A History of Russian and Eastern European Jewry

Undergraduate

This course will provide a broad introduction to the rich history of Russian and Eastern European Jewry, from the late 18th century partitions of Poland to the present day. After a brief overview of the place of Ashkenazi Jews in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, students will study both the changing manner in which Russia’s tsarist rulers dealt with the “Jewish problem,” and how Jews responded and adapted to the repressive conditions of life in the Pale of Settlement. Considerable attention will be paid to everyday life in the Shtetl and in the large cities of the Pale, as well as the development of new cultural and political phenomena in the mid- to late-19th century. The course will survey the importation of Haskalah into Russia and its encounter with traditional religious Judaism; the intensified repression and pogroms, starting in 1881, leading to mass emigration; the development of a diverse array of political movements at the fin de siècle , from the Bund and other Jewish socialist movements to various forms of Zionism; and the development of a rich secular literature in three languages (Hebrew, Yiddish, and Russian).