Modern Jewish Culture: Key Texts and their Afterlives
Professor Jeffrey Shandler
Department of Jewish Studies
563:230
Provisional Syllabus
Course Description
This course examines four key texts, written between 1894 and 1944: Sholem
Aleichem’s “Tevye the Dairyman” stories, Sh. Ansky’s play “The Dybbuk,” Samson
Raphaelson’s short story “The Day of Atonement” (the basis of the 1927 film The Jazz
Singer), and Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl. These works have become fixtures not
only of modern Jewish culture but also of world culture, primarily through adaptations
and remediations in stage, film, broadcasting, music, and visual art. Students will read
these four texts, discuss the complex histories of their original composition, and
examine the trajectories defined by how these works have been revisited over the years
in diverse forms by various communities. As a result, students will consider how the
texts in question have become modern cultural touchstones and how to understand the
acts of adaptation and remediation as cultural practices in their own right. All course
material will be in English.
Core Learning Goals
p. Analyze arts and/or literatures in themselves and in relation to specific
histories, values, languages, cultures, and technologies.
r. Engage critically in the process of creative expression.
Course Learning Goals
Students will:
 Examine the creative processes behind key works of modern Jewish culture,
focusing on issues of composition, redaction, and translation.
 Examine the process by which these key works are adapted, remediated, or
otherwise responded to in various media and genre, focusing on these efforts as
cultural practices in their own right.
 Consider how the case studies at hand are emblematic of larger issues in modern
culture, especially as they pertain to minority diaspora cultures responding to
immigration, war, secularization, and other challenges that the “modern” poses
to the “traditional.”
Course Writing Requirements


8 short guided response papers (1-2 double spaced pages each) on each of the
four key works and on one additional work related to each of the key works.
1 short essay (5 double-spaced pages), due at the end of the term, analyzing an
adaptation or response to one of the four key works that was not discussed in
class; a list of possible works for this assignment will be provided. NOTE: The
assignment for this essay will pose specific questions for assessing the learning
goals “p” and “r.”
Course Schedule
1. Introduction
2-3. Sholem Aleichem, Tevye the Dairyman (1894-1916)
4. Maurice Schwartz’s 1939 film, Tevye der milkhiker
5. Arnold Perl’s 1957 play, Tevye and His Daughters
6-7. Fiddler on the Roof, 1964 stage musical and 1971 film
8. Fiddler phenomena: excerpts from Alisa Solomon, Wonder of Wonders” A Cultural
History of “Fiddler on the Roof” (Metropolitan Books, forthcoming)
9-10. Sh. Ansky, The Dybbuk (Yiddish version, 1912-1917)
11. Sh. Ansky, The Dybbuk (original Russian version)
12. Michal Waszynski’s 1937 film, The Dybbuk
13. Paddy Chayefsky’s 1959 play, The Tenth Man
14. Contemporary stagings of The Dybbuk, focusing on stage design (examples TBA)
15. Samson Raphaelson’s short story, “The Day of Atonement” (1922)
16. Samson Raphaelson’s 1925 play, The Jazz Singer
17. Alan Crosland’s 1927 film, The Jazz Singer
18. Moishe Oysher’s Yiddish “anti-Jazz Singer” films of the 1930s
20. 1952 and 1980 remakes of The Jazz Singer
21. Jazz Singer parodies
22-23. Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl (1942-1947)
24-25: The Diary of Anne Frank, 1955 stage play and 1959 film
26. Anne Frank in contemporary visual art: The work of Absholom Jac Lahav and Ellen
Rothenberg
27. Musical works based on Anne Frank (selections TBA)
28. Anne Frank on YouTube and Anne Frank humor: selections from Anne Frank
Unbound: Media, Imagination, Memory (Indiana U Pr., 2012)