HISTORY 283JEWISH STUDIES 235

JEWS

IN MODERN TIMES

Syllabus

• http://www.history.umd.edu/Faculty/BCooperman/Modern/283syllabus.html

• http://www.history.umd.edu

History 299c

Films

Monday 4-6

Le Frak Hall 2205

Communal Authority

• Challenges– Marranism

• Benedict Spinoza

• Uriel da Costa

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Sabbateanism

– Sabbetai Sevi (Shabbetai Zevi)• 1665-66 and after

• broad appeal

• justifying apostasy (Holiness through Sin)

• Dönmeh; Frankists

• Gershom Scholem

Social Breakdown

• Azriel Shohat– class tensions– right of residence

• Jacob Katz

(Semi-)Neutral Society

• Intellectual space

• Masonic Lodges

• Mendelssohn and Lessing

Maskil(im)

• Haskalah (Enlightenment)

• transitive term with biblical origins

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Moses Mendelssohn 1728-1786

Moses Mendelssohn 1728-1786

• icon of the new possibilities– for Christians– for Jews

• Johann Christian Lavater

Geography

• usually understood as West to East transfer• Germany to

– Eastern Europe (Poland and Russia) & – Ottoman Empire (Middle East and North

Africa)

• danger of this simplistic model– local context– agencies of change

Enlightened Expectations

• Voltaire

• Isaac de Pinto (Sephardic vs Ashkenazic Jewish types) 1762

• portrayal of Jews and Judaism in Encyclopedia is negative

• the Enlightenment did not exist in a vacuum

Externality of Enlightenment

• for Jews this was both a source of attraction and a limitation

• seen as threatening traditional life

• is the maskil a radical? conservative?”

Secularization

• language

• life style

• compartmentalization of religion