The Spirit of Secularism: Jewish Cultures in a Secular Age
This course examines the emergence of distinct forms of Jewish
culture in the modern age that challenge or depart from traditional
Jewish sources and authority. The subject is the rise of a secular
Jewish culture, or more accurately, series of secular Jewish cultures
over the past two centuries. It begins with a discussion of key
definitional questions: What is secularity? Can we trace roots of a
secular impulse Jewish culture prior to modern times? The course will
explore diverse cultural expressions beginning in early modern times
and extending up to the present. In the process, students will take
note of the substantial degree of intellectual and cultural creativity
produced by modern Jews as they have sought to refashion their
identities beyond traditional religious categories.
Course Readings:
Oz Almog, The Sabra
David Biale (ed.), Cultures of the Jews
Paul Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz, The Jew in the Modern World
Yuri Slezkine, The Jewish Century
Course Outline
1. Introduction: What is Secularity?
2. Is There a Pre-Modern Secular Judaism? The Hellenistic Case
1. Erich S. Gruen, “Hellenistic Judaism,” in Cultures of the Jews, A New History, ed. David Biale
2. Philo of Alexandria, Sections from “On the Life of Moses,” in:
www.earlyjewishwritings.com/text/philo/book24.html
3. Reason and Faith in Medieval Jewish Thought
1. Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed
4. The Spinozistic Challenge to Rabbinic Authority in Early Modern Times
1. Baruch Spinoza, Political-Theological Treatise
2. Steven Smith, “The Critic of the Scripture,” in Spinoza, Liberalism and the Question of Jewish Identity
5. Enlightenment and the Jews
1. Paul Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz, The Jew in the Modern World
2. Moses Mendelssohn, Jerusalem, or on Religious Power and Judaism
6. Redefining Women’s Roles
1. Hannah Arendt, Rahel Varnhagen, The Life of a Jewess
2. Marion Kaplan, The Making of the Jewish Middle Class
7. Between Science and Art: Toward a New Jewish Identity
1. Heinrich Heine, “A Ticket of Admission to European Culture,” The Jew in the Modern
World
2. Michael A. Meyer, The Origins of the Modern Jew
8. Denominational Division: Mediating Tradition and Modernity
1. Mendes-Flohr/Reinharz, The Jew in the Modern World
9. The Rise of Modern Jewish Literature
1. Sholem Aleichem, “Chava,” in Classic Yiddish Stories
2. Shmuel Yosef Agnon, “From Lodging to Lodging,” Twenty-One Stories
3. Additional readings from Mendele Mokher Seforim and Y. L. Peretz.
10. L. A. Jewry Then and Now (conference sponsored by the UCLA Center for Jewish Studies at the UCLA Faculty Center)
11. Jewish Culture and the Idea of Nationalism
1. M. J. Berdyczewski, The Zionist Idea
2. Ahad Ha-am, The Zionist Idea
3. Theodor Herzl, Diaries
4. Lucy Dawidowicz, The Golden Tradition
12. Jewish Urban Culture and Secular Identity
1. Franz Kafka, “Before the Law,” in The Complete Short Stories
2. Kafka, “My Father’s Bourgeois Judaism,” in Mendes-Flohr/Reinharz, The Jew in the
Modern World
3. Peter Gay, A Godless Jew: Freud, Atheism, and the Making of Psychoanalysis
13. Immigration and Secular Culture in New York
1. Anna Yezierska, The Breadgivers
2. Abraham Cahan, The Jew in the Modern World
3. Yiddish periodicals including the Forverts and Der Tog
14. The Non-Jewish Jew
1. Isaac Deutscher, The Non-Jewish Jew
2. Yuri Slezkine, The Jewish Century
www.pupress.princeton.edu/chapters/s7819.pdf
15. The Rupture of the Holocaust
1. Zvi Kolitz, Yosl Rakover Talks to God
2. Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, “Elements of anti-Semitism,” in Dialectic of
Enlightenment (New York: Continuum, 1944)
16. Israel and a New Israeli Culture
1. Oz Almog, The Sabra: The Creation of the New Jew
2. A. B. Yehoshua, in Judaism in a Secular Age
17. Jews, Culture(s) and American Society
1. Philip Roth, “Eli the Fanatic,” in Goodbye, Columbus
2. Andrew Heinze, “Jews and the Creation of American Humanism,” in Jews and the American Soul: Human Nature in the Twentieth Century
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