Zvi Gitelman: The Politics and Culture of Modern East European Jewry
This course focuses on the interplay of ethnicity, politics and culture, with specific
reference to the Jews of Eastern Europe since the latter part of the nineteenth century.
Students should gain an appreciation of both the history and culture of East European
Jewry as well as of the interplay of ethnicity and politics. For our purpose, “Eastern
Europe” means, in the main, present day Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Poland and
Romania. Reference will also be made to Hungary and Czechoslovakia.
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II.
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II.
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III.
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2.
Ethnopolitics and East European Jewry
Joseph Rothschild, Ethnopolitics (Columbia University Press, 1981) pp.1-66.
Abraham Joshua Heschel, “The East European Era in Jewish History,” in
Deborah Dash Moore, ed., East European Jewry in Two Worlds ( Northwestern
University Press, 1990) pp.1-21.
Rebecca Himber Berg, “Childhood in Lithuania,” in Leo Schwarz, ed., Memoirs
of My People (Schocken, 1963) pp. 269-280.
Lucy Dawidowicz, The Golden Tradition (Schocken or Syracuse University
Press), pp. 5-89.
Ethnic Relations and the Beginnings of Modern Politics
Robert Chazan,“Medieval Jewish Political Institutions” in Zvi Gitelman, ed., The
Quest for Utopia (M.E. Sharpe, 1992), pp. 67-80.
Bernard Weinryb, The Jews of Poland (Jewish Publication Society, 1972) ch. 2
and 5 (pp.33-55; 119-155).
Milton Esman,“Political and Psychological Factors in Ethnic Conflict,” in Joseph
Montville, ed., Conflict and Peacemaking in Multiethnic States (Lexington,
1990).
Gershon Hundert,“The Implications of Jewish Economic Activity for ChristianJewish Relations in the Polish Commonwealth,” in Chimen Abramsky, et al, eds.,
The Jews in Poland (Basil Blackwell, 1986) pp.55-63.
M.J. Rosman, “Jewish Perceptions of Insecurity and Powerlessness in 16th-18th
Century Poland,” Polin I (1986) pp.19-27
Institutions
Abraham Ain,“Swislocz: Portrait of a Jewish Community in Eastern Europe,” in
Moore, East European Jews in Two Worlds, pp. 22-50.
Israel Cohen, Vilna (Jewish Publication Society, 1943), ch.7-9 (pp. 114-163).
Paul Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz, eds., The Jew in the Modern World,
(Oxford University Press, Second edition, 1995) pp. 394-399.
Politics in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
Michael Stanislawski, Tsar Nicholas I and the Jews (Jewish Publication Society,
1983) ch. 1 & 2 (pp. 13-48).
Eli Lederhandler, The Road to Modern Jewish Politics (Oxford University Press,
1989) pp. 58-157.
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IV.
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V.
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5.
Nicholas Riasanovsky, A History of Russia (Oxford University Press, 1963),
pp.433-482.
Zvi Gitelman, A Century of Ambivalence: The Jews of Russia and the Soviet
Union, 1881 to the Present (Indiana University Press, second edition, 2001), ch. 1.
Hans Rogger, “Conclusion and Overview”, in John Klier and Shlomo Lambroza,
eds. Anti-Jewish Violence in Modern Russian History (Cambridge University
Press, 1992) pp. 314-372.
Mendes-Flohr and Reinharz, Jew in the Modern World [first ed., 1980], p. 309,
328-332.
Hans Rogger, Jewish Policies and Right Wing Politics in Imperial Russia
(University of California, 1986) pp. 25-39.
Aleksander Hertz, The Jews in Polish Culture (Northwestern University Press,
1988) pp.17-32, 59-85.
John-Paul Himka,“Ukrainian-Jewish Antagonism in the Galician Countryside
During the Late Nineteenth Century,” in Peter Potichnyj and Howard Astor, eds.
Ukrainian-Jewish Relations in Historical Perspective (University of Toronto Press,
1988), pp. 111-149.
Modern Political Movements and Ideologies
Salo Baron, The Russian Jew under Tsars and Soviets, pp.163-181.
Mendes-Flohr and Reinharz, The Jew in the Modern World [first ed., 1980], pp.
337-349, 421-431,441-447.
Lucy Dawidowicz, The Golden Tradition, pp. 367-457, 461-492.
Hertz, The Jews in Polish Culture, pp. 143-167.
Jonathan Frankel, “Modern Jewish Politics East and West (1840-1939),” in Zvi
Gitelman, ed., The Quest For Utopia (M.E. Sharpe,1992) pp. 81-104.
Benjamin Nathans, “The Other Modern Jewish Politics: Integration and
Modernity in Fin-de-Siecle Russia,” in Zvi Gitelman, ed., The Emergence of
Modern Jewish Politics: Bundism and Zionism in Eastern Europe (University of
Pittsburgh Press, 2003) 20-34.
Politics and Culture
Mendes-Flohr and Reinharz, Jew in the Modern World (2nd ed.) 401-404.
Modern Hebrew Literature
Mendele Mocher Sforim,“Shem and Japheth on the Train,” in Robert Alter, ed.
Modern Hebrew Literature (Behrman House, 1975), pp. 19-38.
Y.L. Peretz, “Scenes from Limbo,”in ibid., pp. 41-64.
M.Z. Feierberg, Whither? and Other Stories (Jewish Publication Society, 1972).
[Read “Whither?”].
Modern Yiddish Literature
Simon Dubnov, “From Jargon to Yiddish,” in Joseph Leftwich, ed., The Way We
Think, Vol. 2, (Thomas Yoseloff, 1969), pp. 519-527.
Y.L. Peretz, “Hope and Fear,” in Irving Howe and Eliezer Greenberg, eds.,
Voices from the Yiddish (University of Michigan Press, 1972), pp. 22-24.
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David Fishman, “The Bund and Modern Yiddish Culture,” in Gitelman, The
Emergence of Modern Jewish Politics, 107-119.
Peretz, “What Our Literature Needs,” in Voices from the Yiddish, pp. 25-31.
J.I. Trunk, “Jacob and Esau,” in Irving Howe and Eliezer Greenberg, eds., A
Treasury of Yiddish Stories (Viking, 1954),., pp. 137-147.
I.L. Peretz, “Bontsha the Silent,” in ibid., pp. 223-230.
Chaim Grade, “My Quarrel with Hersh Rasseyner,” in ibid., pp. 579-606.
VI.
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The Russian Revolution and the Jews in the Soviet Union
Gitelman, A Century of Ambivalence, ch. 2 and 3.
Isaac Babel, “Gedali,” in Isaac Babel, The Collected Stories (Meridian, 1961) 6972.
VII.
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The Last Chapter? Jews in Interwar Eastern Europe
Ezra Mendelsohn, The Jews of Eastern Europe Between the Two World Wars
(Indiana University Press, 1983).
Michael Steinlauf, “Jewish Politics and Youth Culture in Interwar Poland:
Preliminary Evidence from the YIVO Autobiographies,” in Gitelman, ed, The
Emergence of Modern Jewish Politics, 95-106.
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VIII.
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IX.
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Political Dimensions of the Holocaust
Gitelman, Century of Ambivalence, ch. 4.
David Engel, In the Shadow of Auschwitz (University of North Carolina Press,
1987) pp. 203-213.
Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, “Polish-Jewish Relations in Occupied Poland, 19391945,” in Chimen Abramsky, ed., The Jews in Poland, pp. 147-160.
Joanna Michlic-Coren, “The Troubling Past: the Polish Collective Memory of the
Holocaust,” East European Jewish Affairs, v. 29, n.1-2, 1999, pp. 75-84.
Shmuel Spector, “The Attitude of the Ukrainian Diaspora to the Holocaust of
Ukrainian Jewry,” in Yisrael Gutman and Gideon Greif, eds., The Historiography
of the Holocaust Period (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1988).
Taras Hunczak, “Ukrainian-Jewish Relations during the Soviet and Nazi
Occupations,” in Yuri Boshyk, ed., Ukraine During World War II: History and
Aftermath (Edmonton, 1986), 39-57.
Sima Ycikas, “Lithuanian-Jewish Relations in the Shadows of the Holocaust,”
Jews and Jewish Topics in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe no.1 (11)(Spring
1990), pp. 33-66.
Dov Levin,“New Lithuania’s Old Policy Toward the Holocaust,” Jews in Eastern
Europe 2 (24) (Summer 1994), pp. 15-24.
Ethnopolitics in the Post-War Period
Gitelman, Century of Ambivalence, ch. 5-6, 8-9.
Jonathan Huener, “Pain, Prejudice and the Legacy of the Shoah: On the Vexing
Issue of Polish-Jewish Relations,” in Wolfgang Mieder and David Scrase, eds.,
Reflections on the Holocaust (University of Vermont, 2001), pp.39-62.
Studium Papers, Vol. XIII, No.2 (April 1989) pp. 44-45 (cont. on p. 53); 48-51;
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54-59; 64-67; 79-84.
Jolanta Ambrosewicz-Jacobs and Annamaria Orla-Bukowska, “After the Fall:
Attitudes towards Jews in Post-1989 Poland,” Nationalities Papers, v.26, n. 2,
1998, pp. 265-282.
Zvi Gitelman, “Collective Memory and Contemporary Polish-Jewish Relations,”
in Joshua Zimmerman, ed., Contested Memories: Poles and Jews during the
Holocaust and its Aftermath (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press,
2003), pp. 271-290.
The Politics of History, National Self-Image and Reparation
Jan Gross, Neighbors (Princeton Unviersity Press, 2001), 259 pp.
Adam Michnik, “Poles and Jews: How Deep is the Guilt?” New York Times,
March 17, 2001, A17.
Abe Brumberg, “Poles and Jews,” Foreign Affairs (September-October 2002)
Ethnopolitics and the East European Jewish Experience
David Biale, Power and Powerlessness in Jewish History (Schocken, 1988) ch. V
(pp. 118-144).
Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, ch. 14 and 15 (pp. 563-652).
Ezra Mendelsohn, “Reflections on East European Jewish Politics in the Twentieth
Century,” YIVO Annual Vol. 20, 1991, pp. 23-37.