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© Brandeis University
Author: Dr. Antony Polonsky
MODERN HISTORY OF EAST EUROPEAN JEWRY
Catalogue:
A comprehensive survey of the history, economic, socio-political and
religious of the Jewish communities in Eastern Europe from the middle of
the eighteenth century until World War Two, with emphasis on the Jews of
Poland and Russia.
Rationale:
On the eve of the second world war, Poland contained the largest Jewish
community in Europe, with a population of nearly three and a half million.
The third largest communty numbering nearly three million was in the Soviet
Union. On the lands that had made up the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
the Western and Cental European pattern, which had seen the transformation
of the Jews from a community, linked by a common religious tradition and
way of life and transcending national boundaries, into citizens of their
respective countries, Englishman, Frenchman and even Germans 'of the Hebrew
faith' had not been followed. Because of the size of the Jewish population,
which in 1764 numbered 750,000 (one third of world Jewry), its resistance
to the sort of transformation proposed and the growth of anti-Jewish sentiment,
the 'assimilationists', whether Polish or Jewish, who has sought to make
the Jews into 'Poles of the Mosaic faith' had, by the late nineteenth century,
largely failed in their efforts. A minority of Polish Jews, both in Galicia
(Austrian Poland) and in the Kingdom of Poland (whose autonomy, established
at the Congress of Vienna, was largely done away with in the course of
the nineteenth century), had accepted the assimilationist dream and were
fairly well-integrated into Polish society. But in the parts of Poland
which had been directly absorbed into the Tsarist Empire (the Pale of Settlement)
where the majority of Jews from the former Polish Republic lived, the maskilic
elite favoured Russification rather than Polonization. In all these areas,
and particularly in the Pale of Settlement, the late nineteenth century
had seen the emergence and increasing dominance of autonomist concepts
of Jewish self-identification, in particular Zionism and Jewish autonomist
socialism (Bundism). Modernized versions of traditional orthodoxy also
developed a significant following, both mitnagdic and hasidic. A significant
minority within the Jewish community was attracted to revolutionary socialism
with its vision of a new world in which the old divisions of Jew and gentile
would be subsumed by the creation of a new socialist humanity. These new
ideologies went along with the emergence of Yiddish as a literary language
and the development of modern Hebrew.
The first world war saw a fundamental reordering of the territorial
and political framework of East-Central Europe. The Jews of the area were
now divided between the newly reborn Polish state, where they were guaranteed
their rights both as individuals and as a community, but where they faced
difficult political and social problems and the Soviet Union, which adopted
a new form of radical assimilationism in its Jewish policy, giving the
Jews everything as individuals, but destroying all vestiges of Jewish communal
autonomy, except for the closely controlled socialist Yiddish culture.
The course will investigate the evolution of the Jewish community in the
lands of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from the accession of
the last Polish king, Stanis`aw
August Poniatowski until the second world war which saw the murder of the
large majority of the Jews of the area.
Course Requirements
- Attendance at all lectures
and classes
- Wide reading in the field
- Three term papers (6-8 pages)
on topics chosen from a list to be distributed in class.
- Final in-class examination.
Course Outline
Part I: 1772-1856
1. Eastern Europe in Jewish History: The Polish-Lithuanian Legacy
Readings:
- Abraham Joshua Heschel, The
Earth is the Lord's (entire book);
- M.J. Rosman, "Jewish
Perceptions of Insecurity and Powerlessness in 16th-18th Century Poland,"
Polin 1 (1986): 19-27.
2. Religious Life/ Hasidism
and its opponents
Readings:
- Shmuel Ettinger, "The
Hasidic Movement -- Reality and Ideals," and Gershom Scholem, "Devekut,
or Communion with God," in G. Hundert, ed., Essential Papers on
Hasidism, pp. 226-43, 275-98;
- David Fishman, Russia's
First Modern Jews, pp. 7-21; In Praise of the Baal Shem Tov
(translated by Ben-Amos and Mintz), pp. 7-23.
3. Russian Policy Towards
Jews
Readings:
- Daniel Beauvois, "Polish-Jewish
Relations in the Territories Annexed by the Russian Empire in the First
Half of the Nineteenth Century," in C. Abramsky et al, eds., The
Jews in Poland, pp. 78-90;
- M. Stanislawski, Tsar Nicholas
I and the Jews, pp. 13-48.
4. The Culture of Everyday
Life: Work, Study, Play Shtetl and Shtot
Readings:
- Shaul Stampfer, "Heder
Study, Knowledge of Torah and the Maintenance of Social Stratification
in Traditional East European Jewish Society," in Studies in Jewish
Education, pp. 271-89;
- Israel Aksenfelt, "The
Headband," in Joachim Neugroschel, ed the Shtetl, pp. 47-172.
5. High Culture: Rabbinic,
Hasidic, Maskilic
Readings:
- Immanuel Etkes, Rabbi Israel
Salanter and the Mussar Movement, pp. 17-56;
- Naftali Lowenthan, Communicating
the Infinite, pp. 100-38;
- Lucy Dawidowicz, The Golden
Tradition, pp. 133-42.
6. A tale of Three Cities;
Vilna, Warsaw, Odessa
Readings:
- Arcadius Kahan, "Vilna,"
in Essays in Jewish Social and Economic History, pp. 149-60;
- W. Bartoszewski, et al, eds.,
The Jews in Warsaw, pp. 1-52, 151-70;
- Steven Zipperstein, The
Jews of Odessa, pp. 1-69.
Part II; 1856-1919
7. The Problem of Emancipation
Readings:
- Louis Greenberg, The Jews
of Russia, 1:73-100;
- Hans Rogger, "The Question
of Jewish Emancipation: Russia in the Miror of Europe," in Jewish
Policies and Right-Wing Policies on Imperial Russia, pp. 1-24.
8. Demographic, Social,
and Economic Changes
Readings:
- S. W. Baron, The Russian
Jew under Tsars and Soviets, pp. 63-98;
- Stephen Corrain, Warsaw
Before the First World War, pp. 21-38.
9. Education, Culture and
Ideology
Readings:
- Eli Lederhendler, The Road
to Modern Jewish Politics, pp. 111-53;
- Zofia Borzyminska, "Government-Sponsored
Schools for Jews in the Kingdom of Polan, 1864-1870, Gal-Ed 13 (1993):
27-38;
- Yosef Salmon, "The Emergence
of a Jewish Nationalist Consciousness in Europe during the 1860s and 1870s,
"AJS Review 16 (1991): 107-32;
- Steven Zipperstein, The
Jews of Odessa, pp. 96-113/
10. The Jewish Question
in Russia and Poland
Readings:
- I.M. Aronson, "The
Anti-Jewish Pogroms in Russia in 1881," in J. D. Klier and S.
Lambroza, eds., Pogroms: Anti-Jewish Violence in Modern Russian History,
pp. 44-57;
- Hans Rogger, "The Jewish
Policy of Late Tsarism: A Reappraisal," in Jewish Policies and
Right Wing Policies in Imperial Russia, pp. 25-39;
- Stephen Corrsin, Warsaw
Before the First World War, pp. 78-106.
11. The New Jewish Politics
Readings:
- Ezra Mendelsohn, On Modern
Jewish Politics, pp. 3-36;
- Arthur Hertzberg, ed., The
Zionist Idea, pp. 148-53, 168-77, 181-98, 262-69, 355-60;
- Simon Dubnow, Nationalism
and History (ed. K. S. Pinson) pp. 155-81;
- Moshe Mishkinsky, The Jewish
Society Through the Ages, pp. 284-96;
- Chaim Jitlovsky (sic), "What
is the Jewish Secular Culture?" in Great Yiddish Writers of the
Twentieth Century (selected and translated by Joseph Leftwich), pp.
91-98;
- Zerubavel, "Memories,"
in Great Yiddish Writers of the Twentieth Centurys, pp. 274-79.
12. War and Revolution
Readings:
- S. W. Baron, The Russian
Jew under the Tsars and Soviets, pp. 156-86;
- Pawel Korzec, "Antisemitism
in Poland," in J. A. Rishman, ed., Studies on Polish Jewry,
pp. 29-52;
- P. R. Mendes-Flohr and J.
Reinharz, eds., The Jew in the Modern World (2nd ed.) pp. 428-36.
Part III; 1919-1941
13. Jews in Poland between
the Two World Wars
Readings:
- Ezra Mendelsohn, The Jews
of East-Central Europe Between the World Wars, pp. 11-84;
- Antony Polonsky, The Little
Dictators: The History of Eastern Europe since 1918, pp. 26-43;
- Ezra Mendelsohn, 'Interwar
Poland: Good for the Jews or Bad for the Jews?' in Chimen Abramsky, Maciej
Jachimczyk, Antony Polonsky (eds.), The Jews in Poland, Oxford,
1986, pp. 130-139;
- Ezra Mendelsohn 'Jewish Historiography
on Polish Jewry in the Interwar Period, POLIN, 8, pp. 3-13.
14. Jews in Soviet Russia
and the Soviet Union 1921-41
Readings:
- Benjamin Pinkus, The Jews
of the Soviet Union, pp. 49-137;
- Nora Levin, The Jews in
the Soviet Union since 1917, New York University Press, 1988,
volume 1, chapters 1-19;
- Zvi Gitelman, Jewish Nationality
and Soviet Politics: The Jewish Sections of the CPSU, Princeton,
1972, esp. pp. 321-442;
- Irving Howe, Eliezer Greenberg (eds.), A Treasury of Yiddish Poetry, New York, 1969. Section 'Yiddish Poets in the Soviet Union', pp. 171-197.