept of a Science of Judaism. In
Ideas of Jewish History, ed. Michael A. Meyer, New York: Behrman House,
Inc., 1974, pp.141-155.  (CP)  [approx. 16 pp.]

Optional:

Ismar Schorsch.  The Myth of Sephardic Supremacy.  Leo Baeck Institute
Year Book 34 (1989): 47-66.  (R)

Jacob Katz.  Emancipation and Jewish Studies.  Jewish Emancipation and
Self-Emancipation, pp.75-85.  (R)

Nachman Krochmal and Heinrich Graetz.  Nachman Krochmal/A Philosophy of
Jewish History and Heinrich Graetz, Judaism/Understood Through History, in
Ideas of Jewish History, pp.189-214; 218-244.  (R)

Thursday, November 16: The Jews of Russia and Eastern Europe

Quiz #4

Film clip: Fiddler on the Roof

Zipperstein, Steve.  Haskalah, Cultural Change, and Nineteenth Century
Russian Jewry: A Reassessment Journal of Jewish Studies 35:2 (1983):
191-207.  (CP)

The Pale of Settlement, etc., pp.229-top of p.233.  (H)  [approx. 13 pp.]

Tuesday, November 21: The Jews of Germany and Germanic Lands

Julius Carlebach.  Family Structure and the Position of Jewish Women.  
Revolution and Evolution: 1848 in German-Jewish History, ed. Werner E.
Mosse, Arnold Paucker, Reinhard Rrup, Tbingen: Mohr, 1981, pp.157-187.  
Note: 188-203 are optional!!  (CP)

Jewish Identity Challenged and Redefined.  The Jew in the Modern World,
pp.249-265; 267-279; 282-289.  (CP)  [approx. 53 pp.]

Thursday, November 23

No class-Thanksgiving

Tuesday, November 28: The Rise of Zionism

Shlomo Avineri.  The Making of Modern Zionism: The Intellectual Origins of
the Jewish State. New York: Basic Books, Inc., pp.88-100, 151-158,
187-197.  (CP)

The Birth of Zionism, etc., pp.234-240; 263-264; 281-285.  (H)  [approx.
18 pp.]

Optional: 

Jacob Katz.  The Jewish National Movement: A Sociological Analysis, in
Jewish Emancipation and Self-Emancipation, Philadelphia: The Jewish
Publication Society, 1986, pp.89-103.  (R)

Thursday, November 30: The Great Wave of Jewish Immigration to the US,
World War l, and Restrictive Immigration Laws

Quiz #5

Salo Wittmayer Baron.  The American Experience.  Great Ages and Ideas of
the Jewish People, ed. Salo Wittmayer Baron, et al., New York: Random
House, 1956, pp.455-484.  (CP)

Mass Immigration From Eastern Europe, etc., pp.251-257.  (H)  [approx. 22
pp.]

Tuesday, December 5: The Holocaust

Film clip: Yehoram Gaons From Toledo to Jerusalem
 
Jacob Katz.  Was the Holocaust Predictable?  Commentary 59 (May 1975):
41-48.  (CP)

En Tierras de Polonia/In Polish Lands (Ladino and English).  In And the
World Stood Silent: Sephardic Poetry of the Holocaust, trans. Isaac Jack
Lvy, Urbana and Chicago, University of Illinois Press, 1989, pp.209;
212-213.  (CP)

Mein Kampf, etc., pp.265-278.  (H)					      [approx. 23 pp.]

Optional:

Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi.  Assimilation and Racial Anti-Semitism: The
Iberian and the German Models.  The Leo Baeck Memorial Lecture 26, New
York: Leo Baeck Institute, 1982, pp.1-38.  (R)

Thursday, December 7: The Establishment of the State Israel

M. E. Yapp.  The Near East Since the First World War.  London: Longman,
1991, pp.116-120; 124-139, 280-291.  (CP)

Albert Memmi: Portrait of a Jew (1962).  In The Jews in the Modern World,
pp.289-292.  (CP)

Out of the Ashes (1914-1945), etc., p.259-top of p.260; 279-284.  (H)

[approx. 28 pp.]

Biographical paper due

Tuesday, December 12: The Jews Who Werent There: Jewish Communities and
Individuals Overlooked in Jewish History (non-Ashkenazi Jews, non-Sephardi
Jews, hybrid Jews, suddenly Jewish, etc.)

Film clip: Novia Que Te Vea (May I See You a Bride)

Ephraim Isaac.  Hearing the Call: Solidarity with Ethiopian Jews.  In The
Narrow Bridge: Jewish Views on Multiculturalism, ed. Marla Brettschneider,
New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, pp.219-235.  Note: be
sure to read footnote 25 on p.235.  (CP)

Atlas of Modern Jewish History, pp.10-12; 82-88; 129; 142-144.  (CP)

[approx. 21 pp.]

Thursday, December 14: Jews in America Today-Assimilation or Return?

Wendy Shalit.  Introduction and Beyond Modernity (chapter 12).  In A
Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue.  New York: The Free Press,
1999, 1-12 and 214-238.  (CP)

Atlas of Modern Jewish History, pp.130-141.  (CP)

Nathan Glazer.  Introduction, in American Judaism, Chicago and London: The
University of Chicago Press, 1989, pp.1-11.  (CP)  [approx. 37 pp.]

Final exam: To be announced





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