Jewish Civilization, III. JWSC 20003
Tues, Thurs 9:00-10:20
Special Collections, Regenstein Library
Prof. Leora Auslander
Harper Memorial West, 608; 702-7940
Email: lausland@midway.uchicago.edu
Office Hours (please sign up outside of HMW 608): Thursdays 3:00-5:00
This course is both an introduction to major themes in Jewish Civilization history from
17th century to the present and a case study in the history of diasporic, minority cultures.
The course is thematically, rather than chronologically, organized and has been
conceptualized as a two-quarter sequence. (Each quarter may be taken independently,
however). The winter quarter in 2012 treated the following themes: Dwelling; Praying;
Looking At Jews; Living “ Jewish Ethnicity.” The spring quarter 2012 will take analyze:
Loving; Working; Communicating/Transmitting; Remembering.
In addition to teaching an empirical subject (Jewish Civilization) and a conceptual
problem (minority, diasporic culture) this course seeks to provide you with an
opportunity to improve both your interpretative and research techniques and your
expressive skills. You will be asked to interpret texts and visual materials, to write a
short paper on a single source, a short literature review, and a final reflection piece on the
theme of the course.
Assignments:
Class Presence and Participation:
This course is run as a mixture of lecture and discussion. You MUST come to class, and
you must come to class having read the assigned reading and prepared to discuss it. Your
final grade will reflect that preparation. If you find speaking in class difficult, come to
my office hours to talk about it and we will figure out a strategy.
Each student is entitled to miss one class without explanation. Additional absences will
be made up by writing a three page essay on the day’s topic.
Assignment 1:
Choose one item, author/artist, category of object category (i.e. children's book, textbook,
newspaper, political pamphlet, guide to Jewish living, print, photograph...) listed on the
syllabus or in the Special Collections Catalogue that particularly interests you. You will
be asked to both make an oral presentation of no longer than 10 minutes (I will stop you
at 10 minutes). The presentation should not be read, but rather spoken from an outline.
The presentations will be graded for both content and fluency and coherence of the
presentation. Please think hard about how you will use visual materials in your
presentation and plan to rehearse a number of times.
Please bear in mind both the object and themes of special interest to you and the date
when you make your selection.
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There will be a sign-up sheet on Chalk that will limit each available session to two
presentations.
Assignment 2:
Midterm paper. This will be a 5 page essay from a choice of topics covered in the first
half of the course. You will not be required to do any additional research, but rather draw
on and refer to the course materials. Successful completion will require that you have
attended class, read the assigned readings carefully, and been attentive to your colleagues'
presentations. The prompts will be posted on the course's chalk site on Saturday, April
28 and will be due by midnight on Saturday, May 5.
Assignment 3:
Final Paper. This will be a 7 page essay from a choice of three topics from the 2nd half
of the course. You will not be required to do any additional research, but rather draw on
and refer to the course materials. Successful completion will require that you have
attended class, read the assigned readings carefully, and been attentive to your colleagues'
presentations. The choice of topics will be handed out the last day of class and the essays
will be due on Monday, June 4, 2012 at midnight.
Technical matters: All papers are to be emailed to me. They should be in 12pt, Times
New Roman typeface, double-spaced. Footnotes should be at the bottom of the page,
single-spaced. References may be either in footnote or parenthetical form. In either case,
a bibliography should be included at end. Please do not forget to provide a title and to
number your pages. All papers should be turned in as WORD documents (not PDFs)
because I will read and comment on them on the computer and email them back to you.
Grading:
Your final grade will be a composite of your participation (quality and quantity), your
oral presentation, and your two written assignments. Grades will be lowered for lateness
on papers except when the lateness is a result of illness.
NOTES ON CLASS ETIQUETTE:
1) PUNCTUALITY. I know 9:00 is early. It is important that you be on time anyway.
(This means arriving in Special Collections by 8:55 so you can stow your things.) I will
also commit to ending the class promptly at 10:20.
2) RESPECT. Do not assume any previous knowledge of anyone in the class. Always
define your terms. Do not use Hebrew or Yiddish terms or phrases unless you define
them.
3) BRING TEXTS TO CLASS. You must bring the texts to class in paper format. i.e.
you must print out articles and buy the few books required. This is the only way of
having a serious discussion of the material.
4) COMPUTERS: The use of computers/Ipads/Kindles etc is not allowed in class. It
inhibits interaction.
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5) REMAINING IN CLASS. Once you're here, you should plan on remaining seated
until the end of class (except in cases of emergency). The class is only 80 minutes long.
All of these rules are to assure that everyone benefits as much as possible from the class.
It is impossible to have coherent discussions when people arrive late, leave the room at
random moments, do not have citations and page references for discussion, are hidden
behind computer screens, or (even inadvertently) exclude others by assuming shared
knowledge or experience.
Readings:
Most of the readings are articles, book chapters and documents. Book chapters and
documents are available on the course's Chalk site (under Documents, organized week by
week). If the text is an article in a journal (as opposed to the chapter of a book) and not
on the course's Chalk site, you will find it in JSTOR. We will go over the use of JSTOR
in class; if you have difficulties please ask a librarian.
The two books we will be reading may be found for purchase in new and used copies on
line.
March 27. Introduction
I. Loving
March 29. Sex
David Biale, Eros and the Jews, Introduction and chapters 1 and 2.
April 3. Marriage
Daniel Boyarin, Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1993), chs. 3 and 4.
Kenneth R. Stow, “Marriages are Made in Heaven: Marriage and the Individual in the
Roman Jewish Ghetto,” Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 48, No. 3 (Autumn, 1995), pp.
445-491.
Lila Corman Berwin, “Sociology, Jews and Intermarriage in 20th century America,”
Jewish Social Studies (Winter, 2008): 32-60.
Materials from Special Collections
Unterschiedliche streit Schrifften. Repsonsa und Gutachten: Über die Frage: Ob Gott
verbotten oder zugelassen habe dass einer seiner verstorbenen Weibs Schwester
heyraten mögen? (Oettingen, 1682)
Johann David Michaelis, Abhandlung von den Ehegetzen Mosis: welche die Hyerathen in
die nahe Freundshaft untersagen (Göttingen, 1768)
Board of Deputies of British Jews, Case as to Jewish Marriages (London, 1844)
Anton Theodor Hartmann, Die Hebräerin am Putztische und als Braut (Amsterdam,
1809-1810).
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H.S. Q. Henriques, Jewish Marriages and the English Law (London, 1909)
Images
“Matrimonio Ashkenazita,” Inspired by the original of 1601, etching, n.d. Sondheim, Box
1, folder 17.
Ketubah with cartouche of wedding ceremony, 1922. Sondheim, Box 1, folder 19.
Printed Ketubah with illustration, 1915-1918. Sondheim, Box 1, folder 20.
Ketubah, New York, Hebrew date illegible. Sondheim, Box 1, folder 27.
Maurice Oppenheim, “18th century Jewish Wedding,” color reproduction, n.d. Sondheim,
Box 1 folder 24.
W. A. Stryowski, “Juden hochzeit in Krakau,” print, n.d., Sondheim, Box 1, folder 33.
Picart, “Céremonie nuptiale des juifs allemands,” n.d., Sondheim, Box 2, folder 16.
“Hochzeitfest in einer judischen Familie zu Dran,” print, n.d. Sondheim, Box 4, folder 3.
“Accurrate Vorstellung einer Juden-hochzeit,” print. Sondheim, Box 4, folder 5.
“Huwelyks-Plegtigheid van de Portugeesche Jooden,” print, 1780, Box 4, folder 6.
“Jüdische Hochzeit zu Marocco,” n.d. Sondheim, Box 4, folder 36.
“Formalités des Juifs pour les Lettres de Divorce,” Sondheim, Box 5, folder 14.
Intermarriage
Rosenberger, 14 items, p. 468, Guide
April 5. Queerness
Book of Genesis
Dawn Rose, “Yusuf Come Home: Parashat Miketz (Genesis 41:1-44:17) in Gregg
Drinkwater, Joshua Lesser, and David Shneer, eds. Torah Queeries: Weekly
Commentaries on the Hebrew Bible (New York: NYU Press, 2009), pp. 60-64.
Janet R. Jakobson, “Queers are like Jews, Aren’t They? Analogy and Alliance Politics,”
in Daniel Boyarin, Daniel Itzkovitz, Ann Pellegrini, eds. Queer Theory and the
Jewish Question (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 2003), pp 64-89.
April 10. Reproduction
Susan Martha Kahn, Reproducing Jews: A Cultural Account of Assisted Reproduction in
Israel, Intro. and chs. 1, 3 and 4.
Materials from Special Collections:
Leopold Zunz, Gutachten über die Beschneidung (Franfurt, 1844)
Salomon Abraham Trier, Rabbinische Gutachten über die Beschneidung (Frankfurt,
1844)
Thomas Fuller, The infants advocate: of circumcision and baptism on Jewish Children
(London, 1653)
Rhyming text in block and cursive consoling the child during the removal of his foreskin
(1743). Sondheim, Box 1, folder 11.
“Ceremonies Used at the Circumcision of the Jews,” 1732. Sondheim, Box 5, no. 20.
Mikvah scene, print, Amsterdam, 1781. Sondheim, Box 4, folder 1.
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April 12. Cinematic Representation of Marriage, Sex, Child-rearing
Screening of: Karin Abou, Little Jerusalem (2005). 90 minutes--please be on time!
April 17. Child Rearing
Simha Goldin, “The Role of Ceremonies in the Socialization Process: The Case of Jewish
Communities of Northern France and Germany in the Middle Ages,” Archives de
sciences sociales des religions, 41e Année, No. 95, La Religion: Frein à L'Égalité
Hommes/Femmes? (Jul. - Sep., 1996), pp. 163-178.
One more reading will be added here.
Materials from Special Collections
Children's books—this is just a sampling. There are many more
Elizabeth Charlotte, The Glory of Israel: or, Letters to Jewish Children on the Early
History of their Nation (Philadelphia, 1843)
C. I. Johnstone, The Wars of the Jews, as Related by Josephus (London, 1840-1852)
Hermann Schwab, Kinderträume: ein Märchenbuch für jüdische Kinder von 6-9 Jahren
(Frankfurt, 19??)
Abram S. Isaacs, School Days in Home Town (Phildadelphia, 1928)
Sadie Rose Weilerstein, The Adventures of K'onton: A Little Jewish Tom thumb (New
York, 1935)
Irma Singer, Das verschlossene Buch: Jüdische Märchen (Vienna, 1925)
Vitalii Bianki, Di ershte yagd (Moskow, 1929)
Johanna Reiss, The Upstairs Room (New York, 1972)
Anita Kassof, The Synagogue Speaks (Baltimore, 2011)
Textbooks
Salomon Herxheimer, Glaubens und Pflichtenlehre für israelitische Schulen (Leipzig,
1865)
Egon Jameson, Jüdische Mütter (Berlin, 1936)
Unterschiedliche streit Schriftten
Bar Mitzvah images
Moritz Oppenheim, “Der Barmizvah-Vortrag,” 1874. Sondheim, Box 4, folder 27.
First Synagogue visit
“Einsegnung in der Synagoge,” newspaper, 1895. Sondheim, Box 4, folder 31
“Erste Bekennung zum Glauben der Väter,” newsprint, 1895. Sondheim, Box 4, folder
32.
Families
Egon Jameson, Jüdische mütter (Berlin, 1936).
Theodore Deak, Women and children under the swastika. A collection of news items and
factual reports... (New York, 1936)
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The Jewish Association ofr the Protection of Girls, Women and Children (London, 1926,
1931, 1935, 1936)
II. Working
April 19. "Jewish" work?
Angela Groppi, "Jews, Women, Soldiers and Neophytes: the Practice of Trades under
Exclusions and Privileges from the 17th to the early 19th century", in Guilds,
Markets, and Work Regulations in Italy, 16th-19th centuries, Alberto Guenzi,
Paola Massa, and Fausto Piola Caselli, eds. (Aldershot, Hampshire, Great Britain:
Ashgate, 1998).
Jacek Sobczak, "The Chronology and Distribution of Jewish Craft Guilds in Old Poland,
1613-1795," and Maurycy Horn, "Jews and Trade at the End of the Sixteenth
Century and in the First Half of the Seventeenth" both in Antony Polonsky, Jakub
Basista and Andrzej Link-Lenczowski, eds. The Jews in Old Poland, 1000-1795
(London: New York: I.B. Tauris, 1993).
David Schnall, By the sweat of your brow: Reflections on Work and the Workplace in
classic Jewish Thought, selection.
Materials from Special Collections
Adolf Kurrein, Arbeit und Arbeiter im jüdischen Volke (Frankfurt, 1890).
Zosa Szajkowski, Antisemitizm in der Frantseyzisher arbeter-bavegung (New York,
1948)
Melech Epstein, Jewish Labor in the USA: An Industrial, Political and Culture History of
the Jewish Labor Movement, 1882-1914 (New York, 1950)
Yivo Institute for Jewish Research, The Early Jewish Labor Movement in the United
States, trans. from the Yiddish, (New York, 1961)
George Morris, Labor and Anti-Semitism (New York, 1953)
Koppel S. Pinson, Arkady Kremer, Vladimir Medem, and the Ideology of the Jewish
‘Bund’ (New York, 1945)
Fritz Otto Schultz, Jude und Arbeiter, ein Abschnitt aus der Tragödie des deutschen
Volkes (Berlin, 1934).
Walter Preuss, Die jüdische Arbeiterbewegung in Palästina (Berlin, 1933).
Jan Stanczyk, Rights for Jews in new Poland: Declaration of the Polish Government-inExile (New York, 1941)
Arbeitsbericht der Reichsvertretung der Juden in Deutschland für das Jahr 1937 (Berlin,
1938)
Georg Halpern, Die jüdischen Arbeiter in London (Stuttgart and Berlin, 1903)
April 24. Jews and the Money Business
Natalie Zemon Davis, “Religion and Capitalism Once Again? Jewish Merchant Culture
in the Seventeenth Century,” Representations 59 (1997), 56-84.
Barry E. Supple, “A Business Elite: German-Jewish Financiers in Nineteenth-Century
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New York,” The Business History Review, Vol. 31, No. 2 (Summer, 1957), pp.
143-178.
Herbert Schijf, "Jewish Bankers 1850-1914," in Diaspora Entrepreneurial networks, ed.
Ina Maghdiantz McCabe et al (Oxford, 2005), pp. 91-216.
Special Collections
Bill Levner, Is it true what they say about Cohen (New York, 1948)
The Memorial presented to the High Court of La Tournelle at Paris (London, 1752).
See p. 39 “Economics”: Rosenberger Catalogue
April 26. Jewish Gendering of Labor
Rickie Burman, “The Jewish Woman as Breadwinner: The Changing Value of Women's
Work in a Manchester Immigrant Community,” Oral History, Vol. 10, No. 2,
[Women's History] (Autumn, 1982), pp. 27-39.
Linda Mack Schloff, "'We Dug More Rocks'": Women and Work," in American Jewish
Women's History: A Reader ed. Pamela S. Nadell (New York: NYU Press, 2003),
ch. 6
Alice Kessler-Harris, "Organizing the Unorganizable: Three Jewish Women and Their
Union," in American Jewish Women's History: A Reader ed. Pamela S. Nadell
(New York: NYU Press, 2003), ch. 7
Special Collections
Official Report of the Jewish International Conference on the Suppression of the Traffic
in Girls and Women (London, 1910).
Sidonie Werner, Mädchenhandel (Hamburg, 1907)
Deutsche National-Komitee zur Bekämpfung des Mädchenhandel (Lemberg, 1906).
Arbeiterinnen erzählen. Kampf und Leben in Erez Jisrael (Berlin, 1935).
May 1. Diasporic Trade
Sarah Abrevaya Stein, Plumes: Ostrich feathers, Jews, and a Lost World of Global
Commerce (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008).
III. Communicating/Transmitting
May 3. Jewish Languages? Hebrew, Yiddish, Ladino, English
Joshua A. Fishman, “The Sociology of the Jewish Languages from a General
Sociolinguistic Point of View,” Readings in the Sociology of Jewish Languages,
ed. J.A. Fishman, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1985, pp. 3-24.
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Ariel Hirschfeld, “Locus and Language: Hebrew Culture in Israel, 1890-1990,” in David
Biale, ed. Cultures of the Jews: Modern Encounters (New York: Schocken, 2002),
pp. 289-340.
Jeffrey Shandler, “Postvernacular Yiddish: Language as a Performance Art, “ TDR, Vol.
48, No. 1 (Spring, 2004), pp. 19-43.
Materials from Special Collections
If anyone has a working knowledge of Yiddish, Ladino, Judeo-Arab, or Hebrew, there are
many texts available. Please put yourself down for a presentation on May 3 and consult
with me about a choice of text.
May 8. Scholarship, I: Wissenschaft des Judentums
Documents in Paul Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz, eds. The Jew in the Modern
World: A Documentary History, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford, 2011), pp. 233239; 256-258; 266-268; 273-275.
Materials from Special Collections
If anyone has a working knowledge of German, there are many texts available. Please
put yourself down for a presentation on May 5 and consult with me about a choice of text
May 10. Scholarship, II: Ethnography
S. Ansky, “From the Ethnographic Expedition: Questionnaire,” in The Dybbuk and the
Yiddish Imagination: A Haunted Reader ed. and trans. Joachim Neugroschel
(New York: Syracuse Univ. Press, 2000), pp. 53-59.
Documents in Paul Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz, eds. The Jew in the Modern
World: A Documentary History, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford, 2011), pp. 270-272.
Benyamin Lukin, “’An Academy Where Folklore Will be Studied”: An-sky and the
Jewish Museum,” in Gabriella Safran and Steven J. Zipperstein, eds. The
Worlds of S. An-sky: A Russian Jewish Intellectual at the Turn of the Century,
(Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 2006), pp. 281-306.
S. Ansky, “The Destruction of Galicia: Excerpts from a Diary, 1914-1917,” in S.
Ansky, The Dybbuk and Other Writings, ed. with intro by David G. Roskies,
trans. Golda Werman (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 2002), pp. 169-210.
May 15. Past-Present on Film
Film: Ansky, “The Dybbuk,”
Naomi Seidman, “The Ghost of Queer Loves Past: Ansky’s “Dybbuk” and the Sexual
Transformation of Ashkenaz,” in Daniel Boyarin, Daniel Itzkovitz, Ann
Pellegrini, eds. Queer Theory and the Jewish Question (New York: Columbia
Univ. Press, 2003), pp 228-245.
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IV. Remembering
May 17. Film
Claude Lanzmann, Shoah, excerpts
May 22. Memorializing in Text
Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz
May 24. Commemorating in Monuments
Michael Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of
Decolonization (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 2009), pp. 1-21.
James E. Young, “Against Redemption: The Arts of Countermemory in Germany
Today,” in Peter Homans, ed. Symbolic Loss: The Ambiguity of Mourning and
Memory at Century’s end (University press of Virginia, 2000)
Materials in Special Collections
Memorial to the unknown Jewish Martyr (Paris, 1960)
May 29. Displaying: Jewish Museums
Abigail Gillman, “Cultural Awakening and Historical Forgetting: The Architecture of
Memory in the Jewish Museum of Vienna and in Rachel Whiteread's
'Nameless Library.'” New German Critique, No. 93 Special Issue on : Austrian
Writers Confront the Past (Autumn, 2004), pp. 145-173.
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, "Exhibiting Jews," in her Destination Culture
(Berkeley, 1998), pp. 79-130.
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