The Boston University Department of Religion is pleased to announce the launch of The Other Within: Jewish Secularization, a multi-year program funded by a grant from the Center for Cultural Judaism/Posen Foundation.
The program will consist of three interrelated courses, beginning Fall 2010: The Modern Jew (the core course), The Political Jew, and The Heretical Jew,
to be co-taught by Michael Zank, Abigail Gillman, and Adam Seligman.
Beginning September 2010, the program will also sponsor lectures,
symposia, and seminars on topics in cultural Judaism for the wider BU
community. Information about The Other Within and secular Judaism are available on the program's blog.
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The course
descriptions appear below with complete syllabi to follow when
available.
The Modern Jew
Professors Michael Zank and Abigail Gillman
This course offers an inter-disciplinary approach to the study of the modern Jewish experience, an experience rich in revolutionary changes, social, political, and cultural transformations, geographic displacement and burgeoning opportunity to which Jews responded in a variety of ways, informed by the rich and varigated backgrounds of Jewish culture, but also in critical engagement with tradition. The “modern Jew” is not a single type but a plurality of types, ranging from the religious to the atheistic and from the proudly affirmative to the self-hating Jew, described by Theodor Lessing. Of particular interest to us are modern secular forms of Jewish self-formation and expression.
We begin our course by a look at the current moments, by way of a survey of periodicals and online sources that report on Jewish life from a wide variety of perspectives. What key issues define Jewish life today? How is the present different from the past? What are the most pressing issues now facing the Jewish communities in the US, in Israel, and in Europe?
Keeping this picture in mind, we will proceed to examine the conditions of modern Jewish life from the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries by way of historical documents and testimonies, literary and philosophical texts, films, and secondary sources. Units II and III examine the central issues in twentieth-century America and Israel. Units IV and V go back in time to the age of Enlightenment and emancipation in order trace the Jewish quest to become full-fledged citizens of European society. Units VI and VII return to the present to examine two aspects of modern culture where Jews have played a key role: the domains of learning and scholarship, and the entertainment industry.
Our inquiry is not primarily historicist in nature, but rather, it is designed to help us to understand how the past shapes the present. Are the responses and initiatives of modern Jewish history—cultural, religious, educational, political, social—still viable options today? Lastly, can the modern Jewish experience be used as a paradigm for other groups struggling with questions of secularism, gender, integration (minority status), and post-colonialism?
Additionally, through creative assignments, co-curricular events, and interviews (qualitative research), students will have an opportunity to relate to the subject matter in an immediate and personal way.
Note: “The Modern Jew” serves as the core course for a series of new courses on secular Judaism offered in conjunction with a grant from the Center for Cultural Judaism (Posen Foundation). For more information see the program website, currently at http://secularjudaismbu.blogspot.com, where we will also post information on co-curricular events. There will be a few events on and off campus, including a mandatory field trip to the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, MA (date TBA). All students are expected to participate, so please notify us ahead of time if you have a conflict.
Texts:
Salomon Maimon, An Autobiography. Trans. T. Clark Murray.ISBN-13: 978-0252069772
Philip Roth, Goodbye Columbus. ISBN-13: 978-0679748267
Amos Oz, A Tale of Love and Darkness. ISBN-13: 978-0156032520f
Daniel Boyarin, Unheroic Conduct. The Rise of Heterosexuality and the Invention of the Jewish Man.
ISBN: 9780520210509
Jacob Katz, Out of the Ghetto. ISBN-13: 978-0195074536
Modern Judaism. An Oxford Guide Ed. De Lange & Freud-Kandel. ISBN-13: 9780199262878
Schedule of Meetings and Readings:
UNIT ONE: THE CONTEMPORARY MOMENT
Weeks One and Two (one session each)
Sept 3
Essay (1-2 pages): From what angle do you approach the notion of a “modern Jew”?
Sept 8
Essay (3-4 pages), beginning with the sentence: “The three most pressing issues confronting Jews/the Jewish community today are …”
To prepare for this essay, read chapters 6-9 and chapter 16 (“Jewish Identities,” Kopelowitz) in Modern Judaism.
Then look at as many newspapers and periodicals as you can, both online and in print. Begin with Jewish media sources but also scan some of major news media. You might look at the new Jewish Review of Books; Moment Magazine; Commentary; The Forward; The Jewish Week (NY); the Boston Jewish Advocate; Ha’aretz (online English edition). Look at the IRAC website (Israel Religious Action Committee), the online journals Tablet, Zeek, etc.
Week Three: Moments
Sept. 13 An Israeli Moment
*Reading: Etgar Keret, “Cocked and Locked.”
Modern Judaism Guide, “A National home,” Ottolenghi; “Post-Zionism,” Ottolenghi; “Israeli Jewry,” Kaplan.
Sept. 15 An American Moment
*Reading: Nathan Englander, “The Gilgul of Park Avenue” (The Atlantic Monthly, March 1999)
Online source: http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/99mar/gilgul.htm
MJ, “American Jewry,” Waxman.
Sept. 17 An American-Israeli Moment
*Reading: Peter Beinart, “The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment” (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/jun/10/failure-american-jewish-establishment/)
UNIT TWO: ISRAEL
Week Four
Sept 20
Readings:
Ariel Hirschfeld, “Locus and Language: Hebrew Culture in Israel, 1890-1990”
from: Cultures of the Jews. A New History (ed. David Biale), Part Three: Modern Encounters, Ch. Seven (pp. 1011ff).
Sept 22
Amos Oz, Tale of Love and Darkness.
Sept 24
Amos Oz, Tale of Love and Darkness.
Sept 27
Amos Oz, Tale of Love and Darkness.
*Amos Oz, “The Meaning of Homeland” (The Amos Oz Reader pp. 235-252)
Sept 29
*Eli Yassif, “The ‘Other’ Israel: Folk Cultures in the Modern State of Israel” from Cultures of the Jews. A New History (ed. David Biale), Part Three: Modern Encounters, Ch. Eight (pp. 1063ff).
Oct 1
Discussion: What does it mean to be an Israeli Jew?
UNIT THREE: AMERICA
Weeks Six and Seven
Oct 4
Reading: Stephen J. Whitfield, “Declarations of Independence: American Jewish Culture in the Twentieth Century” Cultures of the Jews. A New History (ed. David Biale), Part Three: Modern Encounters, Ch. Eight (pp. 1099ff). [Topic: “AMERICA”]
Oct 6
Reading: Hannah Arendt, “We Refugees” (The Jew as Pariah pp. 55-65)
Oct 8
Philip Roth , “Goodbye Columbus,” “Defender of the Faith”
Oct 12
Philip Roth, “The Conversion of the Jews,” “Eli the Fanatic”
Oct 13
Mordechai Kaplan, Questions Jews ask: Reconstructionist Answers, Chapter on “Peoplehood” and “Reconstructionist Principles” (pp. xi-xiii and pp. 3-73)
Oct 15
What does it mean to be an American Jew?
Guest lecturer: Katie Light. Introduction to Ethnographic Interviewing.
SHORT ESSAY DUE (3-4 PAGES)
UNIT FOUR: HOW WE GOT HERE
Week Eight: Out of the Ghetto
Oct 18
Katz, Out of the Ghetto, chapters 1-6
Modern Judaism, “Enlightenment and emancipation,” Dubin, and “Persecution,” van Pelt.
Oct 20
Katz, Out of the Ghetto, chapters 7-12
Oct 22
Solomon Maimon, Autobiography, pp. 1-144
Week Nine: Enlightenment and Emancipation (Germany)
Oct. 25
Maimon, An Autobiography, pp. 145-307.
Oct. 27
*Reading: The Jew in the Modern World, Chapter I, readings number 8 through 12 (Dohm, Mendelssohn, Edict of Tolerance, etc.)
Oct. 29
*Reading: The Jew in the Modern World, Chapter II, readings number 5, 7, 15, 19, and 20 (Lessing, Mendelssohn)
ETHNOGRAPHIC INTERVIEW DUE
Week Ten: Emancipation (France)
Nov. 1
Reading: The Jew in the Modern World, Chapter III, readings number 1-3, 5, 10-16 (French National Assembly 1789-91 and Napoleon’s Sanhedrin)
UNIT FIVE: AFTER EMANCIPATION
Nov. 3
*Reading: Hannah Arendt, “The Jew as Pariah: A Hidden Tradition” (in Jew as Pariah pp. 65-96)
Nov. 5
*Reading: Franz Kafka, “Report to an Academy”
*Reading: Franz Kafka, excerpt from “A Letter to his Father” (from The Jew in the Modern World, Chapter VI:3)
Week Eleven: Martin Buber and the Jewish Renaissance
Nov 8
Reading: Martin Buber, “Jewish Renaissance” (from Buber Reader, ed. Biemann, pp. 139ff)
PROSPECTUS FOR FINAL PROJECT DUE
Nov 10
Reading: Buber, “Renewal of Judaism” (pp. 145 ff)
Nov 12
Reading: Buber, “Religiosity” (pp. 115ff)
UNIT SIX: MODERN JEWISH LEARNING and JEWISH STUDIES
Week Twelve: Jewish Scholarship as Revolution
Nov 15
*Reading: The Jew in the Modern World, Chapter V, readings 1-6 (on Wissenschaft des Judentums)
Nov 17
*Reading: The Jew in the Modern World, Chapter V, readings 11 and 13 (on Wissenschaft des Judentums)
Nov 19
*Reading: “Franz Rosenzweig, the 1920s and the moment of textual reasoning” (Zank, in Textual Reasonings (ed. Ochs and Levene).
Week Thirteen
Nov 22
Reading: Susannah Heschel, “Jewish Studies as Counter-History,” (in Insider/Outsider, pp. 101-115)
Nov. 24-26 Thanksgiving Recess
UNIT SEVEN: ACTING JEWISH
Week Fourteen: The Case of the Male Jewish Sissy
Nov 29
Reading: Daniel Boyarin, Unheroic Conduct, prologue, introduction, chapters 1-2
Dec 1
Reading: Boyarin, Unheroic Conduct, chapters 3-5
Dec 3
Reading: Boyarin, Unheroic Conduct, chapters 6-8
Week Fifteen. Acting Jewish, Acting Male? Streisand & Silverman
Sunday, Dec. 5. Movie showing: Yentl. Geddes Language Center.
Dec 6
Yentl
*David Kaufman, “Streisand, Stage Jew.”
*Optional Reading: I.B. Singer, “Yentl the Yeshiva Boy.”
Dec 8
Sarah Silverman, “The Great Schlep” (Youtube) and other sketches.
*Sarah Silverman, “Jew,” The Bedwetter.
Dec 10
Concluding Discussion
Dec 13 (Monday)
FINAL PROJECT DUE BY 5:00
The Political Jew
This course examines the Jewish engagement with political modernity. The vernacular of forms and modes of Jewish political theory and practice was shaped by a millennial experience that involved, at least since late antiquity, legal autonomy but not political sovereignty. Jewish political modernity began with the decline and dismantling of the resulting political organization of the Jews as a widely disseminated collective of corporate societies that shared a memory of common origin and a legal tradition, and its substitution by a variety of peculiarly modern forms of political organization and orientations in which traditional Jewish ideals and practices may be refracted and reconfigured in novel ways.
Instead of proceeding along a chronological schema of pre-modern conditions followed by modern challenges and Jewish responses, the course readings and discussions will be grouped around themes based on a simple sociography or phenomenology of the political. This schema is loosely based on Hermann Cohen’s Ethic of Pure Will. According to this scheme, the political runs the gamut from all to many to one, whereby the individual is not the singular individual of romantic religion but the person entering into a contractual relationship with another. Sociability unfolds from or is configured by the nature of its relationships: the one and the other, the many (plurality, ethnicity, nationality in the pre-modern sense, community, group identity etc.), and the all. Thus, for example, the all may be represented by either the modern state or by one of many different forms of universality (i.e. current beliefs in multiculturalism, globalism, world peace, etc.).
This scheme (illustrated below) allows us to map multiple modern Jewish political attitudes, actions, movements, and aspirations that, while mutually contradictory, are equally representative of Jewish modernity, a fact that is easily overlooked if one privileges one solution over another, or if by the political we merely consider the question of authority or sovereignty.
The wide varieties of Jewish political modernity (from Marxist internationalism to Jabotinsky’s revisionism, from the communitarianism of the Kibbutz to the solipsism of the intellectual of Karl Mannheim’s Ideology and Utopia, from the Paris Sanhedrin to the radical democracy of Hannah Arendt) can thus be examined from the perspective of their underlying philosophical assumptions. This is to enable students to consider the political itself from a perspective that is broad and systematic while being completely specific and concrete.
The Heretical Jew
Yosef Yerushalmi classified Sigmund Freud and Baruch Spinoza as “archheritic[s] of Judaism in modern times” (Freud’s Moses, p. 35). What does it mean to speak of heresy in the absence of a revealed divine norm? This course explores the meaning of heresy in a secular world. We begin with pre-modern cases of heresy documented in the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and in Rabbinic literature – instances that involve general rules or particular individuals. We will evaluate to what extent the condemnation of the heretic, or the identification of an ‘other’ as an encroacher, stems from cultic concerns with purity, or originates in political or spiritual concerns with identity and otherness. We will then explore a range of modern heretics and heresies, in each case examining both how the term was applied and also the practical consequences and social meanings of heretical behavior. Further attention will be given to the modern retrieval of the position of the “Jew” as the exception, i.e. the Jew as the heretic par excellence – a view that entered modern discourse through classical learning, but that continues to function in novel ways as a distinguishing mark of the Jew after religion.
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