HIS 333 - The Jewish Century

For centuries, Jews in Europe lived as a largely urbanized and literate religious and social minority amidst majority agrarian, often Christian societies. Within these imperial and feudal structures, Jews enjoyed broad communal and religious autonomy while lacking political power, and a few managed to gain wealth as merchants, traders, financiers, or leaseholders. As a result, some scholars have classified Jews in European history as a ‘middleman’ or a ‘rural service’ minority, who were, as the scholar Yuri Slezkine has argued, ‘modern’ before modernity, and ‘capitalist’ before capitalism. As Europe industrialized and more and more people began to urbanize, they became in Slezkine’s formulation ‘Jewish,’ leading him to describe the twentieth century as “The Jewish Century.” 

Using Slezkine’s provocative thesis as our starting point, this course surveys the history of Jews in Europe, focusing on Jews’ changing social and economic position. Taking the long view, this course considers the makings of Jewish communities in European lands and interrogates the category of ‘Jewishness’ across the early modern and modern periods. Considering the changing state and popular attitudes towards Jewish populations, we will ask: how have Jews been shaped by the political economy of empires? What does it mean to trace legacies of legal, social, and religious separateness, discrimination, privileges, and discourses of prejudice across time and place? By reconstructing Jewish life, we will seek to uncover the variety of lived experiences within diverse contexts, from Iberian, to Ottoman, to Polish, German, and Russian lands. Using a rich array of secondary and primary sources, from songs, short stories, memoirs, and other cultural artifacts, this course will introduce students both to Jewish history and major themes of the twentieth century, from histories of mass politics, state formation, mass migration, secularization, nationalism, war, genocide, and displacement.

Satisfies a History major and minor requirement.
Satisfies a Russian Studies major and minor requirement. 
Satisfies the Historical Thought Ways of Knowing requirement.
Satisfies the Cultural Diversity requirement.