This course offers a detailed survey of the core themes in modern Jewish history from the eighteenth century through World War II. Topics to be examined will include religious and cultural modernization, Haskalah (the Jewish Enlightenment), political emancipation and integration, modern anti-Semitism, Zionism and other modern Jewish political movements, and Jewish participation in modern European culture and intellectual life. The focus of the course will be on European Jewry, with selected attention to the question of parallel Jewish experiences in North America and the Middle East. Particular emphasis will be placed on the emergence of secular Jewish culture, politics, and intellectual life.

Readings will include Birnbaum and Katznelson, Paths of Emancipation: Jews, States, and Citizenship; Biale, Cultures of the Jews; Katz, Out of the Ghetto; Peter Gay, Freud, Jews, and Other Germans; Slezkine, The Jewish Century; Stanislawski, Zionism and the Fin de Siecle. Assignments will include several short response papers and one major research paper. Students interested in modern European history and the history of Judaism alike are encouraged to sign up (there are no prerequisites), and the course is open equally to graduate students and advanced undergraduates.