Assimilation and Modern Jewish Identity in the Emancipation Era

Instructor: Dr. Miklós Konrád (Institute of History of the Research Centre for the Humanities, Hungarian Academy of Sciences)

Course Description

The main question addressed by historiography on Jewish assimilation and identity in the long nineteenth century was and remains whether a high degree of acculturation could be consistent with a high degree of Jewish self-assertiveness and sense of Jewish communal belonging. This question is the main focus of this course, which aims to provide an overview of the identity dilemmas faced by emancipated and acculturated Jews in Central and Western Europe (with a strong focus on Germany), and of their success or failure in dealing with these dilemmas. As acculturation, secularization and integration are multi-generational processes, the course will focus on the second half of the nineteenth century, or more precisely the five decades preceding World War I. By the very nature of its inquiry, the course will restrict itself on those who found themselves entangled in these identity dilemmas, that is, those Jews whom Ezra Mendelsohn called “integrationists”, instead of the pejorative “assimilationists”. That historians are still debating the very name by which the majority of Jews in fin-de-siècle Central and Western Europe should be labeled is maybe the best indication of the issue’s enduring relevance.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this course, students will be able to: - understand and reflect on the diversity and complexities of modern Jewish identity - assess the ideological motives of recent historiographical works on this question - critically analyse historiographical discourse

Course Requirements  Active class participation (25%)  Class presentation of one of the readings (25%)  Research paper (50%) on a class-related topic (3000–5000 words)

Course Schedule

1. Introduction  ENDELMAN, Todd M., ‘Making Jews Modern: Jewish Self-Identification and West- European Categories of Belonging’, in Broadening Jewish History: Towards a Social History of Ordinary Jews (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2011), 19– 48.

2. Assimilation in Jewish Historiography  FRANKEL, Jonathan, ‘Assimilation and the Jews in Nineteenth-Century Europe: Towards a New Historiography?’, in Jonathan Frankel and Steven J. Zipperstein (eds.), Assimilation and Community: The Jews in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 1– 37.  VAN RAHDEN, Till, ‘Treason, Fate, or Blessing: Narratives of Assimilation in the Historiography of German-Speaking Jewry since the 1950s’, in Christhard Hoffmann (ed.), Preserving the Legacy of German Jewry: A History of the Leo Baeck Institute, 1955–2005 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 349–373.

SUGGESTED ADDITIONAL READING  HYMAN, Paula E., ‘The Ideological Transformation of Modern Jewish Historiography’, in Shaye J. D. Cohen and Edward L. Greenstein (eds.), The State of Jewish Studies (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1990), 143–157.

3. German Jews  SCHOLEM, Gershom, ‘On the Social Psychology of the Jews in Germany: 1900– 1933’, in David Bronsen (ed.), Jews and Germans from 1860 to 1933: The Problematic Symbiosis (Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, 1979), 9–32.  SORKIN, David, ‘Emancipation and Assimilation: Two Concepts and their Application to German-Jewish History’, Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, 35 (1990), 17– 33.  MEYER, Michael A., ‘German Jewry’s Path to Normality and Assimilation: Complexities, Ironies, Paradoxes’, in Rainer Liedtke and David Rechter (eds.), Towards Normality? Acculturation and Modern German Jewry (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 13–25.

SUGGESTED ADDITIONAL READING  MOYN, Samuel, ‘German Jewry and the Question of Identity: Historiography and Theory’, Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, 41 (1996), 291–308.  BRENNER, Michael, ‘Gnosis and History: Polemics of German-Jewish Identity from Graetz to Scholem’, New German Critique, no. 77 (Spring/Summer 1999) 45–60.

4. French Jews  COHEN ALBERT, Phyllis, ‘Israelite and Jew: How did Nineteenth-Century French Jews Understand Assimilation?’, in Jonathan Frankel and Steven J. Zipperstein (eds.), Assimilation and Community: The Jews in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 88–109.  MANDEL, Maud, ‘Assimilation and Cultural Exchange in Modern Jewish History’, in Jeremy Cohen and Moshe Rosman (eds.), Rethinking European Jewish History (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2009), 72–92.

SUGGESTED ADDITIONAL READING  RODRIGUE, Aron, ‘Rearticulations of French Jewish Identities after the Dreyfus Affair’, Jewish Social Studies, 2, no. 3 (Spring/Summer 1996), 1–24.  MALINOVICH, Nadia: French and Jewish: Culture and the Politics of Identity in Early Twentieth-Century France (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2008), 15– 37. (Chapter 1. Setting the Stage: Jewish Identity in the Nineteenth Century and the Impact of the Dreyfus Affair)

5. Jews in Vienna  ROZENBLIT, Marsha L., The Jews of Vienna, 1867–1914: Assimilation and Identity (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983), 1–12, 195–196.  ROZENBLIT, Marsha L., Reconstructing a National Identity: The Jews of Habsburg Austria during World War I (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 22–25, 32– 36.  ROZENBLIT, Marsha L., ‘Jewish Assimilation in Habsburg Vienna’, in Jonathan Frankel and Steven J. Zipperstein (eds.), Assimilation and Community: The Jews in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 225– 245.

SUGGESTED ADDITIONAL READING  WISTRICH, Robert S., The Jews of Vienna in the Age of Franz Joseph (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1989), 537–582. (Chapter 9. The Jewish Identity of Sigmund Freud)  ROZENBLIT, Marsha L., ‘Jewish Identity and the Modern Rabbi: The Cases of Isak Noa Mannheimer, Adolf Jellinek, and Moritz Güdemann in Nineteenth-Century Vienna’, Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, 35, (1990), 103–131.

6. Jews in Budapest  GLUCK, Mary, ‘Jewish Humor and Popular Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Budapest’ Austrian History Yearbook, 39 (2008), 1–21.  KONRÁD, Miklós, ‘Music halls and Jewish identities in Budapest at the turn of the century’, in Jurgita Šiaučiūnaitė-Verbickienė and Larisa Lempertienė (eds.), Jewish Space in Central and Eastern Europe: Day-to-Day History (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007), 143–156.

SUGGESTED ADDITIONAL READING  VÖRÖS, Kati, ‘‘Judapest’ Satirized: Visual Images of Jews in Satirical Magazines in Fin-de-Siècle Budapest’, in Martin Reisigl and Ruth Wodak (eds.), The Semiotics of Racism: Approaches in Critical Discourse Analysis (Wien: Passagen Verlag, 2000), 363– 389.  BUZINKAY, Géza, ‘The Budapest Joke and Comic Weeklies as Mirrors of Cultural Assimilation’, in Thomas Bender and Carl E. Schorske (eds.), Budapest and New York: Studies in Metropolitan Transformation, 1870–1930 (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1994), 224–247.

7. Gender and Identity  HYMAN, Paula E., Gender and Assimilation in Modern Jewish History (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995), 10–49. (Chapter 1. Paradoxes of Assimilation)  KAPLAN, Marion A, The Making of the Jewish Middle Class: Women, Family, and Identity in Imperial Germany (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), VII–XI., 64–84. (Preface; Chapter 2. Domestic Judaism: Religion and German-Jewish Ethnicity)

SUGGESTED ADDITIONAL READING  KAPLAN, Marion A, ‘Tradition and Transition: The Acculturation, Assimilation and Integration of Jews in Imperial Germany. A Gender Analysis’, Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, 27 (1982), 3–35.  HYMAN, Paula E., ‘Does Gender Matter? Locating Women in European Jewish History’, in Jeremy Cohen and Moshe Rosman (eds.), Rethinking European Jewish History (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2009), 54–71.

8. Critics of the new historiographical trend  ENDELMAN, Todd M., ‘Response’, in Shaye J. D. Cohen and Edward L. Greenstein (eds.), The State of Jewish Studies (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1990), 158–164.  ENDELMAN, Todd M., ‘The Legitimization of the Diaspora Experience’, in Broadening Jewish History: Towards a Social History of Ordinary Jews (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2011), 49–64.  ENDELMAN, Todd M., ‘Welcoming Ex-Jews into the Jewish Historiographical Fold’, in Broadening Jewish History: Towards a Social History of Ordinary Jews (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2011), 82–92.

SUGGESTED ADDITIONAL READING  GAY, Peter, ‘Encounter with Modernism: German Jews in Wilhelminian Culture’, in Freud, Jews and Other Germans: Masters and Victims in Modernist Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 93–101.

9. Antisemitism and Jewish Identity  BORUT, Jacob, ‘Vereine für Jüdische Geschichte und Literatur at the End of the Nineteenth Century’, Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, 41 (1996), 89–114.  ENDELMAN, Todd M., ‘Conversion as a Response to Antisemitism in Modern Jewish History’, in Jehuda Reinharz (ed.), Living with Antisemitism: Modern Jewish Responses (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1987), 59–83.

10. Jewish Self-Hatred  ENDELMAN, Todd M., ‘Jewish Self-Hatred in Britain and Germany’, in Michael Brenner, Rainer Liedtke and David Rechter (eds.), Two Nations: British and German Jews in Comparative Perspective (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999), 331–363.  ROBERTSON, Ritchie, ‘Jewish Self-Hatred? The Cases of Schnitzler and Canetti’, in Robert S. Wistrich (ed.), Austrians and Jews in the Twentieth Century: From Franz Joseph to Waldheim (New York, St. Martin Press, 1992), 82–96.

11. Acculturated Jews and the ‘Ostjuden’  ASCHHEIM, Steven E.: Brothers and Strangers: The East European Jew in German and German Jewish Consciousness, 1800–1923 (Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982), 32–57. (Chapter 2. The Ambivalent Heritage: Liberal Jews and the Ostjuden, 1880–1914)  GILMAN, Sander, ‘The Rediscovery of the Eastern Jews: German-Jews in the East, 1890–1918’, in David Bronsen (ed.), Jews and Germans from 1860 to 1933: The Problematic Symbiosis (Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, 1979), 338–365.

SUGGESTED ADDITIONAL READING  VOLKOV, Shulamit, ‘The Dynamics of Dissimilation: Ostjuden and German Jews’, in Jehuda Reinharz and Walter Schatzberg (eds), The Jewish Response to German Culture: From the Enlightenment to the Second World War (Hanover, N.H.: University Press New England, 1985), 195–211.

12. Jews and Race  Hart, Mitchell B., ‘Jews and Race: An Introductory Essay’, in Mitchell B. Hart (ed.), Jews & Race: Writings on Identity & Difference, 1880–1940 (Waltham, Mass.: Brandeis University Press, 2011), XIII–XXXIX.  WEISS, Yfaat, ‘Identity and Essentialism: Race, Racism, and the Jews at the Fin de Siècle’, in Neil Gregor, Nils Roemer and Mark Roseman (eds.), German History from the Margins (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006) 49–68.

SUGGESTED ADDITIONAL READING  LEFF, Lisa Moses, ‘Self-Definition and Self-Defense: Jewish Racial Identity in Nineteenth-Century France’, Jewish History, 19, no. 1 (March 2005), 7–28.