Central Europe Syllabus and Readings

Kivunim: Civilization 5770/2009-2010 Academic Write-up
UNIT IV – Central Europe
Lecturer – Shalmi Barmore
T.A. – Josh Weinberg

Session 1: Mon. March 15, 2010
3:30pm – 4:30pm
General Introduction to Central Europe from Romanesque to Baroque
• The Formation of Christian Europe around the Millennium
• Feudalism and Christian Society
• The Holy Roman Empire
• The Rise of Towns, Trade and Monetary Economy
• Culture - Architecture, Art, Philosophy, Science
• Religious Reform, Religious Wars, Counter Reform.

Reading: Norman Davies, Europe - A History
• ChV Medium- The Middle Ages c. 750 – 1270
• ChVI Pestis:Christendom in Crisis, c.1250 – 1493
• Ch VII Renatio: Renaissances and Reformations, c. 1450 - 1670

Session #2 4:45pm –6pm: The Czech Lands till Maria Theresa:
Consolidation of Czech State 9th – 114th Centuries
• Charles IV – Holy Roman Emperor. Prague's Gothic Golden Age.
• Jan Huss and Hussite Revolution
• Rudolph II( Habsburg) – Holy Roman Emperor. Prague's Renaissance
• Golden Age Thirty Year's War – Baroque Counter Reform
• Maria Theresa

Reading: Mary R. Anderson, The Stones of Prague- History, Pattern and Memory

Wed March 17th Session #3: 14:30-16:00 - The Ashkenazi Jews in the Middle Ages
• The Jew in Christian Society
• Ashkenazi Scholarship – Rashi and the Tosafists
• Synagogues, Cemeteries and Social Institutions
• The Golden Age of Jewish Prague – Meisel, Maharal but not the Golem
• Modernity Blood Libels, Expulsions and other forms of persecutions

Reading: Haim Hillel Ben Sassoon ed, A History of the Jewish People - Part V: The Middle Ages
Hillel Kieval, Languages of Community, The Jewish Experience in the Czech Lands
Ch 1. Czech Landscape, Hapsburg Crown: The Jews of Bohemia and Moravia to 1918


Optional:
Jacob Katz, Tradition and Crisis- Jewish society at the End of the Middle Ages;
Part I The basis of Existence
Part II: Communal Institutions and Structure, Ch 9, The Form and structure of the Kehila. Ch 17, Religious Institutions

Session 4: 16:30-17:30 - Reform of Joseph II
• Movement of National Revival
• Tomasz Masaryk and Czechoslovakia
• Twofold Process of Jewish Emancipation: Germanization and Modernization
• Kafka and the Golem

Reading:
The Edict of Tolerance - Jospeh II
Hillel Kieval ibid: The rest of Ch 1.
Ch 4: Pursuing the Golem of Prague; Jewish Culture and the Invention of Tradition,
Ch 5: On Myth, History and National Belonging in the 19th Century

Session 5: Thurs. March 18th (15:00-16:30) -The Course of Modern German History: Was Nazism its logical out come or an aberration?
• Romanticism, Liberalism and Nationalism. The identity of Culture
• Industrial Revolution and the rise of Metropolis
• The Crisis of Modernity and Anti Semitism
• Racism and Nazi Ideology

Reading:
Amos Elon, The Pity of it All, A History of Jews in Germany 1743 – 1933 Introduction
Optional: George Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology
Ch 1, From Romanticism to Volk
Ch16, A German Revolution
Ch 17, The Anti Jewish Revoluttion

Sun March 21st – Tour of Yad Vashem (With Shalmi Barmore)
Session #6 9:30-11:00 - The Holocaust: The Twisted Road to Auschwitz
• Nazi Germany and the Jews
• Thereisenstadt
• The Precious Legacy

Reading:
Karl Schleunes, Retracing the Twisted Road: Nazi policies towards the German Jews 1933 - 1939


Mon. March 22th Session #7: 13:30-14:45 The Jews of Germany – Was their Love Blind?
• Enlightenment and Bildung
• Acculturation and Assimilation
• Reform of Judaism
• The Golden age of Weimar

Reading:
Amos Elon, ibid, Ch8 “Assimilation and its Pains,”
Ch 10, “The End”

Session #8: 15:00 – 16:15 - Summary of Jewish Germany

Session #9: 9:00-10:30 Wed. March 24th - A brief outline of Hungarian history: Who are the Magyars?
• Creation and consolidation of Hungarian Kingdom.
• Under the Ottomans – 1526- 1696.
• Hungary part of the Habsburg Empire then the Austro-Hungarian Empire since 1867.
• Turn of the 20th century - financial and industrial boom
• Trianon Hungary – national humiliation; radical revolution and obsession with revisionism that link fate with Hitler's Germany
• The unique path of Hungarian Jews: Germanisation leading to emancipation leading middle class leading to cultural Magyarizers and economic modernizers
• Budapest Fin de Siecle – Judapest
• Collapse of Habsburg regime – collapse of Jewish/gentry alliance.
• Bela Kun- "The Jewish Revolution", The Red Terror, The White Terror
• Jewish responses to Interwar Hungarian Fascism.
• Jews in Communist Hungary

History of the Jews in Hungary

JudaPest - Cool articles on Jewish Budapest


Pesah Vacation – חופשת פסח

Session #10: Thurs. April 8th (16:15-17:15) – T.A. Session - The Golem of Prague

Session #11: Mon. April 12th (יום השואה)
"The Life and Times of Franz Kafka"
Reading:  Intro to Kafka

Session #12: Wed. April 14th (14:30-15:30) (15:45-16:45) - Presentations and final projects

Session #13: Thurs. April 15th (15:00-16:00)

Session #14: Mon. April 19th (13:00-14:30) (יום הזיכרון) -Life after Death – Communism and the Jews
• Jews in the Communist Regime, The Communist Regime and the Jews
• The Changing Attitude and Policy towards Israel
• Prague Spring 1968
• The velvet Revolution
• Is there Life after Death? The Rebirth of Jewish Life.

Reading:
Jonathan Kaufman, A Hole in the Heart of the World - Being Jewish in Eastern Europe

Leave for Europe!!!: April 20th 2010