The Graduate Theological Union is offering the following courses in Spring 2010: Literature of the Haskalah: Secularization and Sexuality, and From Spinoza to Seinfeld: Secular Jewish Expression. Previously offered classes include: Secular Jewish Thought, Introduction to Jewish Folklore, and Issues In Modern Jewish History.
Literature of the Haskalah: Secularization and Sexuality
Professor Naomi Seidman
The
Haskalah in Eastern Europe: In the decades after Moses Mendelssohn
inaugurated what has become known as the Berlin Haskalah [Jewish
Enlightenment], a new and more variegated maskilic movement arose in
Galicia, Poland and Russia that flourished throughout the nineteenth
century. While the Berlin Haskalah generated a philosophical corpus,
the Eastern European maskilim tended toward literary production—satire,
romance, poetry and autobiography. The Eastern European maskilim,
moreover, spanned a wider ideological framework, from conservative and
“rationalist” reforms of traditional Judaism to a spectrum of radical
secularisms. It is important to note that the history of the Haskalah
in Eastern Europe overlaps with that of the urbanizing, modernizing and
secularizing trends of the nineteenth century but cannot be reduced to
them. Maskilim championed modernization and tried to rein it in,
fearing radical assimilation. In this way and others, Haskalah
expressed and attempted to shape the course of Jewish history,
providing both models of and models for Jewish modernity.
This
course will focus on the literature of the Eastern European Haskalah in
two of its major dimensions: the first of these is secularization, an
important motivation and shaping force of this literature throughout
the nineteenth century; the second is gender and sexuality, as they
impelled the break with Jewish tradition and were themselves
transformed in the waves of Jewish modernization. In particular, we
will explore the function played by marital and educational practices
and gender roles in the Haskalah critique of the Jewish tradition, as
expressed in maskilic manifestoes, autobiographies, novels and poetry.
Among the principle effects of modernization was a revolution in the
distinctive contours of Jewish femininity and masculinity: it is the
traces, ideals and missteps of this revolution that we will also track
in the literature of the Haskalah.
After setting the
historical background for the rise of the Eastern European Haskalah, we
will survey the geographical centers of the Haskalah and present its
major genres—satire, poetry, autobiography and romance, each of which
played a distinctive role in the Haskalah project. Among the questions
we will explore are: How did the maskilim respond to the historical
upheavals that characterized nineteenth-century Jewish life in Eastern
Europe? In what ways did they view modernization as an opportunity for
reformulating conceptions of Jewish identity? What in Jewish tradition
did they consider worth salvaging and what did they jettison? What were
the new models of Jewish identity—particularly in its gendered and
sexual dimensions—proposed by the maskilim?
The study of
Haskalah literature has been undercut, some argue, by its aftermath,
which involved the rejection of many of its ideological stances with
the rise of Zionism and Zionist literary historiography (Hebraism also
effected the way in which the canon of this literature was remembered).
New attention to the Haskalah has meant reading it outside this bias
and from newer perspectives, especially feminism and post-colonialism.
Of course, exploring the gender dimension of Haskalah literature
entails a revisit to some older issues in the analysis of this corpus,
including the question of audience, the question of canon, and the
question of language. The post-colonialist reading of the Haskalah,
which argues against the older (in part, maskilic) view that the
Haskalah liberated Jewish women from traditional patriarchy and views
the maskilim as playing the role of “native agents” of (internal)
European colonialism, also revolves around questions of gender. We will
keep these larger theoretical debates in mind in the course of the
seminar, although not every reading will directly involve these
questions.
Students will generally read primary sources either
in Hebrew or Yiddish (or both). All students are required to write a
seminar paper of 12-15 pp., due at the end of the semester; a brief
paper proposal should be turned in during the first session after the
mid-semester break.
Learning Outcomes:
1.
Students will acquire a broad knowledge of the literature of the
Eastern European Haskalah, its historical and political context, and
the gender issue raised by this literature.
2. Students will be
able to think critically about the gender and sexual dimension of the
Haskalah program and Jewish modernity, in general.
3. Students
will learn to think critically about the intersection of cultural
history and literary criticism in which the question of gender and
Haskalah arises.
4. Students will familiarize themselves with the
new literature on gender and Haskalah and contribute original
scholarship to this interdiscipline.
Course Readings:
Material
for the course will be assembled in a course reader available at
Instant Copy and Laser Printing, 2138 University Avenue, 704-9700.
Course Schedule:
1. Introduction
Reading: The poetry of Rachel Morpurgo (Wendy Zierler); Te’udah beyisrael
2.
The Origins of Maskilic Autobiography and the Bridge between Berlin and
Eastern Europe: Solomon Maimon. In this session we will read the
autobiography of Solomon Maimon describing his move from the “Talmudic
darkness” of his traditional upbringing to Enlightenment Berlin. We
will pay particular attention to the gendered aspects of this radical
break, paying attention to both the differences between Maimon’s
adolescent marriage and in his adult, “enlightened” romances and the
unexpected return of his traditional past in the form of his abandoned
wife.
David Biale, “Eros and Enlightenment,” in Eros and the Jews
Maimon, from the Autobiography
Additional Readings:
Lucy
Davidowicz, “Introduction,” “Hasidism and Haskalah,” “Education Reform
and Assimilation,” and “New Religions: Science, Progress and Humanity,”
in The Golden Tradition
Marcus Moseley, Being for Myself Alone
Bluma Goldstein, “Doubly Exiled in Germany: Abandoned Wives in Glikl’s Memoirs and Maimon’s Autobiography”
Te’udah beyisrael
3. Closet drama and Yiddish play: Wolfsohn
4.
The Origin of Modern Hebrew Satire in the Polemic against Hasidism:
This session will focus on the beginnings of Haskalah fiction in Joseph
Perl’s satire of the Hasidic bestseller “In Praise of the Ba’al Shem
Tov,” exploring both Perl’s parodic rewriting of the Hasidic
hagiography and his satirical mimesis of Hasidic superstition and
irrationality.
Paula Hyman, “Two Models of Modernization: Jewish Women in the German and the Russian Empires,” in Jews and Gender: The Challenge to Hierarchy
Shmuel Feiner, “Toward a Historical Definition of the Haskalah,” in New Perspectives on the Haskalah
Joseph Perl, Revealer of Secrets, 1-49
5.
Women, Piety, and the Maskilic Critique of the Traditional Jewish
Economy. In this session we will explore the ways in which the maskilic
critique of the traditional Jewish economy (as unproductive and
“parasitical”) intersected with the critique of traditional Jewish
gender roles in the figure of Sheyntse, whose insistence on an
expensive headkerchief as an engagement gift drives Aksenfeld’s
tragicomedy.
Yisroel Aksenfeld, “The Headband,” in The Shtetl
Parush, Chapters 1-3
Tova Cohen, ““Reality and its Refraction in Descriptions of Women in Haskalah Fiction,” in New Perspectives on the Haskalah
6.
Sexuality, Corruption and the Hasidic Court: In this session we will
read Linetski’s hilarious and biting satire of Hasidic life,
particularly in its depiction of the oppression of Jewish women and
degradation of Jewish men. The first chapter, which is told from the
perspective of a sexually indeterminate fetus, begins to suggest the
anxieties that beset a society in transformation, a transformation that
was expressed perhaps on the deepest level as a sexual transformation.
Isaac-Joel Linetski, The Polish Lad, chs. 1-14
Milton Hindus, “Introduction,” The Polish Lad
Parush, Chapters 4-5
7.
Serkele: Gender, Haskalah, and the Beginnings of Yiddish Theater. In
this class we will read Ettinger’s satirical “closet drama” about a
domineering Jewish woman, asking how Ettinger maps the conflict between
true and “false” Enlightenment onto the Jewish family.
Shloyme Ettinger, Serkele; or In Mourning for a Brother
The piece at the end of the Musterverk edition and the intro in the Yiddish Plays book.
8.
Constructions of Jewish Masculinity in the Hebrew Romance: While satire
(often in Yiddish) was the exemplary genre of the Haskalah critique of
the Jewish tradition as they saw it, Hebrew romance was the genre in
which maskilim expressed their vision of what Jewish modernity could
be. We will read Mapu’s pioneering novel with an eye to the sexual role
models he constructs in his biblical heroes and heroines—Jewish men and
women as they were meant to be.
Abraham Mapu, The Love of Zion
David Patterson, “Introduction,” Abraham Mapu
9.
Maskilic Hebrew Poetry and the Jewish National Revival: In this session
we will focus on the Hebrew poetry of Y.L. Gordon, particularly “The
Tip of the Yod,” in which he represents the young heroine as the victim
of rabbinic obscurantism and her would-be lover, the engineer of the
new railroad, as the harbinger of a modernity that—if only it were not
stymied by tradition—would provide economic and romantic salvation to
the heroine and her family.
Michael Stanislawski, “Awake, My People!” and “Religious Reform,” For Whom Do I Toil? Judah Leib Gordon and the Crisis of Russian Jewry
Gordon, “lemi ani amel” and “The Tip of the Yod” (to be distributed)
Parush, Chapters 7-9
10.
Ayzik-Meir Dik and the Female Reader: In this session we will read two
short stories by Isaac Meir Dick, the prolific writer whose stories
addressed to Jewish women often disguised maskilic ideology, including
gender prescriptions, in such “traditional” genres as the folktale
Dik, “Pious Tirtsah,” in The Dybbuk: A Haunted Reader, and “R. Shimen Barbun, the Rabbi of Mainz or The Tripartite Dream,” in The Jewish Pope
Parush, Chapter 6
David Roskies, “The Master of Lore,” in Bridge of Longing
11.
Loss of Faith and the Search for New Sexual Identities: Haskalah
Autobiography: In this session we will focus on the genre of
autobiography, exploring the notion of a “collective biography” that
characterizes the maskilic break with tradition and turn to new models
of Jewish life and investigating the importance of autobiography to the
Eastern European Haskalah as part of the process of constituting an
individual—that is, modern—self. We will analyze the role sexuality
plays in the construction of this self, from the descriptions of sexual
anxiety and impotence in the arranged marriages featured so prominently
in these autobiographies to the difficulties the maskilim had in
forging adult relationships with women after their break with
tradition.
Alan Mintz, “The Turn toward Autobiography in
Hebrew Literature,” and “The Haskalah Background: In the Toils of
Authenticity,” from Banished from My Father’s Table: Loss of Faith and Hebrew Autobiography
S.Y. Ansky, “The Sins of Youth” in The Dybbuk and Other Writings
Paula Hyman, Gender and Assimilation in Modern Jewish History: Roles and Representations of Women, Chapters One and Two
Pauline Wengeroff, “First Changes” and “The Haskalah in Our Home and Beyond,” in Rememberings: The World of a Russian-Jewish Woman in the Nineteenth Century
12.
Models of Maskilic Masculinity: In this session we will read
Abramovitsh’s first Yiddish novella, which has been read as the bridge
between Haskalah literature and the period of modern Yiddish literature
proper. Although Abramovitsh’s work was celebrated largely for its
introduction of the folk-narrator Mendele the Bookseller, we will focus
also on the character Abramovitsh constructed as his intended hero, the
Berlin educator Guttmann—the “good man”—whose conduct represented the
positive pole of Jewish modernity toward which readers were supposed to
aspire. We will also read Goldfaden’s play Kuni Leml, which present a very different sort of Jewish masculinity in the comic protagonist of the play.
S.Y. Abramovitsch (Mendele Mokher Seforim), The Little Man, in Classic Yiddish Stories
Goldfaden, Kuni Leml, in Landmark Yiddish Plays
Shmuel Werses, “Portrait of the Maskil as a Young Man,” from New Perspectives on the Haskalah
13.Tradition,
the Shrew and Wounded Jewish Masculinity: Abramovitsh’s Yiddish Satire:
In this session we will read Abramovitsh’s best-known work, his
reworking of Don Quixote in the traditional world, in which men fled
from their wives rather than pursuing romance (what traditional Jewish
man beyond puberty was a bachelor?) We will ask whether Abramovitsh the
maskil “redeemed” his sad-sack protagonists at the end of the novella
by having them fail so miserably at that other pursuit of European
males—the military. In this ending, Abramovitsh suggests that certain
attributes of traditional Jewish masculinity—otherwise so laughable—are
worth saving for Jewish modernity, including above all a skepticism
about patriotic ideals and a nearly genetic distaste for fighting.
S.Y. Abramovitsh (Mendele Mokher Sforim), The Travels of Benjamin the Third
14. Student Presentations
Extra class sessions, to be determined, will be held on the following texts:
Isaac-Ber Levinson, “Te’udah beyisrael”
Gordon, “Shney yamim velaylah echad beveyt orkhim”
Ginzburg, Aviezer and M.L. Lilienblum, Hat’ot ne’urim
Isaac-Meir Dik, Di kremerkes oder Golde-Mine di broder agune
Reuven Braudes, Shtey haktzavot
Get:
Wendy Zierler
Tova Cohen
From Spinoza to Seinfeld: Secular Jewish Expression
Professors Shaina Hammerman, Eleanor Shapiro, Naomi Seidman
Course Description:
Drawing
on insights from anthropology, folklore, ethnomusicology, literary
theory, and history this course will examine the religious and secular
genealogies of American Jewish cultural creativity, all the while
questioning the stability of these categories. Rooting the discussion
in Benedict Spinoza’s seventeenth-century treatise and ending with the
Jewish-American sitcom, we will explore various approaches to the study
of secular Jewish expression.
Student Outcomes:
Students will:
1. Begin to build an appreciation for the rich variety of modern Jewish music, fiction, film, and television.
2. Interrogate the categories of religiosity and secularity for Modern Jews.
3. Develop analytical tools for reading a story, film, song, piece of music, or television show’s Jewishness.
Recommended Background Reading:
1. John Efron, et. al, The Jews: A History
2. David Biale, et. al, Cultures of the Jews: Part Three, Modern Encounters
3. Barbara Kirschenblatt-Gimblett, et. al, The Art of Being Jewish in Modern Times
Required book (available through Amazon.com or other bookstores):
Paula Hyman, Gender and Assimilation in Modern Jewish History: The Roles and Representation of Women. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995.
All other readings will be made available for students to copy or by e-mail.
Course Syllabus:
Introductory Session
1. Introductions
What is secular Judaism?
Secularization theory
2. Spinoza, Marranism, The Naturalization of Judaism
Benedict Spinoza, “On Miracles,” in Theological- Political Treatise, 71-85.
Yermiyahu Yovel, “Heretic and Banned,” and “Spinoza, the Marrano of Reason” in Spinoza and Other Heretics: The Marrano of Reason, 3-39.
Steven Nadler, “Baruch Spinoza and the Naturalization of Judaism,” in The Cambridge Companion to Modern Jewish Philosophy, 14-34.
3.Peretz, An-sky and Jewish Music
Y. L. Peretz, “The Reincarnation of a Melody,” in In This World and the Next: Selected Writings of I. L. Peretz, pp. 90 - 103
S.
Zipperstein, “Introduction: An-sky and the Guises of Modern Jewish
Culture,” David Roskies, An-sky, Sholom Aleichem, and the Master
Narrative of Russian Jewry, and I. Zemtsovsky, “The Musical Strands of
An-sky’s Texts and Contexts,” in The Worlds of S. An-sky, pp. 1 – 43 and pp. 203-231
4. Eastern European Jewish Music
Philip Bohlman, “Inventing Jewish Music,” in Jewish Music and Modernity, pp. 73-104
Mark Slobin, “The Mythic Old World,” and “Prefabricating a Popular Music” in Tenement Songs, pp. 11 - 48
Klara Moricz, “Introduction,” and “Trifles of Jewish Music,” in Jewish Identities: Nationalism, Racism and Utopianism in Twentieth Century Music, pp. 1-54
Sholom Aleichem, “Stempenyu” pdf only
5. Chazzonus Meets America
Jeffrey Shandler, “Cantors on Trial,” in Jews, God, and Videotape: Religion and Media in America, 13-55.
Michael Rogin, “Blackface, White Noise: The Jewish Jazz Singer Finds his Voice,” in Blackface, White Noise: Jewish Immigrants in the Hollywood Melting Pot, pp. 73 - 120
Marc Slobin, on Blackface in Entertaining America, pp. 93 - 99
Clips from The Jazz Singer
6. American Jews and Christmas
Irving Berlin, White Christmas
Grace Paley, “The Loudest Voice,” in The Collected Stories, 34-40.
Nathan Englander, “Reb Kringle,” in For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, 141-152.
Michael Feinstein, “Whose Christmas is it?” from The New York Times, December 17, 2009. Available online.
Jeffrey Shandler, “A Stranger Among Friends,” in Jews, God, and Videotape: Religion and Media in America, 185-229.
Clips from Friends and Frasier
7. Symposium on Jewish Music Revivals with Edwin Seroussi
8. Two Ways to Understand Secularism: American and Soviet
Laura Levitt, “Impossible Assimilations, American Liberalism, and Jewish Difference: Revisiting Jewish Secularism,” American Quarterly 59 (September 2007): 807-832.
Anna Shternshis, “Introduction: Sara F.’s Kosher Pork” and “Soviet Yiddish Songs as a Mirror of Jewish Identity,” in Soviet and Kosher, xiii-xxii and 106-142.
Peter Gordon talk at 4:00, Dinner Board Room
9. Jewish Music Festival
10. Sexuality and Secularization
Paula Hyman, Gender and Assimilation in Modern Jewish History
I.B. Singer, “Yentl,” The Collected Stories, 149-169.
Naomi’s essay on “Yentl” and gender (TBD).
Clips from Yentl
11. April 13: The Klezmer Revival
Richard Blaustein, “Rethinking Folk Revivalism, “ in Neil V. Rosenberg, ed. Transforming Tradition: Folk Music Revivals Examined, pp. 258-274
Jeffrey Shandler, “Yiddish as Performance Art,” in Adventures in Yiddishland: Postvernacular Language and Culture, pp. 126 - 154
Lev Lieberman, “Memories of the klez revival and ‘The Klezmorim’” handout
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, "Sounds of Sensibility,” in Judaism, Winter, 1998.pp. 49-78
Henry Sapoznik, “The Emperor’s New Klez: The Future for a Music with a Past,” in Klezmer! Jewish Music from Old World to Our World, pp. 243-292
Ruth Ellen Gruber, “Part Four: Klezmer in the Wilderness” in Virtually Jewish: Reinventing Jewish Culture in Europe, pp. 183 - 234
12. Cynthia Ozick, Jews as Pagans
Irving Howe, “Introduction,” in Jewish American Stories, 1-17.
Hana Wirth-Nesher and Michael P. Kramer, “Introduction: Jewish American Literatures in the making,” in The Cambridge Companion to Jewish American Literature, 1-11.
John Hollander, “The Question of American Jewish Poetry,” in What is Jewish Literature? Hana Wirth Nesher, ed. 36-52
Cynthia Ozick, “America: Toward Yavneh,” in What is Jewish Literature? 20-35.
Cynthia Ozick, “The Pagan Rabbi,” in The Pagan Rabbi and Other Stories, 3-37.
13. The Seinfeld Phenomenon
Vincent Brook, “Introduction” and “Under the Sign of Seinfeld: The Second Phase of the Jewish Sitcom Trend,” in Something Aint Kosher Here: The Rise of the “Jewish” Sitcom, 1-21, 118-128.
Henry Bial, “Performance Studies, Mass Culture, and the Jewish Problem,” Acting Jewish: negotiating ethnicity on the American stage & screen, 1-29.
J. Hoberman and Jeffrey Shandler, Entertaining America : Jews, Movies, and Broadcasting, 244-257.
Rosalin Krieger, “‘Does he actually say the word Jewish?’ - Jewish representations in Seinfeld,” in Journal for Cultural Research 7, 2003: 387-404.
Clips from Seinfeld, The Nanny
14. Ortho-Lit
Nathan Englander, “The Last One Way,” in For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, 155-173.
Nathan Englander, “The Gilgul of Park Avenue,” in For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, 109-137.
Tova Mirvis, “A Poland, A Lithuania, A Galicia,” from Lost Tribe: Jewish Fiction from the Edge, Paul Zakrzewski, ed., 400-421.
Wendy Shalit, “The Observant Reader,” New York Times Book Review, January 30, 2005, 16-17. Available online.
15. Jews in Drag
Philip Roth, “Eli the Fanatic,” in Goodbye Columbus, 249-298.
Shalom Auslander, “The Metamorphosis,” in Beware of God, 115-126.
Michele Byers and Rosalin Krieger, “Something Old is New Again? Postmodern Jewishness in Curb Your Enthusiasm, Arrested Development, and The O.C.” in You Should See Yourself : Jewish Identity in Postmodern American Culture, Vincent Brook, ed., 277-297.
Clips from The Frisco Kid, Zelig, Annie Hall, Curb Your Enthusiasm
Secular Jewish Thought
Professors Shaina Hammerman, Eleanor
Shapiro, Naomi Seidman
By nearly every demographic measure, most of the world’s Jews today
can be described as secular, that is, as living outside of traditional
Jewish belief or practice. (Because practice is so central to Judaism,
it may be more reliable to define secularism as non-observance of
Jewish law rather than by recourse to categories of belief, though
certainly changes in belief have been important in Jewish
secularization and secularism.) Nevertheless, the history and
phenomenology of Jewish secular identities and cultures remains
relatively unexplored - untaught in Jewish schools and often neglected
in both popular and academic studies of Jewish experience. This course
aims to provide Jewish adults with the tools to understand Jewish
secularism from historical, philosophical and cultural perspectives.
The religious dimension of Judaism has never exhausted the meaning
of Jewish identity and experience, which has always expressed itself as
and through the culture of a particular people. The modern period saw
the rise of a number of forms of self-consciously non-religious
Judaism, many of which highlighted the national and/or cultural
character of the Jewish people; this category is broad enough to
include Zionism and Yiddishism, Diaspora Nationalism and Labor Bundism.
The massive upheavals of modernity, which included urbanization and
immigration along with secularization, meant that large numbers of Jews
began to lead secular lives, even if they did not consciously affiliate
with one or another brand of ideological Jewish secularism.
Nevertheless, secular Jews in the modern and contemporary world
developed ways of maintaining recognizably Jewish identities, some of
them based on re-readings and transvaluations of traditional Judaism
and some emerging from the new conditions of modernity. We will begin
by exploring the concept of secularization and secularism with
sociological tools, especially that of the “secularization thesis,”
which has recently been coming under considerable fire. We will then
set the historical background necessary for understanding the emergence
of Jewish secularism, first in central Europe and then throughout the
Jewish world. A major portion of this course will be devoted to
surveying the major thinkers and philosophies of Jewish secularism from
its beginnings in the early modern period to its contemporary
manifestations.
Course books:
David Biale, ed. The Cultures of the Jews
Benedict Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise
George L. Mosse, German Jews beyond Judaism
Paula Hyman, Gender and Assimilation in Modern Jewish History: The Roles and Representation of Women
Robert Seltzer, Jewish People, Jewish Thought
Course Schedule:
1. Introduction and Clarification of Terms
2. Sociological approaches to secularization and Jewish secularization
This session will introduce the theories and debates of
secularization that have shaped the academic understanding of the break
with religious tradition. Beginning with Durkheim and Weber, we will
explore the modern period as characterized by a break with religious
beliefs and traditions and trace the underlying continuities as well as
ruptures between traditional and modern-secular societies. We will also
ask about what secularist philosophies affirm, beyond their critiques
of religion.
Peter L. Berger, “The Process of Secularization,” and “Secularization and the Problem of Legitimation,” in The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion
Berger, “Modernization as the Universalization of Heresy,” in The Heretical Imperative: Contemporary Possibilities of Religious Affirmation
Berger, “The Desecularization of the World: A Global Overview,” in The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics
Roy Wallis and Steve Bruce, “Secularization: The Orthodox Model,” in Religion and Modernization
Vincent P. Pecora, “Introduction,” in Secularization and Cultural Criticism
Study Questions:
1. What are the major components of what sociologists have called
“the secularization thesis’? What are the major variations,
qualifications, and critiques of that thesis, as far as you can glean
from the week’s readings?
2. The essays we have read often discuss Jews and Jewish history,
but it widely varying and perhaps even contradictory ways: discuss the
ways in which Jewish experience is either exemplary or a special case
of secularization.
3. Pecora suggests that “cultural criticism” is implicated in the
ambivalences of secularization. How do you understand this insight and
how does it bear on our work in this class?
3. Spinoza
Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, Introduction, Preface, chapters 1-8 and 13-30
Yirmiyahu Yovel, “Prologue: Heretic and Banned,” “Spinoza, the
Marrano of Reason,” “Epilogue: Spinoza and His People: The First
Secular Jew?” in Spinoza and Other Heretics: The Marrano of Reason
Benedict (or Baruch) Spinoza (1632-1677) was born in Amsterdam to a
family of former conversos or Marranos, Jews who had converted to
Christianity but secretly continued some form of Jewish practice or
belief. The former Marranos who had returned to their Jewish ancestral
faith in Amsterdam (often after centuries of Christianity), were both
reestablishing its connection to Judaism and negotiating a number of
radical challenges to traditional religion, most famously Uriel
Acosta’s denial of rabbinic authority. In 1656, Spinoza was questioned
by the rabbinic authorities about certain unorthodox beliefs he
apparently espoused and he was eventually excommunicated. Spinoza spent
the rest of his life working as an optician and refining his
philosophical thought. Being outside the Jewish community and within
the relatively liberal environment of seventeenth-century Holland did
not spell the end of his struggle for freedom of conscience. Whereas
his earlier thought was condemned by the Jewish authorities, his later
work was greeted with resistance and opposition to its alleged atheism
by Christian theologians and politicians. It is no surprise, then, that
his philosophical works are characterized by indirection and caution;
reading Spinoza often feels like an attempt to decode what he really
meant, and his work has been subjected to a wide range of
interpretations. In this session we will assess his role as precursor
to what would become a prototypically Jewish position outside of
religious affiliations and discuss Yovel’s thesis that Jewish
modernity, and religious skepticism, begins in the experience of the
converso culture from which Spinoza’s family emerged. We will also
address (but probably not resolve!) the question of whether Spinoza’s
pantheism should be read as a variety of atheism or rather as a form of
“God-drunkenness” - or perhaps both!
Study Questions:
1. How do you understand the organizational logic of Spinoza’s
Theological-Political Treatise? What is he arguing for in the preface,
and why does he begin the book proper with a discussion of prophecy?
What are the basic points of the TPT and why are they sometimes hard to
discern?
2. Compare and contrast Spinoza’s discussions of Christianity and Judaism.
3. How does Yuval explain and historically contextualize the emergence of the radical new thought of Spinoza?
4. Lecture
David Biale, “Heresy, Apostasy, and the Beginnings of Jewish Secularism”
5. In this session we will read and critically engage two chapters
of David Biale’s forthcoming history of Jewish secularism,
“Self-Portraits,” which examines the autobiographical writings of five
Jewish thinkers concerning their break with the Jewish tradition, and
“God,” which explores the medieval roots of Jewish pantheism (or
panentheism) and atheism and the evolution of modern Jewish secularist
thought on God.
6. Emancipation, Secularization and Jewish Modernity
In this session, we will study Katz’s classic historical accounts
of the beginnings European Jewish modernization, discussing it in the
light of more recent historical views and the secularization thesis and
its recent critics.
Jacob Katz, Chapters 1-4 in Out of the Ghetto: The Social Background of Jewish Emancipation, 1770-1870
Katz, “Judaism and Christianity against the Background of Modern
Secularism,” and “The Influence of Religion and Society on Each Other
at the Time of Emancipation,” in Jewish Emancipation and Self-Emancipation
Pierre Vidal-Naquet, “The Privilege of Liberty,” in The Jews: History, Memory, and the Present
Richard I. Cohen, “Urban Visibility and Biblical Visions: Jewish Cultures in Western and Central Europe in the Modern Age,” in Cultures of the Jews
7. Secularization, the Bible, and History
In this class session we will read another two chapters from David
Biale’s forthcoming book, one on history and one on the Bible. These
chapters will be delivered via email a week or two before we meet.
8. German Jews from the Enlightenment to Weimar
In this session we will discuss the rise of a German-Jewish
intellectual culture following the Enlightenment and the emancipation
of German Jews; this was a culture that prized Bildung as an integral part of German citizenship and which soon elevated Bildung
Readings:
George Mosse, German Jews beyond Judaism
Hannah Arendt, “The Jew as Pariah,” in The Jew as Pariah
Isaac Deutscher, “Who is a Jew?” in The Non-Jewish Jew and Other Essays
Peter Gay, from A Godless Jew: Freud, Atheism, and the Making of Psychoanalysis
9. Gender and Assimilation
Reading:
Paula Hyman, Gender and Assimilation in Modern Jewish History
The feminist analysis of Jewish secularization begins with Paula Hyman’s Gender and Assimilation in Modern Jewish History,
which argues that gender is an important and neglected component in
Jewish secularization, modernization, and assimilation. Earlier
scholars of Jewish modernization tended to reduce the historical role
of women in this process to a few comments on the German-Jewish “salon
Jewesses,” whose early nineteenth-century salons frequently became the
scene for both intermarriage and conversion to Christianity. As Hyman
demonstrates, these figures do not represent the norm of Jewish women’s
experience in modernity, which was far more likely to be characterized
by a conservative approach to Jewish tradition. Jewish tradition, in
some modern bourgeois formations, indeed became “feminized” along the
model of Protestantism, with women considered the guardian of a
tradition now located more centrally within the home rather than in the
masculine public sphere. More generally, modernization drastically
reformulated the Jewish gender order, imposing a domesticating and
bourgeois gender model on Jewish women (where traditionally they had
held a much more visible economic and public role) while subjecting
traditional Jewish masculinity to new European norms of proper sexual
and economic behavior. Marital practices, gender roles, economic
behavior, the relationship between public and private sphere, all of
these shifted in the process of Jewish modernization, urbanization, and
migration.
Although our topic here is secularism rather than assimilation, the
two phenomena are clearly related. Hyman opens by exploring the
distinction between assimilation as a process and as a project: as a
process, assimilation could lead to the disappearance of Jewish
communal structures and to conversion and intermarriage; as a project,
Jewish proponents of assimilation often asserted both the necessity of
Jewish modernization and cultural integration and the need to maintain
Jewish identity and difference within a larger environment. Although
contemporary scholars resist the term assimilation for its pejorative
and judgmental qualities, preferring such terms as acculturation and
integration, Hyman maintains the language in which so many of these
issues have historically been debated. For our own purposes,
assimilation can stand in for the anxiety that Jewish secularization
inevitably leads to the disappearance of Jews into the dominant
culture. The story of Jewish secularism can hardly be told without
reference to this cultural anxiety. Nevertheless, that secularization
is not equivalent to assimilation (in its pejorative sense) is part of
the narrative Hyman unfolds.
Study Questions:
1. How has the process of modernization differed for Jewish men and
Jewish women? How did the modernization process take different shapes
in German and East European Jewish communities?
2. In what sense were Jewish women either buffers against or
agents of assimilation? How did secularization support or limit Jewish
women’s self-determination?
3. How did modern anti-Semitism manifest itself in the relations
between Jewish men and women? Do you think it continues to influence
these relations?
4. Paula Hyman discusses some of the differences between the
assimilation of first and second generation East European Jewish women
immigrants. How would you characterize the development of this story in
third and fourth generation American-Jewish women? Are they more or
less “domestic” than earlier generations?
5. I characterized assimilation as the anxiety that underlies
discourses of Jewish secularism. Do you think this is accurate? How
might Hyman’s book have looked different if she had focused on
secularism rather than assimilation?
10. Enlightenment and Emancipation beyond Germany
In this session we will study the breakdown of tradition in Eastern
Europe and beyond Europe, examining not only the ideological
formulations of new forms of Jewish identity but also the cultural
context in these new forms of identity arose.
Readings:
David Biale, “A Journey between Worlds: Eastern European Jewish Cultures from the Partitions of Poland to the Holocaust,” in Cultures of the Jews
Aron Rodrigue, “The Ottoman Diaspora: The Rise and Fall of Ladino Literary Culture,” in Cultures of the Jews
Lucette Valensi, “Multicultural Visions: The Cultural Tapestry of the Jews of North Africa,” in Cultures of the Jews
Yosef Tobi, “Challenges to Tradition: Jewish Cultures in Yemen, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Bukhara,” in Cultures of the Jews
Shmuel Werses, “Portrait of the Maskil as a Young Man,” in New Perspectives on the Haskalah
Eli Lederhandler, “Interpreting Messianic Rhetoric in the Russian Haskalah and Early Zionism,” in Jewish Responses to Modernity
11. Jewish Nationalism I - Socialism, Yiddishism and Diaspora Jewish Nationalism
In this session we will focus on the varieties of Jewish
nationalism that arose around the embrace of Yiddish and the positive
value of the Jewish diaspora. We will explore how Jewish language and
Jewish politics interacted to construct a notion of Jewish identity
that overturned traditional categories of Jewish thinking that had
privileged Hebrew over Yiddish, Israel over the diaspora, the rabbinic
elite over the masses, and abstract intellectual achievements over
embodied life experience. We will also explore the arguments that set
these forms of Jewish nationalism against each other and analyze how
each side mobilized different elements of the Jewish tradition and
history.
Readings:
Ezra Mendelsohn, “Varieties” and “Geography,” in On Modern Jewish Politics
Tony Michels, “Introduction,” and “The Politics of Yidishe Kultur: Chaim Zhitlovsky and the Challenge of Jewish Nationalism,” in A Fire in Their Hearts: Yiddish Socialists in New York
David Shneer, “Ideology and Jewish Language Politics: How Yiddish Became the National Language of Soviet Jewry,” in Yiddish and the Creation of Soviet Jewish Culture
12. Jewish Nationalism II - Hebraism and Zionism
This session will focus on Zionism and Hebraism as forms of Jewish
secularism, in which Jewish traditional values (as of land, or the
“sacred tongue”) are recast in a secular mold, mirroring the European
nationalisms that were such potent sources of the rejection of Jews as
“alien.” We will read major literary and ideological expressions of
these movements in order to discern “internal” and “external”
influences in the construction of this important form of Jewish
nationalism, the construction of Jewish identity through paradigms of
language, territory and peoplehood rather than religious affiliation or
theological superstructure.
Readings:
Arthur Herzberg, from the “Introduction,” in The Zionist Idea: A Historical Analysis and Reader
Benjamin Harshav, “The Modern Jewish Revolution: An Essay on the History of Culture and Consciousness” in Language in Time of Revolution
Robert Alter, “Hebrew and Modernity,” and “Secularity and the Tradition of Hebrew Verse,” in Hebrew and Modernity
Ariel Hirschfeld, “Locus and Language: Hebrew Culture in Israel, 1890-1990,” in Cultures of the Jews
13. Issues in Jewish Secularism Today
In this final session we will explore the contemporary shape of
Jewish secularism, whether as a fully articulated philosophy or as a
function of social forces. How is this contemporary Jewish secularism
different from earlier manifestations of Jewish secularism and how does
it build on these earlier expressions? How do we understand the
differences between the fully articulated Jewish secularism of the
prior two class sessions and the more “passive” secularism of large
portions of the world’s Jews? Turning to the State of Israel, we
confront the problem and paradox of a Jewish democracy, one which lays
claims to certain secular principles while striving to maintain a
“Jewish” character
Readings:
Ira Sharkansky, “Religion and State in Israel: Another Round of an Ancient Conflict among the Jews,” in The Secular and the Sacred: Nation, Religion and Politics
Azmi Bishara, “Religion and Democracy,” in Jewish Identity in Modern Israel: Proceedings on Secular Judaism and Democracy
Lucy Dawidowicz, “Jewish Identity: A Matter of Fate, A Matter of Choice,” in The Jewish Presence: Essays on Identity and History
Anita Schwartz, “The Secular Seder: Continuity and Change among Left-Wing Jews,” in Between Two Worlds: Ethnographic Essays on American Jewry
Stuart Charme, “Varieties of Authenticity in Contemporary Jewish Identity,” in Jewish Social Studies 6 (2000). To be distributed through email.
14. Last class - Student Presentations
Introduction to Jewish Folklore
Professor Dina Stein
This course has two main objectives. The first goal is to present a
survey of what have been considered "folkloristic texts" within the
Jewish (primarily Hebrew) literary tradition, from the Bible until
modern-day Israel. In this context students will read passages of the
Jewish literary tradition from the Bible to modern Israeli literature
as well as viewing films and reading essays on folk cultures and
practices.
The second objective is to subject the notion of folklore and the
assumptions by which phenomena are deemed "folkloristic," to critical
analysis. Folklorists have traditionally delineated the material they
study based on a variety of criteria: "folkloristic" motifs or genres,
reconstructed modes of communication or the presumed "oral" origins of
a text, or attestation in multiple forms and across a range of
geographic locations. The romantic notions underlying "folklore" from
its inception as a discipline in the nineteenth century until most
recently have implied a certain cultural hierarchical map in which
"folklore" occupies the margins. A set of binary oppositions is often
implicated in that notion, such as written/oral, elite/folk,
center/periphery, tradition/innovation, particular/universal,
Jewish/"foreign" and hegemonic/subversive - in all these dichotomies,
folklore is assumed to belong more fully to the second and "lower" item
than the first, "higher" one. Within the tradition of both Jewish
sources and Jewish scholarship the issue of folk vs.
elite/institutionalized religion plays a particularly key role students
will explore, and deconstruct.
Syllabus:
1. Aspects of Folklore: General Overview
R. M. Dorson, "Concepts of Folklore and Folklife Studies" in Folklore and Folklife
A. Dundes, "Who are the Folk?" Interpreting Folklore
B. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, "Folklore's Crisis," Journal of American Folklore
2. Aspects of Jewish Folklore: General Overview
D. Ben-Amos, "Jewish Studies and Jewish Folklore," Proceedings of the Tenth World Congress of Jewish Studies
D. Stein, "'Let the People Go,': on the Use of 'Folk" and 'Folklore' in the Reconstruction of Rabbinic Culture"
3. Anthropological Perspectives
P. Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power
V. Crapanzano, 'Hermes Dilemma: The Masking of Subversion in Ethnographic Description,' in Writing Culture
C. Geertz, "Ideology as a Cultural System," in The Interpretation of Cultures
C. Levi-Strauss, "The Story of Asdiwal" in Sacred Narrative
4. Folklore in the Bible
R. Alter, "Samson without Folklore," Text and Tradition
C. V. Camp and Carole Fontaine, "The Words of the Wise and their Riddles," in Text and Tradition
Y. Zakovitch, "Humor and Theology or the Successful Faillure of
Israelite Intelligence: A Literary-Folkloric Approach to Joshua 2," Text and Tradition
5. Folklore of the Bible
Y. Sabar, The Folk Literature of the Kurdistani Jews: An Anthology
H. Bar-Itzhak and A. Shenhar, Jewish Moroccan Folk Narratives from Israel
6. Folklore in Rabbinic Literature
G. Hasan-Rokem, Web of Life: Folklore and Midrash in Rabbinic Literature
7. Folklore in Medieval and Early Modern Texts
I. G. Marcus, Rituals of Childhood - Jewish Acculturation in Medieval Europe
E. Yassif, The Hebrew Folktale - History, Genre, Meaning
D. Ben-Amos and J. R. Mintz, In Praise of the Baal Shem Tov - The Earliest Collection of Legends about the Founder of Hasidism
8. Folklore in Israeli Narratives
E. Ben Ari and Y. Bilu, "Saints Sanctuaries in Israelli Development Towns: On a Mechanism of Urban Transformation," in Grasping Land - Space and Place in Contemporary Israeli Discourse
E. Yassif, "The 'Other' Israel: Folk Cultures in the Modern State of Israel," Cultures of the Jews
9. Folklore in Israeli Cinema
Sallah Shabati
10. Folklore and the Contemporary Israeli Novel
H. Bar-Itzhak, Jewish Poland - Legends of Origin: Ethnopoetics and Legendary Chronicles
H. Be'er, The Pure Element of Time
S. Sabar, "Childbirth and Magic - Jewish Folklore and Material Culture," Cultures of the Jews: A New History
to a peculiarly Jewish value, as well. We will explore the role of
German-Jewish intellectuals in relation to the larger culture, focusing
on what German-Jewish intellectuals shared with their non-Jewish
counterparts and in what ways they differed, as never fully integrated
individuals and groups. We will also compare and contrast two classic
statements on the distinctiveness and continued Jewishness of the
secular, unaffiliated Jew, Arendt’s and Deutscher’s.
Issues In Modern Jewish History
Professor Naomi Seidman
Course Description:
This course will explore the major developments in the history of the Jews in the modern period, analyzing the dramatic transformations of Jewish cultural, political, and religious identity in modernity. In the course of our readings we will consider such questions as what constitutes modernity and Jewish modernity, and when and how modernity could be said to begin in various segments and communities of the Jewish world.
The modern period is also the inauguration of the academic study of Jewish history, which implicates our very enterprise in the study of Jewish modernity. We will thus begin this course by examining how traditional understandings of Jewish history in the pre-modern world were transformed with the rise of modern Jewish historiography—in the movement known as Wissenschaft des Judentums—in the nineteenth century. After we read one classical text that attempts to chart the very beginnings of Jewish modernity (Out of the Ghetto), the bulk of the semester will be devoted to a series of innovative new voices in a range of areas of modern Jewish history. With each of these texts, we will be attending both to the subject matter of the histories we read and the ways these histories are presented, using this double reading—historical and historiographical—to critically understand the narratives by which Jewish modernity has been and continues to be told.
Learning Outcomes:
1. Students will familiarize themselves with the major developments of modern Jewish history, including Westernization and acculturation, political emancipation, religious reform, secularization, immigration, the emergence of modern anti-Semitism, and the rise of Jewish nationalism and other political movements.
2. Students will gain a basic understanding of the history of the writing of Jewish history, from its nineteenth-century beginnings through Zionist and diasporic Jewish historiography to the newest trends in Jewish historiography: feminism, post-colonialism, and post-Zionism.
3. Students will learn to read historical texts critically, recognizing the ways that ideology and narrativity have shaped and continue to shape the writing—and reading—of history.
Texts:
The following texts are available for purchase at the UC ASUC Bookstore. A series of additional brief readings will be distributed in class (and also made available on the top of the file cabinet to the left of my office door).
1. Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory
(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996 [1982])
2. Jacob Katz, Out of the Ghetto: The Social Background of Jewish Emancipation, 1770-1870 (New York: Schocken Press, 1978 [1973])
3. Paula Hyman, Gender and Assimilation in Modern Jewish History: The Roles and Representation of Women (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995)
4. Esther Benbassa and Aron Rodrigue, Sephardi Jewry: A History of the Judeo-Spanish Community, 14th-20th Centuries (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000)
5. Gershon David Hundert, Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century: A Genealogy of Modernity (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2006)
6. Anita Shapiro, Land and Power: The Zionist Resort to Force, 1881-1948 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992)
7. Hasia R. Diner, The Jews of the United States, 1654-2000 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004)
8. Saul Friedlander, The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945 (New York: Harper Perennial, 2008)
9. Yuri Slezkine, The Jewish Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004)
Historiographical Questions:
The study of Jewish history, at its nineteenth century Jewish origins, aimed to replace Christian (and premodern Jewish) theological readings of Jewish history with “objective,” academically respectable, and intellectually coherent (to a Western consciousness) narratives. Nevertheless, from the beginning, the political, ideological and personal circumstances of these historians shaped the histories they wrote, and theological concerns may have continued to shape these histories in secularized forms. Jewish scholarship of the nineteenth century cannot be easily separated from the political advocacy of the scholars, who sought to gain political, intellectual, and social acceptance for Jews within the German scene. Later political circumstances had equal influence on the writing of Jewish history: Scholars have discerned certain trends in the historiography of the “Jerusalem school,” which wrote Jewish history within the larger umbrella of a Jewish nationalist project. Other trends of Jewish historiography have included post-Zionism, diaspora nationalism, feminism, and post-colonialism. Students of modern Jewish history, then, do well to attend to the ideological currents and intellectual trends of the Jewish Studies academy. For us, as well, the study of the Jewish past will move on the double track of history and historiography.
The field of history, in general, has also developed a rich historiographical tradition, increasingly questioning the role of both ideology in the interpretation of the past and narrative in its representation. Contemporary historical scholarship now takes for granted that no simple presentation of the past “as it actually was” is possible. History has more in common with literature and interpretation than the Wissenschaft scholarship allowed. Hayden White, in a number of important writings, has discussed the role of “emplotment” in historical narrative, and White and a host of others have drawn attention to the inevitable influence of ideological and personal tendencies in the writing of history.
Finally, historians are engaged not only in a representation of the past, but in an intertextual relationship with each other and the field as a whole. To understand a historical text, it is necessary to grasp these intertextual connections as well.
For each work we read, then, we will ask one or more of these questions:
What are some of the ideological currents that have shaped the book under discussion?
How has the “narrativity” of the writing of history shaped the story told by the book under discussion?
Is there a “master narrative” of Jewish modernity and how has the book under discussion reinforced or complicated this narrative?
What is the conversation in which the book under discussion participates, and how does the book contribute to this conversation?
Course Schedule:
1. Introduction
2. The Emergence of Jewish Historical Consciousness
Yerushalmi, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory (focus particularly on the last chapter)
Responses to Zakhor (to be distributed in class):
Amos Funkenstein, “Collective Memory and Historical Consciousness,” History and Memory 1:1 (1989), 5-26
David Myers, “Remembering Zakhor: A Super-Commentary,” History and Memory 4:2 (1994), 129-46
Amos Funkenstein, “Response,” History and Memory 4:2 (1994), 147-48
See also additional recommended reading on historiography and Jewish historiography at the end of the syllabus
For this session, please also read the following two brief articles (to be distributed in class and available on the file cabinet) and submit a 2-3 pp. discussion and summary to the class list.
Salo Baron, “Ghetto and Emancipation,” in Menorah Journal
Ismar Schorsch, “The Lachrymose Conception of Jewish History,” From Text to Context: The Turn to History in Modern Judaism (Hanover and London: Brandeis University Press), 376-388.
3. Katz’s Out of the Ghetto and the Beginnings of Jewish Modernity
Jacob Katz, Out of the Ghetto
Additional Reading (not required):
Ronald Schechter, Obstinate Hebrews: Representations of Jews in France, 1715-1815
Deborah Hertz, How Jews Became Germans. The History of Conversion and Assimilation in Berlin. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, November 2007).
Pierre Birnbaum and Ira Katznelson, eds., Paths of Emancipation
Paul Mendes-Flohr, German Jews: A Dual Identity
Jonathan Hess, Germans, Jews and the Claims of Modernity
4. Hyman, Assimilation, and Feminist Jewish History
Paula Hyman, Gender and Assimilation in Modern Jewish History
Additional reading (not required)
Paula Hyman, The Jews of Modern France
Biale, Eros and the Jews
Boyarin, Unheroic Conduct
5. Eastern Jewries and Westernization
Benbassa and Rodrigue, Sephardi Jewry
Additional Reading (not required):
Mark R. Cohen, “The Neo-Lachrymose Conception of Jewish-Arab History”
Aron Rodrigue, Jews and Muslims
Ammiel Alcalay, After Arabs and Jews
Pierre Birnbaum and Ira Katznelson, eds., Paths of Emancipation
6.Modern Jewish History in Eastern Europe
Hundert, The Jews of Poland-Lithuania
Additional reading (not required)
Anthony Polonsky, ed., et. al., Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry: Jews in Independent Poland, 1918-1939, v.8
David Assaf, The Regal Way: The Life and Times of Rabbi Israel of Ruzhin
ChaeRan Y. Freeze, Jewish Marriage and Divorce in Imperial Russia
Benjamin Nathans, Beyond the Pale
Zvi Gitelman, A Century of Ambivalence: The Jews of Russia and the Soviet Union, 1881 to the Present
7.Zionism, Israel
Shapira, Land and Power
Additional Reading: Michael Berkowitz, Zionist Culture and West European Jewry before the First World War
8. Instead of class, students will be asked to participate in the afternoon session of “Sex and the Shtetl”
9.Holocaust Historiography
Friedlander, The Years of Extermination
Additional Reading: Omer Bartov, Germany’s War and the Holocaust: Disputed Histories
10.Makeup Class
Slezkine, The Jewish Century (chapters one and four)
Additional recommended reading:
Anna Shternshis, Soviet and Kosher: Jewish Popular Culture in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939
Jeffrey Veidlinger, The Moscow State Yiddish Theater
11.Immigration and American Judaism
Hasia Diner, The Jews of the United States
12.Student presentations
Further Reading on Jewish and General Historiography:
Michael A. Meyer, “Where Does the Modern Period of Jewish History Begin?” “The Emergence of Modern Jewish Historiography,” and “Jewish Scholarship and Jewish Identity: Their Historical Relationship in Modern Germany” in Judaism Within Modernity.
David N. Myers, Re-inventing the Jewish Past: European Jewish Intellectuals and the Zionist Return to History
Ismar Schorsch, “The Emergence of Historical Consciousness in Modern Judaism” in From Text to Context
Max Weiner, “The Ideology and the Founders of Jewish Scientific Research,” YIVO Annual of Jewish Social Science 5 (1950): 184-196.
Immanuel Wolf. “On the Concept of a Science of Judaism,” Leopold Zunz, “The Suffering of the Jews,” Isaak Marcus Jost, “The Rigors of Jewish Historiography,” and Nahman Krochmal, “A Philosophy of Jewish History,” in Ideas of Jewish History, ed. Michael A. Meyer, 141-155.
David N. Myers, “The Ideology of Wissenschaft des Judentums,” The Routledge History of Jewish Philosophy
Amos Funkenstein, Perceptions of Jewish History
Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (1973); Tropics of Discourse
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