The University of Denver offers Jews on the Move: Culture, People and Ideas as its core course with Foundations of Jewish Communal Service offered as a graduate course.
Jews on the Move: Culture, People and Ideas
Dr. Caryn Aviv
Jews on the Move focuses on culture, people and ideas to think about how Jewish lives and communities have changed with the emergence of modernity, particularly in the United States. Jews have been characterized as people perpetually on the move, from early biblical stories of exodus and exile to contemporary narratives of global migration and tourism. Movement in this sense is both literal – in the case of Jews who pack up, pick up, and leave for other places – and metaphorical – in the case of Jews who traverse long distances to adopt new and different identities. We will focus on a specific group and period of time: European Jews and their descendants encountering the modern age of the late 19th, 20th, and early 21st centuries in the United States.
Our journey will take us from Europe to the thriving Jewish communities of the United States, particularly New York, Los Angeles, and our own Denver. We will look at how Jews as a group have constantly ‘traveled’ to adapt traditions to new ideas – sometimes as a survival strategy and sometimes in the hopes of creating new kinds of Jews. This course focuses on Jewish social history, cultural production, and cultural artifacts that represent and imagine changing Jewish identities. We’ll be looking at films, the Broadway stage, Yiddish radio, contemporary magazines, museums, new Jewish rituals, heritage tourism, and a little poetry thrown in for good measure.
In the course you’ll explore:
• How Jewish people have imagined, defined, practiced, and adapted what it means to be Jewish in the United States.
• How Jewish people have created vibrant subcultures while also contributing to American culture and society.
• How by comparing the experiences, dilemmas and cultural products of Jewish people in America you can better understand your own identities and communities, whatever those might be.
Texts:
The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History, edited by Paul Mendes Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz
New Jews, by Caryn Aviv and David Shneer
Fighting to Become American: Jews, Gender, and the Anxiety of Assimilation, by Riv-Ellen Prell
Class Schedule:
Week One: Introduction to the class, notions of Jewish identity, movement and culture
We will go over the syllabus in the first hour, and then do an in-class exercise and discussion in the second hour.
Some old and new ideas about Jewish modernity, homelands, movement, and culture in Europe
Reading:
- Introduction (3-7), “Charter Decreed for the Jews of Prussia” (22-26), and “Concerning the Amelioration of Civil Status of the Jews" (28-36) and "The Right to be Different" (68-69) all in The Jew in the Modern World
- Preface and Introduction to New Jews: The End of the Jewish Diaspora
Concepts we’ll discuss in class: ghettos, diaspora vs. exile, homelands and movement and rootedness, Jewishness vs. Judaism
Week Two: The Enlightenment and European Jewish Citizenship
Western Europe and Beckoning Calls: Emancipation, Citizenship, Identity, and Secularism
Readings (these are all short excerpts from Jew in the Modern World):
- “Process of Political Emancipation in Western Europe, 1789-1871” (112-113) and Emancipation debates and proclamations from France (114-118)
- “On Changes in Judaism” (194-197)
- “The Society for the Culture and Science of the Jews” and “A Society to Further Jewish Integration” (213-218)
- “My Emergence from Talmudic Darkness” (250-253)
Watch and discuss several excerpts from Fiddler on the Roof
Eastern Europe: Anti-Semitism and Poverty, Socialism and Zionism, or Emigration?
Readings: (all in The Jew in the Modern World)
- East European Jewry (372-374)
- “Awaiting a Pogrom”, “The City of Slaughter,” “The Massacre of the Jews at Kishinev,” (408-411)
-“To America or to the Land of Israel?” (413-414)
-“Off to America!” (463-465)
Watch more excerpts from Fiddler on the Roof
Week Three: Immigration to the “Promised Land”
Arriving in New York, Working in the Garment Industry, Yiddish Culture on the Lower East Side
Readings: (all in The Jew in the Modern World)
- “The Concordance of Judaism and Americanism” (471-472)
- Jewish Immigration into the US (472-473)
- The Russian Jew in America (474-476)
- Women Wage Workers, Sweatshops in Philadelphia, Economic Conditions of the Russian Jew in NYC, and The International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union and the American Labor Movement (478-485)
Read “The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus in class, watch first half of Hester Street
Concepts: push/pull migration models, assimilation/acculturation/melting pots/hybrids
Introducing Jewish Anxieties about Gender
Readings:
-Introduction and Chapter One: Ghetto Girls in Fighting to Become American: Jews, Gender, and the Anxiety of Assimilation
Watch Hester Street
Week Four: Second Generation Jews: Negotiating Identities
New York’s Jewish Vaudeville Stars
Reading:
- “A Republic of Nationalities” by Judah Magnes (493-496 – Jew in the Modern World)
- In Their Own Image: New York Jews in Jazz Age Popular Culture, introduction and Chapter 1 until page 40 (don’t read past the section beginning with “2nd Generation Jewish Masculinity”) – scanned on Blackboard under Course Documents
Watch first half of Funny Girl
Gender Politics, Race, and Assimilation
Readings:
-remainder of Chapter 1 in In Their Own Image pp.40-60 (scanned on Blackboard under Course Documents)
Watch and analyze the rest of Funny Girl
Shema Event: The Last Temptation of Moses: A Night of Sacred Story, The Lab at Belmar, 404 S. Upham Street in Lakewood
Week Five: Hollywood Beckons, WW II and the Cold War
Readings:
- “Mogul-dom” and “Hollywood’s Jewish Question” (on Blackboard under Course Documents)
Watch first half of An Empire of Their Own
Readings:
- Chapter 4: Fading Feuds: The Eerie Silence of the War Years in Fighting to Become American
Shema Event: Peter Cole http://www.yale.edu/opa/v35.n1/story20.html
Week Six: Fighting the War, Coming Home, Moving to the ‘Burbs
American Jewish men fighting in the US Army
Readings:
- “War and Identity,” and “Liberation and Revelation” from GI Jews (on Blackboard under Course Documents)
Watch first half of Marjorie Morningstar
Readings:
-“On the Move: 1945-1967” from A New Promised Land (on Blackboard under Course Documents)
-Chapter 5: “Strangers in Paradise: The Devouring Jewish Mother” in Fighting to Become American
Watch last half of Marjorie Morningstar
Shema Master Class with Amichai Lau-Lavie
Making Maven Matter: Reclaiming the Oral Art of Biblical Translation
Week Seven: Post-War Challenges and Changes: Building New Jewish Cultures and Institutions
Jewish counter-cultures
Readings:
-Hasidism in the Age of Aquarius (on Blackboard under Course Documents)
American Jewish Museums
Readings:
- Temples of American Identity: Jewish Museums in Los Angeles, from New Jews
Guest lecture with Joanne Kauvar, Executive Director of the Council on American Jewish Museums
Week Eight: The 1980’s: Rise of the “JAP” stereotypes, emergence of Jewish Feminism
Readings:
- Chapter 6: “The Jewish American Princess” from Fighting to Become American
Watch excerpts from Private Benjamin
Re-inventing themselves: Jewish Women, Changing Traditions
Readings:
- “Becoming a Ritual Innovator” and “Democracy, Open Access, and Jewish Feminism” from Inventing Jewish Ritual, by Vanessa Ochs
Shema Events with Ari Kelman, University of California, Davis
Public Lecture
Station Identification: A Cultural History of Yiddish Radio in America
Rimon:Master Class
The Sound of the Sacred
Week Nine: Postmodern Heeb Culture
Who are Heebs, and what’s their deal?
Readings:
- “The New Jews: Reflections on Emerging Cultural Practices” (on Blackboard under Course Documents)
Analyze Heeb magazine
Check out www.yideoz.com
Watch first half of The Hebrew Hammer
Gender Politics, Heeb-American style
Readings:
- “Guardians, Millionaires, and Fearless Fighters: Transforming Jewish Gangsters into a Usable Past” (on Blackboard, under Course Documents)
- Chapter 7: “Talking Back through Counter-Representations” in Fighting to Become American
Finish watching The Hebrew Hammer
Week Ten: Modern Pilgrimages in Search of Roots: Youth Heritage and Identity Travel to Eastern Europe and Israel.
Searching for an Elusive Past
Readings:
-“Encounters with Ghosts: Youth Tourism and the Diaspora Business,” from New Jews: The End of the Jewish Diaspora
Watch first half of Everything is Illuminated
Coming full circle
Readings:
-Epilogue from New Jews
Today we’ll eat pizza, watch remainder of Everything is Illuminated and discuss what we’ve learned together.
Foundations of Jewish
Communal Service
Dr. Caryn Aviv
This course has two main goals.
The first goal is to introduce and orient students to major historical
and contemporary themes of American Jewish communities. How have
American Jewish communities come to look like they do, and how have they
changed over time and in different places? The second goal is to
explore the rich, diverse, and complex landscape of organized Jewish
life and Jewish communal practice in the United States. We will use a
case study approach, looking at different kinds of organizations, their
missions, and their relationships to social work practice. Students
will explore the development, range, and changing nature of Jewish
agencies that have provided philanthropic, educational, and social
services to Jewish communities across the United States for the past 150
years.
Working effectively as a professional in Jewish
communities requires unique leadership skills, knowledge of Jewish
history and culture, and an awareness of issues of diversity and
pluralism. This course provides a gateway into understanding the broad
contours of the organized Jewish community, with a specific emphasis on
historical and social continuities and changes. Understanding the
historical and sociological context of American Jewish communities is
critical to developing competent social work practice and leadership in a
range of Jewish communal settings.
Course Outline:
Monday,
September 8th: Overview of American Jewish History and the Field of
Jewish Communal Service: Important Ideas, Structures, Practices, and
Challenges
Readings:
• “Reinventing North American
Jewish Communal Structures: The Crisis of Normality,” by Jeffrey
Solomon, Journal of Jewish Communal Service, Spring/Summer 2001.
•
“Principles of Jewish Communal Life for the New Millenium,” by Marla
Eglash Abraham and Steven Windmueller, Journal of Jewish Communal
Service, Summer 2000.
• “Excellence in Practice: An
Examination of the Field of Jewish Communal Service from the Standpoint
of the Professional,” by Howard Rieger, Journal of Jewish Communal
Service, Winter 2004
• “Recruitment and Retention: Imperatives
for the Field of Jewish Communal Service,” by Larry Moses, Journal
of Jewish Communal Service, Fall 2001.
Monday, September
15th: Jewish (Participatory) Philanthropy: Federations, Women’s
Leadership, and Institutional Change
Readings:
•
“Jewish Foundations: An Introduction,” by Jeffrey Solomon, Journal of
Jewish Communal Service, Fall/Winter 2005
• “Parallel Power
Structures, Invisible Careers, and the Changing Nature of American
Jewish Women’s Philanthropy,” by Susan Chambre, Journal of Jewish
Communal Service, Spring 2000.
• “Federation Philanthropy for
the Future,” by Charles Edelsberg,” Journal of Jewish Communal
Service, Winter 2004.
Guest lecture with Dr. Jeanne Abrams,
2nd hour, Overview of Colorado Jewish History
Monday, September
22: Jewish Family Services: Challenging Program Areas, Healing Clients
and Professionals, and Professional Staff Issues
Readings:
•
“Marriage of JFS and Criminal Justice System,” by Chana Widawski and
Shoshannah Frydman, Journal of Jewish Communal Service,
Winter/Spring 2007.
• Understanding the Jewish Near Poor: An
Analysis of the Population and How the Jewish Community Can Serve Them,”
by William Rapfogel, Ilene Marcus, Esther Larson, Journal of Jewish
Communal Service, Winter/Spring 2007.
• “Creating
Opportunities for Spiritual Awareness and Growth Within a Jewish Family
Service Agency,” by Rabbi Lenore Bohm, Journal of Jewish Communal
Service, Winter/Spring 2007.
• “Addressing the Professional
Leadership Crisis in the Jewish Family Service Field,” by Jaclynn
Faffer and Seymour Friedland, Journal of Jewish Communal Service,
Winter/Spring 2007.
Monday, September 29th: no class, first
night of Rosh Hashanah
Monday, October 6th: Variations in Jewish
Education, possible guest lecture and discussion with Toby Borus or
Risa Buckstein (depending on schedule availability) from the Colorado
Jewish Agency for Education (CAJE)
Readings:
• “On
Truth, Tradition, and Respect in Jewish Education,” by Zohar Raviv, Journal
of Jewish Communal Service, Summer 2000.
• “Reaching and
Teaching Jewish Youth: A Study of Post B’nai Mitzvah Retention and
Engagement,” by Sharon Ravitch, Journal of Jewish Communal Service,
Summer 2002.
Monday, October 13th: Jewish Community Relations
Organizing: Political Power and Advocacy in America
Readings:
• “The Jewish Community and American Public Policy,” by Earl
Raab, Judaism, 2000.
Monday, October 20th: Jewish Aging
and Eldercare Issues, possible facilitated discussion with Sue Stark
Readings:
• “Preparing Communal Professionals to Support Jewish Aging,”
by Susan Shevitz, Journal of Jewish Communal Service, Spring 2006
•
“Is Aging for Us? Toward a Dialogue on Jewish Long-Term Care,” by
David Dunkelman, Journal of Jewish Communal Service, Winter 2000.
•
“Forsake Them Not: The Jewish Community and Elders in Non-Jewish
Long-Term Care Facilities,” by Rabbi Dayle Friedman, Journal of
Jewish Communal Service, Spring 2006
Monday, October 27th:
Jewish Summer Camps as Formative Identity-Building Experiences, guest
visit with Don Skupsky, chair of Ramah of the Rockies
Readings:
• Excerpt from “How Goodly Are Thy Tents”?
•
“Research Findings on the Impact of Camp Ramah,” by Ariela Keysar and
Barry Kosmin
Monday, November 3rd: Complex Relationships between
American and Israeli Jews
Readings:
• “Beyond Distancing”
by Steven M. Cohen and Ari Kelman
• “The Growing Gap Between
American Jews and Israel: Two Views,” by Ardie Geldman and Steven Bayme,
Journal of Jewish Communal Service, Fall 2001.
• “The
Future of the North American Jewish Community- Israel Relationship,” by
Steven Nasatir, Journal of Jewish Communal Service, Fall 2002.
Monday,
November 10th: Global Opportunities and Challenges
Readings:
•
“Assuring Jewish Responsibility in a Changing World,” by Steven
Schwager, Journal of Jewish Communal Service, Fall/Winter 2005
• “Leadership Training for a Global Jewish Civil Service,”
by Gerald Bubis, Journal of Jewish Communal Service, Spring 2000.
Assignments
Participation in Class
Discussion (20% of your final grade)
Much of what happens in
Jewish communal service involves listening, meeting facilitation,
balancing inquiry and advocacy, and guiding policy discussions. To that
end, students will be expected to participate extensively in weekly
class discussions. This can include raising questions about the
readings and in response to other student/instructor comments, offering
critiques of arguments in the reading, and sharing personal experiences
relevant to the weekly topic.
Personal and Analytic Reflection,
due October 10th via email by the beginning of class (20% of your final
grade)
This mid-term assignment is designed to offer a
reflective analysis of the relationships between personal biography and
emerging professional identity. In this short (no more than 7 pages)
reflection, I’d like you to think and write about the following
questions:
• What in your personal background, history, and life
experience strongly resonates with or departs from the themes and issues
we’re exploring in the course? In other words, if you have a personal
connection to Jewish communities, identities, and histories – describe
and narrate some of those links. If you don’t have a personal
connection, what interests you about this field and the professional
social work opportunities it offers?
• What brought you to take
this course from a personal and professional perspective?
• What
kinds of issues, dilemmas, and ideas do you find compelling and
challenging that you might want to pursue in a Jewish professional
context as a social worker? In other words, if you could imagine
yourself working in a Jewish communal setting in the future, what would
be your passions, where could you imagine working, what would you want
to work on, and why?
Organizational profile and analysis, due
November 10th via email by the beginning of class (60% of your final
grade)
Looking at the local Denver Jewish communal landscape,
this assignment will provide you with the opportunity to do ethnographic
field research in the form of an analytic case study. You will choose a
communal organization that works in an area of interest to you, and
focus in-depth on the history, mission, constituencies, services, and
funding/donor base of that particular agency or organization.
Additionally, students will include contextual (social, political,
historical) background on the emergence and history of this type of
organization. With the instructor’s help, you are encouraged set up and
conduct in-depth interviews with any willing staff members at this
agency. You can also analyze the agency’s brochures/publicity
materials/website. Then I’d like you to write a paper (no more than ten
pages) that describes the agency, integrates an historical perspective,
and analyzes the interview data and supporting material in detail. The
paper should be double-spaced, use 12 point font, have one-inch
margins, and should have a title page and bibliographic citations. The
paper is due via email at caviv@du.edu by the beginning of class on
November 12th. Some guiding questions for your paper and potential
interviews:
Mission:
• What’s the mission of the
organization?
• How do staff members see the organization as
fulfilling its mission (or drifting from it, if relevant)?
• Has
this mission remained consistent over the years?
• Does this
organization partner with other organizations? If so, in what kinds of
ways and around what issues? If not, why not?
• What are the
challenges and opportunities of working in this organizational domain?
•
What is particularly Jewish (or not) about this organization?
Services
and Clientele:
• What kind of services does the organization
provide?
• Have the range of services and programs changed over
time at all? If so, in what ways have they expanded or involved
new/changing aspects?
• Who uses your organization’s services and
programs? Who are the clientele? What are their needs, and have those
needs changed over time? If needs have changed – what are some of the
causes and factors, and how have those changes been addressed?
•
What are the challenges and opportunities of working with this
organization’s clientele and providing the range of services that the
organization offers?
Donors and Funding
• How does the
organization pay for its staff, programs and services? Who funds the
organization?
• Does the organization accept government or state
funding? Why or why not?
• Has the agency experienced ups and
downs in funding? Can you explain (i.e., a question about recessions,
levels of unemployment, whether an issue is on the community’s radar
screen or not, etc.)
Questions for people willing to be
interviewed:
• How long have you worked at this agency, in this
capacity?
• What is your background and training in Jewish
communal service and leadership?
• What do you find rewarding
/find challenging about your own work in this organization?
• What
do you find rewarding /find challenging about working in the wider
Jewish community in Denver?
Bibliography:
Bayme, S.
(Ed.) (1989). Facing the Future. Tel Aviv, Israel: Ktav Press.
Cohen, S. (1996). Reengineering the Jewish Community. Journal
of Jewish Communal Service, Vol. 73, 6-13.
Deutsch, E.
(1995). Women in Leadership Roles in Federations: An Historic Review. Journal
of Jewish Communal Service, Vol. 72, 96-101.
Dubin, D.
(1983). Essential Competencies for the Jewish Communal Professional. Journal
of Jewish Communal Service, 60, 11-14.
Elazar, D. (1997).
Jewish Communal Structures Around the World. Journal of Jewish
Communal Service, Vol. 74, 20-131.
Elazar, D. (1995). Community
and Polity. New York, NY: Jewish Publication Society.
Goldberg,
J. (1996). Jewish Power: Inside the American Jewish Establishment.
New York, NY: Addison-Wesley Publishing.
Kimelman, R.
(1989). Taking Risks for Jewish Unity. Journal of Jewish Communal
Service, Vol. 65, 197-203.
Liebman, C. (1979). Leadership
and Decision-Making in a Jewish Federation: The New York Federation of
Jewish Philanthropies. American Jewish Year Book. New York, NY:
American Jewish Committee.
Mendes-Flohr, P., and Reinharz, J.
(1995). The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History.
Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Schor, J. and Cohen, S.
(2002). Centering on professionals: The 2001 Study of JCC Personnel
in North America. New York, NY: Jewish Community Center Association.
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