History 210/American Studies 223 Office: PAC 306Spring 2016 Office hours: Thursday, 2-4 p.m. Ronald Schatz (860) 685-2384, rschatz@wesleyan.edu

Jews & America, 1492-2001 Fully one-third of the Jews in Russia, Poland, and other parts of Eastern Europe crossed the Atlantic to enter the United States in the latter 19th and early 20th centuries. This venture constituted one of the largest migrations of a people in world history. Despite hardships and prejudices, over time Jews thrived in America. Unlike most other European immigrants to the United States, those of Jewish background hardly ever returned to their original homelands. And while many American Jews, especially those from Eastern Europe, enthusiastically supported Zionism, few actually moved to Palestine. Rather, the great majority became proud citizens and ardent defenders of America.

Starting from quite modest circumstances, Jewish immigrants or their children typically rose to middle-class status, some even higher. Jews frequently became prominent in fields including commerce, education, literature, theater, medicine, science, politics, and the media, among others. There were Jewish champion boxers, basketball stars, and racketeers. Many of the sharpest radical critics of America and social reformers also emerged from the Jewish community, which itself was extremely self-critical.

Thus the history of Jews in America is complex and significant. This course will investigate why Jews came to America and how they and their children adapted to their new home. It will explore American Jews’ relations with other groups, including the Irish Americans, African-Americans and elite white Protestants, as well as with Jews in other parts of the world. Finally, the course will consider how and in what ways American Jews have made an impact on this country’s economy, politics, and culture. While the course will begin with the colonial era, it will focus primarily on the 19th and especially the 20th centuries.

The readings will include history books and articles, primary sources, and literature and film.

OBJECTIVES OF THE COURSE:

a) To help students acquire greater understanding of American Jewish history and, because they are closely connected, the history of Jews in other parts of the world and U.S. history generally; b) to help students learn how to interpret and discuss primary documents; c) to help students learn how to conduct research.

READINGS:

The following titles will be available on reserve at Olin Library and can be purchased at Broad Street Books and other booksellers.

Hasia R. Diner, A New Promised Land: A History of Jews in America (2000, 2003)Jenna Weissman Joselit, Our Gang: Jewish Crime and the New York Jewish Community, 1900-1940 (1983)Philip Roth, The Plot against America (2004) Jack Salzman and Cornell West, eds., Struggles in the Promised Land: Toward a History of Black-Jewish Relations in the United States (1997)Stuart Svonkin, Jews against Prejudice: American Jews and the Fight for Civil Liberties (1997)

Art Spiegelman, Maus: A Survivor’s Tale, vols. 1 & 2 (1997)

Assignments not listed above will be available at Olin Library’s reserve desk or on electronic reserve. REQUIREMENTS:

Conscientious reading and regular attendance. A 1,000-word essay interpreting a document which will be handed out in class on February

8th and will be due via email by 4 p.m. February 12th. A 1,500-word essay, interpreting a document handed out in class on February 22th and due by

email Friday, March 4th, 4 p.m. A 350-word essay interpreting a document handed out in class on April 4th and due by email

on Friday, April 8th at 4 p.m. A 10-12-page research essay due May 10th or a final exam—student’s choice. If you opt for

the essay, you have to submit a proposal a month ahead of time and discuss the proposal with me. The final exam will be on the date and time scheduled by the Registrar’s Office.

Prof. Deborah Dash Moore, program of history at the University of Michigan and one of the leading scholars in the field, will deliver the Annual Samuel and Dorothy Frankel Lecture on March 30th at 8 p.m. in the Daniels Family Commons. Attendance at the lecture is mandatory. I will also try to arrange a meeting for students with Prof. Moore earlier that day if her schedule permits.

Course grade will be based on class participation (20%), February essay (10%), mid-term essay (25%); April essay (10%), and the final essay or final exam (35%).

Grades will be lower for students who miss more than three classes or who do not contribute to the class discussions.

Please turn off laptops, tablets, cell phones, and all other electronic equipment before class begins. Please don’t bring food to class.

TEACHING APPRENTICE

Sarah Schechter will be serving as a Teaching Apprentice in the course. A history major who has taken this course before, Sarah will be directing the PowerPoint and working with me and the students in other ways. Her e-mail address is sschechter@wesleyan.edu.

OFFICE HOURS, E-MAIL, TELEPHONE:

I would be happy to talk with students after class, during office hours, and by appointment. My office is in the Public Affairs Center, room 306; my office hours this semester will be Thursday, 4-6 p.m. and by appointment. My telephone number is (860) 685-2384; my e-mail address is rschatz@wesleyan.edu.

DISABILITY RESOURCES:

Wesleyan University is committed to ensuring that all qualified students with disabilities are afforded an equal opportunity to participate in and benefit from its programs and services.  To

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receive accommodations, a student must have a documented disability as defined by Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the ADA Amendments Act of 2008, and provide documentation of the disability. Since accommodations may require early planning and generally are not provided retroactively, please contact Disability Resources as soon as possible.

If you believe that you need accommodations for a disability, please contact Dean Patey in Disability Resources, located in North College, Room 021, or call (860) 685-5581 for an appointment to discuss your needs and the process for requesting accommodations.

TOPICS AND ASSIGNMENTS

January 25 Jews and American Liberty Reading: Peter Stuyvesant petition to expel the Jews from New Amsterdam, Sept. 22, 1654; Reply to Stuyvesant’s Petition, April 26, 1655, Rights of the Jews in New Amsterdam, March 13, 1656, in The Jew in the Modern World, 3rd ed., pp. 501-03.

January 27 Jews in the New Republic, 1776-1820 Reading: Diner, The New Promised Land, preface, ch. 1. Excerpts from the Declaration of Independence, 1776, and the U.S. Constitution; letters between the Hebrew Congregation of Newport and George Washington, August 1790; Rebecca Samuel, “An Observant Jewish Woman in America,” 1791; Rachel Mordecai Lazarus, “A Country Where Religious Distinctions Are Scarcely Known,” The Jew in the Modern World, 3rd

ed., pp. 504, 506-11. February 1 Arrival of Jews from Central Europe and the Market Revolution Reading: Hasia R. Diner, Road Taken: The Great Jewish Migration to the New World and the Peddlers Who Forged the Way (2015), ch. 2

Exchange of letters between Jacob Ezekiel and President John Tyler, April 1841, reprinted in American Jewish History: A Primary Source Reader, ed. Gary Philip Zola and Marc Dollinger (2014), pp. 73-74. February 3 Southern Jews, the Civil War, and Race Relations in the 19th Century Reading: David Brion Davis, “Jews in the Slave Trade,” and Jason H. Silverman, “‘The Law of the Land Is the Law’: Antebellum Jews, Slavery, and the Old South,” Struggles in the Promised Land, pp. 65-86.

Robert N. Rosen, “Jewish Confederates,” and Eric L. Goldstein, “‘Now Is the Time to Show Your True Colors’: Southern Jews, Whiteness, and the Rise of Jim Crow,” in Jewish Roots in Southern Soil, pp. 109-55.

February 8 Judaism in Nineteenth-Century America Reading: Diner, The New Promised Land, ch. 2

Isaac Mayer Wise, “The Confirmation of Girls,” 1854; David Philipson, “Dedication of Hebrew Union College,” 1875; Conference of Reform Rabbis, “The Pittsburgh Platform,” 1885; H. Pereira Mendes, “The Beginning of the Jewish Theological Seminary,” 1886; declaration issued by the Orthodox Congregational Union of America, 1898, Kaufmann Kohler, “The Concordance of Judaism and Americanism,” 1915, reprinted in The Jew in the Modern

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World, 3rd ed., pp. 518-26

February 10 Transformation in the Pale and Early Emigration

Reading: “Awaiting a Pogrom in Vilna,” 1882; N. Tchaykovsky, “The Massacre of the Jews at Kishinev,” 1903; Haim Naham Bialik, “The City of Slaughter,” 1903; “The Beilis Trial,” 1913, and “To America or to the Land of Israel,” 1881, in The Jew in the Modern World, 3rd ed., pp. 388-94. I. L. Peretz, “The Dead Town,” and Lamed Shapiro, “Eating Days,” in A Treasury of Yiddish Stories, ed. Irving Howe and Eliezer Greenberg (1953, 1990). Emma Lazarus, “1492” and “The New Colossus,” from in Jewish American Literature: A Norton Anthology, pp. 104-05, 106. Rec’d: Photographing the Jewish Nation: Pictures of S. An-sky’s Ethnographical

Expeditions, ed. Eugene M. Avrutin, et al. (2009)

Abraham Cahan

February 15 The Goldene Medine Reading: Diner, A New Promised Land, ch. 3 Abraham Cahan, “A Ghetto Wedding,” and Mary Antin, “The Lie,” in Jewish American Literature: A Norton Anthology, pp. 123-33, 190-206

February 17 Jews, Socialism, and Radical Culture Reading: Tony Michels, A Fire in Their Hearts: Yiddish Socialists in New York (2005), ch. 2

Arthur Liebman, “The Ties That Bind: Jewish Support for the Left in the United States,” Essential Papers on Jews and the Left, ed. Ezra Mendelsohn (1997), pp. 322-57.

February 22 Increasing Nativism Reading: Adolf Stoecker, “What We Demand of Modern Jewry,” 1878; Houston Steward Chamberlain, “The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century,” 1899; “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” 1902; “The Manhattan Beach Affair”

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(1879); Henry Adams, “The Jews Make Me Creep,” 1896; “Leo Frank Lynched,” 1915; reprinted in The Jew in the Modern World, pp. 317-19, 333-36, 339-42, 527-31.

February 24 Uptown Jews in the Early 20th Century Reading: Israel Friedlaender, “The Division between German and Russian Jews,” 1915; Louis Marshall, “The American Jewish Committee,” January 12, 1906; Jacob H. Schiff, “The Galveston Project,” 1907, reprinted in The Jew in the Modern World, 3rd ed., pp. 545-49;

Leon Harris, Merchant Princes: An Intimate History of the Jewish Families Who Built Great Department Stores (1994), ch. 2.

Louis Brandeis

February 29 Shtarkers Reading: Joselit, Our Gang, chs. 1-4

March 2 The Garment Workers’ Unions Reading: Irving Howe with Kenneth Libo, World of Our Fathers (1976, 1994), ch. 9. The Protocols of Peace, Ending the 1910 Cloak Makers’ Strike, New York City, reprinted in American Jewish History: A Primary Source Reader, ed. Gary Philip Zola and Marc Dollinger (2014), pp. 146-48 “The Meaning of Labor Day,” Justice, September 2, 1921, reprinted in Jewish Radicals: A Documentary History, ed. Tony Michels (201), pp. 124-25.

Spring Break

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March 21 Brandeis and Kallen Louis Brandeis, “The Jewish Problem and How to Solve It,” reprinted in

The Zionist Idea: A Historical Analysis and Reader, ed. Arthur Hertzberg (1997), pp. 514-17 Horace Kallen, “Democracy versus the Melting Pot,” 1915, excerpts in Jewish American Literature: A Norton Anthology (2001), pp. 206-17.

March 23 From Class Struggle to the Struggle for Class Reading: Diner, A New Promised Land, ch. 4 Congressional Committee on Immigration, “Temporary Suspension of Immigration,” 1920, and Henry Ford, “The International Jew,” 1920, reprinted in The Jew in the Modern World, pp. 568-72.

Anzia Yezierska, "Children of Loneliness (1923)," in Jewish American Literature: A Norton Anthology (2001), pp. 233-45.

Groucho Marx and Margaret Dumont

March 28 Hollywood, Comedy & Prohibition Reading: Neal Gabler, An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invested Hollywood (1988), Introduction, chs. 4-5. Groucho Marx, “We Were Brothers before You Were,” reprinted in The Jew in the Modern World, pp. 318-19. Joselit, Our Gang, ch. 5-7

March 30 "The Liberating Lens: Jewish American Photographers Picture the Modern World," Frankel Memorial Lecture by Prof. Deborah Dash Moore, Daniels Family Commons, 3rd floor, Usdan Center, 8 p.m.

April 4 FDR & the Jews during the New Deal Reading: Daniel Soyer, “Making Peace with Capitalism? Jewish Socialism Enters the Mainstream, 1933-1944,” Chosen Capital: The Jewish Encounter with American Capitalism, ed. Rebecca Kobrin (2012), pp. 215-33.

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April 6 The Nazi Assault Reading: Adolf Hitler, excerpt from Mein Kampf (1923); Decrees excluding Jews from German cultural and public life, 1933-42; Hitler, “Why the Nuremberg Laws,” “Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honor”; “The Reich Citizenship Law,” September 15, 1935, from The Jew in the Modern World, 3rd ed., pp. 716-19, 723-26, 729-31 Philip Roth, The Plot Against America (2004) - entire book

April 11 The Triumph of Zionism & Revelation in Europe Reading: Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver, “Toward American Jewish Unity (1943),” and “American Jewry in War and After (1944),” in The Zionist Idea: A Historical Analysis and Reader, ed. Arthur Hertzberg (1997), pp. 590-602

“The Columbus Platform,” 1937; American Council for Judaism, “A Statement of Policy,” Feb. 1944, from The Jew in the Modern World, 3rd ed., pp. 575-76, 580-81.

Deborah Dash Moore, G.I. Jews: How World War II Changed a Generation (2004), ch. 7

Karl Shapiro, “Israel,” Jewish American Literature: A Norton Anthology (2001), p. 556. April 13 “The Golden Decade” Reading: Diner, A New Promised Land, ch. 5

Philip Roth, “Eli, the Fanatic,” from Goodbye, Columbus (1959)

Bess Myerson, Miss America 1945

April 18 Postwar Liberalism

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Reading: Svonkin, Jews Against Prejudice, chs. 2-7 (rec’d: ch. 1)

April 20 Black-Jewish Relations, the Civil Rights Movement, and Southern Jewry Reading: Claybourne Carson, “Black-Jewish Universalism in the Era of Identity Politics” and Deborah Dash Moore, “Separate Paths: Blacks and Jews in the Twentieth-Century South,” Struggles in the Promised Land, 177-96, 275-94

April 25 American Jews & the State of Israel Reading: Arthur Hertzberg, “Israel and American Jewry,” Commentary, 44:2 (August 1967), pp. 69-73. Svonkin, ch. 8

Diner, A New Promised Land, ch. 6

April 27 Feminism & Gay Rights Reading: Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (1963), ch. 1

Robin Morgan, “Introduction,” Sisterhood Is Powerful, (1970), pp. xiii-xl. “Robert Spitzer, psychiatrist of transformative influence, dies at 83,”

Washington Post, December 27, 2015 Rachel Adler, “The Jew Who Wasn’t There: Halakha and the Jewish Woman,”

1971, reprinted in The Jew in the Modern World, pp. 875-78.

May 2 After the Holocaust Reading: Spiegelman, Maus, vol. 2 (rec’d vol. 1)

May 4 Jews & America Reading: Max Appel, “The Eighth Day,” Jewish American Literature: A Norton Anthology (2001), pp. 1073-81. Simon Dawidowicz, Israel, The Ever-Dying People and Other Essays, ed. Benjamin C. I. Ravid (1986), pp. 53-63: https://books.google.com/books?id=v8KQLxnXf4IC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

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Art Spiegelman, Maus: A Survivor's Tale

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