The core course at the University of Toronto is Secularism and Strife: The Cultural History of Modern Jews. A previously offered course was Jews and American Popular Culture.
Secularism and Strife: The Cultural History of Modern Jews
Professor Derek J. Penslar
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Modern Jewish culture is the product of a dynamic interaction between two sets of opposed elements: religion versus secularism and the individual versus the collective. This course will analyze the historical roots and development of the four possible combinations of these elements: the religious collective, the secular individual, the secular collective, and the religious individual. Our starting point will be the invention of the modern Jewish self in the late 18th and 19th-century Jewish Enlightenment. We will see how Jews reacted to new promises of personal freedom by reforming, reframing, and
abandoning Judaism. We will trace the connection between these developments and the creation in the late 19th and 20th centuries of new forms of secular, collective Jewish identity through movements such as communism, diaspora nationalism, and Zionism.
Books for purchase:
Abraham Cahan, Yekl and the Imported Bridegroom
Albert Memmi, PIllar of Salt
Ezra Mendelsohn, On Modern Jewish Politics
Amos Oz, A Tale of Love and Darkness
Philip Roth, Goodbye Columbus
Michael Stanislawski, Autobiographical Jews
A course reader will consist of selections from:
Robert Alter, Modern Hebrew Literature
Hannah Arendt, Rahel Varnhagen
Amos Elon, The Pity of it All
Jonathan Frankel, Prophecy and Politics
Benjamin Harshav, Language in Time of Revolution
Heinrich Heine, The Rabbi of Bacharach and Other Stories
Deborah Hertz, Jewish High Society in Old-Regime Berlin
Andrew Heinze, Jews and the American Soul
Eli Lederhendler, The Road to Modern Jewish Politics
Solmon Maimon, Autobiography
Deborah Dash Moore and Ilan Troen, eds., Divergent Jewish Cultures
Tony Michels, A Fire in Their Hearts
Marcus Mosley, Being For Myself Alone
Derek Penslar, Israel in History
Derek Penslar, Shylock’s Children
Philip Roth, Operation Shylock
Nancy Sinkoff, Out of the Shtetl
Yuri Slezkine, The Jewish Century
Sarah Abrevaya Stein, Making Jews Modern
Michael Stanislawski, Autobiograpical Jews
Michael Stanislawski, Zionism and the Fin de Siecle
Yosef Haim Yerushalmi, Zakhor
Yael Zerubavel, Recovered Roots
Steven Zipperstein, The Jews of Odessa
Course Outline:
Week One: Modernity, Secularization and Selfhood
Reading: (CR) David Sorkin, “Into the Modern World,” in Nicholas de Lange, The Illustrated History of the Jewish People, 199-233; Stanislawski, Autobiographical Jews, Introduction
Week Two: Haskalah and the Invention of the Modern Jewish Self
Reading: Maimon, Autobiography; Stanislawski, Autobiographical Jews, 32-68
Week Three: Reframing Judaism: From Reform to Orthodoxy
Reading: (CR) Reinharz/Mendes-Flohr, The Jew in the Modern World, 161-85, 194-205
Week Four: Gender and Selfhood in 19th-Century Jewish Culture
(CR) Hannah Arendt, Rahel Varnhagen, 103-13, 219-59; (STL) Pauline Wengeroff, Rememberings, 96-213
Document analysis handed out
Week Five: Self-Fulfillment: Narratives of Jewish Success
(CR) Sorkin, “Into the Modern World,” in De Lange, 234-53; (CR) Derek Penslar, Shylock’s Children: Economics and Jewish Identity in Modern Europe, 124-38, 144-58; Cahan, “Yekl”
Document analysis due
Week Six: Self-Abasement: Crises of Jewish Identity at the fin de siecle
Reading: Stanislawski, Autobiographical Jews, Chapter 4; (CR) Yfatt Weiss, “Identity and Essentialism: Race, Racism and the Jews at the Fin de Siecle,” in Neil Gregor et al., eds., German History From the Margins 49-69; (CR) Mendes-Flohr, The Jew in the Modern World, 261-82
First essay assignment handed out
Week Seven: Collective Solutions: Modern Jewish Politics
Reading: Mendelsohn, On Modern Jewish Politics, 1-125
Week Eight: Language as a Tool of Revolution: Yiddish and Hebrew
Reading: (STL) Harshav, The Meaning of Yiddish, 119-60, (STL) Abramovitch, “The Brief Travels of Benjamin the Third;” Assorted documents on Zionist Hebrew culture to be posted on course web site.
First essay due
Week Nine: The Colonized Self: Sephardic and Middle Eastern Jewry
Reading: Memmi, Pillar of Salt
Week Ten: Individualist Secularism in a Collectivist Society: The Soviet Union
Reading: (CR) Anna Shternshis, “Soviet Yiddish Songs as a Mirror of Jewish Identity,” (STL) Moshe Kulbak, “Zelmenyaner,” (CR), Isaac Babel, “Gedali,” “The Rabbi,” “The Rabbi’s Son”
Week Eleven: Collectivism, Secular and Religious: The Zionist Project
Oz, A Tale of Love and Darkness, chapters 1-19, 27, 30-44
Week Twelve: Parricide in Israel: The End of Hegemony and the Rise of Ethnic Selfhood
Reading: Oz, A Tale of Love and Darkness, chapter 45-end; (CR) Ella Shohat, “Zionism From the Standpoint of its Jewish Victims;” (CR) Shimon Ballas, interview and “Iya;| Sami Shalom Chetrit, selected poems, in Keys to the Garden, Ammiel Alcalay, ed., 61-99, 357-63; Etgar Keret, “The Nimrod Flipout.”
Week Thirteen: Individualism, Secular and Religious: Contemporary North America
Second essay assignment handed out.
Reading: (CR) Whitfield, “Declarations of Independence,” Roth, Goodbye, Columbus
Jews and American Popular Culture
Professor Andrea Most
For over a hundred years, American Jews have been among the most prominent creators of American popular entertainment. This course will explore this persistent relationship, looking at the complex ways in which the Jewish encounter with modern liberal America was shaped by, and helped to shape, the mass culture that emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century and grew into one of the defining features of American public life. We will examine a wide variety of cultural forms such as vaudeville and blackface performance, Tin Pan Alley music, Hollywood films (both of the Golden Age of the 1930s and 40s, and later works), animation and cartoons, Broadway musicals, stand-up comedy, and television variety shows. Students in the course will be expected to engage with both the primary text and a series of secondary materials that will provide historical and political context, theoretical background on the study of popular culture, and an overview of the century-long, often troubling, conversation on the role of Jews in the creation of American culture.
Required Texts:
Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman
Laurents, Sondheim & Styne, Gypsy
Gelbart, Shevelove & Sondheim, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
Schedule of Readings and Viewings:
Week 1: Introduction
Watch: The Jewish Americans, Parts 1 & 2
Week 2: Theatricality and Anti-Theatricality
Watch: The Jazz Singer (1927)
Read "Moguldom" and "Hollywood's Jewish Question," from Entertaining America, pp. 44-75
"On the Jazz Singer," from Entertaining America, pp. 76-83
Jonas Barish, The Anti-theatrical Prejudice, pp. 1-2. 464-69
The Jazz Singer, cont'd
Week 3: Action
Watch: Show Boat (1936)
Read Abraham Joshua Heschel, "A Science of Deeds," from God in Search of Man, pp. 281-292
Watch: Twentieth Century (1934)
Read David Belasco, "Acting as a Science," From Actors on Acting, p. 576-583
Week 4: Freedom
Watch: To Be or Not to Be (1942)
Read Selections from Matthew Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color
Read and/or watch: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1964)
Watch: Selections from Superman, Betty Boop, Looney Tunes
Week 5: Obligation
Read George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber, The Royal Family (1927)
Read Robert M. Cover, "Obligation: A Jewish Jurisprudence of the Social Order," Journal of Law and Religion, Vol. 5, No. 1 (1987), pp. 65-74
Watch: GoldDiggers of 1933 (1933)
Week 6: Theatrical America
Watch: Annie Get Your Gun (1950)
Week 7: The Return of Anti-Theatricality
2 hour Mid-Term Test
Read and Watch: Death of a Salesman (1949)
Read Lee Strasberg, "The Actor and Himself"
Week 8: The Return of Anti-Theatricality Cont'd
Death of a Salesman, Cont'd
Read Gypsy (1959)
Listen to Gypsy cast album or watch the 1933 Bette Midler version
Weeks 9/10: Authenticity and Performance
Read Selections from Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
Watch: The Jewish Americans, Part 3
Watch: Funny Girl (1968)
Watch: Sid Caesar, "The German General"
Essay Due
Week 11: Sincerity, Authenticity, and Parody
Watch: Young Frankenstein (1974)
Read Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of Parody, pp. 1-49
Read Lionel Trilling, Selection from Sincerity and Authenticity
Young Frankenstein, cont'd
Week 12: Performativity
Watch: Zelig
Read Selections from Judith Butler, Gender Trouble
Zelig cont'd
Week 13: Wrapping Up - Jews and Theatricality Today
Watch selections from Da Ali G Show
Read Daniel Itzkovitz, "They Are All Jews"
Test
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