Social History of Central European Jewry

Course programme

Problems of modern Jewish identity. (A general introduction)

Reasons to dedicate a special course to modern Jewry in Central Europe, representing only one of major ethnic diasporas in the region (like Germans, Armenians, etc.). The unique historic fate and social role of Jews in the framework of the stratification of European societies. Jews can be defined as a particularistic status group (one based on cultural or symbolic assets, as against economic classes or professional strata) following various criteria of ethnicity, religion, race and other attributes which are differently constructed in (social) space and time. The collective references commonly used for this construction – however variable they may be – display though some core elements. But those ascriptions vastly differ when they are due to members of the Jewish cluster itself or to outsiders. Self-definition and outside definitions delineate as a rule a permanent conflict area. Jewry as a historical status group (as against non historical ones). Difference of status ascriptions in feudal and post-feudal societies. Modern Jewry is less and less defined by ethnicity and religion and more and more by (ascribed or constructed) common memory. The ‘community of fate’ as the central piece of the social definition of modern Jewry. Individual or sub-cultural patterns of the relationship to the consensual definition of Jewry. Heritage, option and strategy in the experience of modern Jewish identity. Main functions of status groups : community integration (intimate social link), collective distinction (honor), moral control over members, security and self-reliance, socio-professional advancement or self-assertion, self-reproduction (self-perpetuation in the historical continuity of the group) .

The Prehistory of the European Jewish Diaspora (up to the 18th century).

The medieval foundations of Jewish settlements in the Iberian Peninsula, the German States and (since the 13th century) the Polish-Lituanian Commonwealth. The legal and economic status of Jews in feudal Christian and Muslim Europe. Religious anti-Judaism and the upsurge of bloody persecutions following the Crusades (12-14th century). Jewish secular and religious culture in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance : poetry, philosophy, the codification of costumary law (Caro, Issserles). The catastrophe of expulsions from Western Europe and Christian Spain. The new diaspora in the East and the rise to Sephardi and Askenazi civilizations. The regional divisions of pre-modern Jewish populations. Ghettoisation and the marranos phenomenon in the West. Reformation and Christian anti-Judaism. Protestant Judaizers and philo-Semites. Reformation, Counter-Reformation and the Jewish policies of modernizing absolute monarchies. Jews as ‘serfs of the Royal Chamber’ and economic partners of estate owing aristocracies. The court Jew in early modern Europe. Cromwell’s Britain, the Netherlands and the (mostly Protestant) state policies of toleration. The philosophy of natural right and the programme of Jewish emancipation in Western and Central Europe. Moses Mendelssohn and the Berlin Haskalah as a response to the appeal for Jewish religious modernization. Hassidism, the new popular religious movement in Eastern Jewry (Poland, Ukraine, Moldavia, Eastern Hungary), as a challenge to Orthodox rabbinism.

Traditional Jewish society.

A network of independent but inter-related communities. The community as a framework for total social integration. Communal services : organization and control of religious practice (kosher meat included), care for the poor, the orphans and widows, arrangement of marriages and burials, etc. Oligarchical and rabbinical authority as foundations of community order. Submissiveness to and respect for the Christian State as against toleration and reserved economic niches. Jewish occupations : trade, money-lending (usury), crafts, communal services, medicine. The wealthy, the Luftmenschen and the social obligation of philanthropy. Forms of political representation of Jews in Poland (stadtlanut, the Council of Four Regions). The ‘Jewish Quarter’, the ghetto (especially in theWest) and the stettl. The cultivation of difference, separate Lebenswelt and strong particularistic identity. Home cult and synagogue services. Strictly gender specific division of religious activities and obligations. The paramount importance of religious literacy, intellectualism and the obligation of learning (lernen) for males. The dual social hierarchy of learning and wealth. The patriarchal family, the qualified preeminence of males and the prevalence of symbolic violence (as against physical coercion) in matters familiar and communal.

Population movements and settlement patterns in Europe (from the 18th century to the Shoah).

Unequal progress of toleration, civil emancipation and the freedom of migrations. Inter-regional migrations : earlier mostly from West to East, then from East to the South and to the West. The USA, Western Europe, South America and South Africa as well as Palestine, main regions of (re)settlement since the late 19th century. From the exclusion of Jews from cities before emancipation to a unique degree of over-urbanization afterwards (often before full legal equality). The special case of the Russian Pale of settlement till 1915. Residential specificities inside cities. Cases of Amsterdam, Antwerpen, Budapest, Cracow, London, Paris, Prague, Vienna and Warsaw.

Aspects of comparative demography of Jews and non Jews (since the 18th century).

Unequal demographic modernization and natural growth. Marriage customs and rules (mean age, age relation between bride and groom, out-marriage). Differential evolution of birth-rates, illegitimate births and the nuclear family. Cluster specific patterns of mortality, morbidity, suicide and ‘natural deviance’ (mental illnesses, blindness). Marriage patterns and the evolution of the social role of women. Gender differentials in the process of modernization. The duality of the subsistence of patriarchal family patterns and Jewish women as paragons of ‘modern women’ and feminism in Central Europe.

The politics of unconditional emancipation in West European nation States.

Ambiguities of the ideologues of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution : the pattern of more or less unconditional emancipation in France, the Netherlands and French occupied Europe. The aftermath of the revolutionary experience and the emergence of patriotic Franco-Judaism with large scale social integration of French Jewry, including those of the French colonies during the III. Republic – 1871-1940 - (in salons, politics, State services, cultural institutions, universities). The successful adoption of the French model in Italy from unification till Fascism (included). Similar but step by step developments in Britain and Scandinavia. The increasing admission and self-assertion of Jews in Western European elites : in the entrepreneurial bourgeoisies, civil services, armies, intellectual and political power structures.

The paradigm of conditional emancipation in Central European empires and nation states.

The legal modernization of the state and the contradictions of eman-cipation in Prussia (1812). Antisemitism, Jewish embourgeoisement, social exclusion and the policies of reluctant emancipation in the German states (with 1848 and 1871 as decisive stages). Austrian ambiguities from the Toleranzpatent of Joseph II. to 1867 and the protective Jewish policies of the Dualist period. The special case of Jews in Bohemia, between hostile Czech nationalism, imperial protection and the political alliance with German urban elites in the 19th century. Hungarian independentist liberal gentry and the ‘assimilationist social contract’. Stages of Hungarian emancipationist policies (1840, 1849, 1867) and the ‘nationalization’ of Hungarian Jewry. Official philosemitism and its limitations in Hungary up to 1919. Emancipation and the legal consolidation of Balkan nation states liberated from Ottoman rule, especially after the Berlin Congress (1878) : Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece.

The politics of non emancipation in tsarist Russia and Romania.

The politics of exclusion (pale of settlement, professional and political incapacities) from Catherine II. till the February Revolution (1917). The ‘cantonist’ military regime (1827-1856), efforts of state managed school integration, the wave of pogroms in the 1880s, the 1904-5 revolutionary turmoil - as focal points of changing tsarist policies. Limited social mobility and assimilation, social exclusion and (since the 1880s) massive emigration to America, the West (as well as Palestine). ‘Self-emancipation’, attraction of Leftism and the birth of Jewish nationalism in the Pale (Zionism, Folkism, Bund). Ambiguities of independentist liberal nationalism in Romania Prior to 1848. The ‘Christian Clause’ of the Romanian Constitution after the unification of Moldavia and Valachia. The sabotage of the legal emancipation of Jews after the Berlin Congress and the persistence of Jewish incapacities both legal and professional. Jewish reactions : exit (emigration), Jewish nationalism (Zionism) and cluster-specific political mobilization (self-defence, Jewish parties).

From traditional religious anti-Judaism to modern political anti-semitism.

The Christian heritage in Jewish-Gentile relations. Regional and national inequalities of popular anti-Judaism : its prevalence in most of the central areas of the continent (from France to Russia, via Germany and Austria), its weakness in the European periphery (including Italy, Britain, The Netherlands, Scandinavia and countries formerly under direct Ottoman rule). The questionable impact of demographic, economic, cultural, political and religious factors. The self-generating and perpetuating ‘relative autonomy’ of anti-Jewish imagery and discourse. The spread of stereotypical ideological formulations in the 19th century and the birth of political anti-semitism in the 1870s. Cultural and nationalist exclusivism, racist social Darwinism and the elaboration of the ‘Aryan myth’ from Gobineau to Chamberlain. Variants of anti-semitic hysteria in the outgoing 19th century in Germany (Stöcker), France (Drumont, Dreyfus Affair), Austria (Lueger, von Schönerer), Hungary (Tiszaeszlár trial), Congress Poland (Dmowski) and Romania.The anti-semitic turn in post-world war Central Europe from the 1918-19 revolutions to Nazism. The ‘Brown Plague’ and the Shoah in East Central Europe.

Assimilation, religious divisions and patterns of modern Jewish identity.

Temptations of modernity and the 18th century Jewish heritage : Haskalah in the West and in East Central European cities. The diffusion of Hassidism in Galicia, the Ukraine, Moldavia and Eastern Hungary. Tensions between rabbinical orthodoxy (Hatam Sofer in Pozsony/Pressburg) and Hassidism. The birth of religious reform (‘conservative Jewry’) in Germany and Austria-Hungary. The schism in Hungary after emancipation (1868) and the emergence of ‘neolog’ communities oriented towards controlled assimilation and Magyar nationalism. The different meanings of indicators of secularization : mixed marriage, baptism, desertion of synagogues, abandonment of ‘Jewish languages’, change of traditional surnames and first names. Assimilation endured as a constraint and as a collective strategy of modernization and social integration.

 Assimilation, social mobility and professional restratification.

Emancipation and the opening of new middle class activities and markets for Jews. Inter-relation between global economic dynamism of the country concerned, its political modernization and chances of Jewish professional mobility. Three major patterns : growth along traditional tracks (from peddler to wholesale trade, from petty craftsmen to industrial entrepreneurship, from usury to merchant banking), conversion to and entry into the professions (doctors, lawyers, engineers), secularization of religious intellectual assets in lay scholarship, the arts and sciences. Specialization and unequal occupation of various economic branches by Jews inside trade, industry and the professions in various countries and legal conditions. Exclusion from or limitation of access to civil service in most of Central and Eastern Europe and emergence of Jewish politicians and high level civil servants in Western governments, armies, administrations.

Assimilation and educational strategies.

Jewish over-schooling as part of the process of assimilation. Persistent differences between educational investments among ‘modern’ and Orthodox Jewry. Quantitative over-schooling as measured by frequencies of school attendance in various levels of education (gymnasium, Realschule, Bürgerschule, Normal schools (for teacher training), industrial and commercial secondary schools, universities and vocational higher education). The problem of global or apparent and ‘pure’ measures of quantitative over-schooling, free from the incidence of differences between Jews and Gentiles in class stratification, urbanization, demographic modernization (family size), regional settlement, etc. Assimilation and the differential option for Christian or state schools (when available, like in France or Hungary). Qualitative over-schooling : scholarly excellence, preference for ‘hard’ subjects, neglect of physical education, stress of religious and scholarly discipline, regularity and shorter duration of studies. Specific Jewish options in higher education and the variable professional market chances of Jewish graduates.

Assimilation as strategic status mobility.

Elements of a socio-historical theory of assimilation : patterns of unilateral ‘rapprochement’ in the dynamics of modernization and secularization. Mutual ‘rapprochement’ and ‘reversed assimilation’ as a paradigm of unequal modernization (Jews as modernizers against Gentiles). Incompleteness and reversibility of the assimilationist process. Jewish ‘guest nationalism’. The differential socio-historical implications and meanings of mixed marriage, nationalization of self-presentation (surnames, first names, behaviorial and eating habits), residential mixing in non Jewish quarters, assumption of Gentile elite habits (like duelling, `voluntary` military service), participation in `mixed` social movements (like free-masonry) and political parties (especially in liberal ones), adoption of universalist social salvation ideologies (liberalism, socialism, feminism, esperantism, communism), etc. Sources of the study of these indicators of assimilation. The social reception or exclusion of assimilees in Jewish and Gentile environments.

The birth of Jewish politics.

From denominational representation to Jewish nationalism. The integration of Jews in the political field of Western nation states and their exclusion in the East. Liberalism, Social Democracy and Socialism – but also monarchism (like in Austrian or British state loyalism) - as major ideological frameworks for the political integration of Jews in Central Europe. Proto-Zionism (since the 1870s), the Bund and folkism (or cultural autonomism) around 1900 in Russia as a response to political exclusion : movements for political mobilization of Jewish masses for self-defence. The organization of world Zionism by Herzl at the Basel Congress (1897) and its aftermaths. Zionism as the federation of an ideological mosaic and its development : ‘practical’ (Hovevei Zion, He Haluz), socialist (Ha Shomer ha Zair), ‘general’, religious (Mizrachi), right radical (‘Revisionist’) and other Zionists. Territorialists and the choice of Palestine for the ‘homeland of the Jewish People’. Orthodox, assimilationist and leftist opposition to Zionism. Differential rates of Jewish emigration to Palestine and elsewhere since the 1880s.

Crime and strategic deviance.

Various forms of social deviance : passive or endured (handicaps) or strategic (like crime). The problem of differential efficiency of the moral control of deviance in various ethnic and denominational communities in the age of secularization and assimilation. Traditional Jewish communities as efficient means of moral police. Religious cultures and the legitimacy of public or private violence. Traditional Jewry as a strongly integrated and (relatively) non violent sub-culture : prohibition of weapons, no armed police, no military tradition, violent virility ruled out, strong consensual community power, stress on learning in the time budget of young males. The translation of religious discipline and the respect for community law and order into middle class morality as a consequence of assimilation, secularization and modernization. Study of data related to various branches of sentenced criminal actions (political, economic, sexual, violence against persons, etc.) due to Jews and Gentiles in East Central Europe as reflections of objective social opportunities and contrasting responses to marginality and distress. Methods to control the most relevant independent factors of crime when comparing Jews and Gentiles: differences of social stratification, historical hero worship, urbanization, family structure, housing conditions, levels of education, etc.

Modernization, secularization and Jewish creativity in the arts and sciences.

Quantitative and qualitative over-schooling and educational assimilation as preconditions for striking Jewish intellectual over-performances in modern times. The (fragile) evidence of the high proportion of Jewish Nobel Prize laureates. The orientation effect of degrees of accessibility of branches and institutions of higher learning, academic and professional markets. Medicine as a perpetuation of the medieval Jewish scientific heritage. Traditional and modern Jewish legal practice and commitment to legalism. Patterns of conversion of religious intellectualism and traditional Jewish cultural pursuits (learning habits) into secular scholarship and modern cultural production. Direct links between the latter in performing music (especially as to conductors, violinists and pianists), journalism, literature, economics, historiography, decorative arts (jewellers), architecture, etc. Talmudic argumentation, scientific rationalism and modern forms of erudition and theorizing (in physics, philosophy, etc.). The special cases of psychoanalysis, various therapeutic and social science disciplines as transmuted expressions of self-reflection, self-analysis and social awareness of a group under duress (in permanent danger). The belated and selective entry of Jews into markets of the visual arts (painting). Sources of preferential interest for cinema and photography. Entrepreneurship in the cultural industry (the press, theater, art galleries, revues, etc.) and artistic creativity. Assimilation, secularization and the spirit of intellectual innovation. Déracinement, outsider status and commitment to the avant-garde.

Further topical problems (occasionally raised in class) :

Nazism, fascism and Jewish reactions as witnessed by social indicators

The aftermath of the Shoah in East and West

Varieties and patterns of transformation of Jewish identity from the Haskalah to post-industrial societies

Jews and the Left : socialism, communism, leftism before and after the Shoah

Pathologies of assimilated Jewish identity : self hatred, dissimulation, dissimilation, etc.

Jewish women and feminism from salon hostesses of the late Enlightenment to Women’s Lib

Jews and Freemasonry

Israel and the Jews in Central and Eastern Europe

Patterns of collective Jewish properties as reflected in stereotypes and social indicators (the ‘smart Jew’, the ‘coward Jew’, bodily attributes, anti-alcoholism, the ‘Yiddische Mame’, male and female sexual qualities, solidarity and strong community links, etc.)

Jews in the sports

Jews in journalism

The successive Jewish policies in the Soviet Union from the Civil War till Stalin’s death (1917-1953)

Jews under the successors of Stalin

Specific (and differential) Jewish policies in Soviet satellite states (1945-1989)

- Jews and anti-Semitism after 1989 in the post-socialist successor states

Victor Karady

’Jewish social history’ course (2009)

Reminder of Course Programme with mandatory readings

 (For details and general bibliography see READER, first pages !)

1. All titles of mandatory readings are (except those which will be separately proposed by the professor) in the READER I-II.
2.  Students are expected to read closely and take good note of all the studies listed as ’mandatory’ in the READER. They should send to the professor either a short (ex. half page) critical and personal presentation of the given paper or present one or several remarks or questions about its methodology or conclusions. Such reactions to mandatory readings represent a minimum here. For each seminar session at least one additional study is expected to be read among suggested readings, so that students my occasionally be asked to report on it. In the READER students will find more papers on several topics than specifically suggested for seminar work.
3.  Mandatory and optional studies listed in the READER on one specific topic may be targets of the course paper to be handed in by the end of the course. This course paper is mandatory. It should consist of a critical discussion (8-10 pages minimum) of a large topic as exposed in a book of the bibliography, a book chosen by the student and agreed upon by the professor or a number of comparable articles in the reader.
4. Tests and marks are based on 1. oral reports and questions raised related to readings, participation in course discussions, notably in the seminar work, 2. course paper and 3. the final written test (to be done at home on a large topical problem) at the proportion of cc. 33 % each.

  5.   For our detailed program and the general bibliography of the course please consult the READER (first pages !)

  6.   Students may receive copies of elaborate lecture notes of the professor, if they wish to have a thorough written guide for the whole course.

  7.   Additional readings (and exposés on them) could be suggested during the course, in   case of special interest manifested by students for certain topics.

1. course: Friday, October 2

            - General introduction : modern Jewish identity.

2. course: Friday, October 2.

            -  Prehistory of European Jewry, up to modern times

3. course: Monday, October 5 : Seminar work

            Mandatory readings:

                  I./ 4. J. Katz, Self-presentation and representation [pdf]

                  I./ 5. N.N. Schneidman, The practical experience of identity [pdf]

           Recommended readings:

                  I./1. M. Oppenheim, A „Fieldguide” to the study of modern Jewish ethnicity [pdf]

                  I./ 2. J. Czekanowski, Anthropological structure of the Jewish people in the Light of Polish analyses [pdf]

                  I./ 6. I. Bartal, Between two extremes: radicalism and orthodoxy [pdf]

                  I./ 9. I. Deutscher, The non-Jewish Jew [pdf]

           See also the other studies of Section I. of the Reader!

                                      [pdf];   [pdf];   [pdf]

4. course: Friday, October 9.

            - Traditional Jewish society.

5. course: Friday, October 9.

            - Population movements

6. course: Monday, October 12, Seminar work

            Mandatory readings:

                  III./ 8. Arieh Tartakover, Jewish Migratory Movements in Austria [pdf]

                  II. / 4. S. Zipperstein, The Jews of Odessa (Historical background) [pdf]

            Recommended readings :

                  II./ 2. D. Levin, A short history of the Jews in Litvania [pdf]

                  II. / 3. N.N. Schneidman, The Jews of Vilna [pdf]

                  II. / 7. S.D. Corrsin, Aspects of population change and acculturation in Jewish Warsaw ...the Censuses of 1882 and 1897 [pdf]

                  II. / 8. D. Cohn-Sherbok, Maps of Jewish history [pdf]

            See also other studies of Section II. of the Reader !

                                [pdf]         [pdf]         [pdf]

7. course : Friday, October 16  

- Comparative Demography

8. course : Friday, October 16

 - Emancipation in the West

9. course : Monday, October 19, Seminar work

Mandatory reading :

 III. / 1. Sergio Dellapergola, „An overview of demographic trends”,

VII./ 5. S.M. Loewenstein, The crisis : illegitimacy and family breakdown

Recommended readings :

III. / 4. M. Tolts, Jews in the Russian Federation. A decade of

demographic decline

            III. / 3. J. Silber,  Some demographic characteristics of the Jewish population in

 Russia at the end of the nineteenth century

III. / 4. M. Tolts, Jews in the Russian Federation. A decade of demographic

decline

                        III. / 5. J. Marcus, Demography (Poland)

                  See also the other studies in Section III. Of the Reader !

NO COURSE ON 23. OCTOBER ! (NATIONAL HOLYDAY IN HUNGARY)

10.course : Monday, 26. October, Seminar work.

            Mandatory readings :

IV. / 1 P. Birnbaum, Between Social and Political Assimilation (France) [pdf]

IV./ 3. G. Alderman, English Jews or Jews of English persuasion ? [pdf]

            Recommended readings :

IV./ 2. D. V. Segre, The emancipation of Jews in Italy [pdf]

IV. / 8. R.J. Evans, Progress and emancipation in Hungary during the age of Metternich [pdf]

IV./ 4. W. Mosse, From „Schutzjuden” to „deutsche Staatsbürger jüdischen

Glaubens” [pdf]

            See other studies in Section IV. of the Reader !

                          [pdf]              [pdf]                [pdf]

1. course : Friday, October 30,

- Conditional emancipation in Central Europe 

12.course : Friday, 30 October.

      - Delayed emancipation in Russia and Romania

13. course :Monday, November 2. Seminar work

Mandatory reading :

 V. / 1Hans Rogger, The Question of Jewish Emancipation :

Russia in the Mirror of Europe [pdf]

V./ 5. C. Iordachi, The unyielding boundaries of citizenship[pdf]

Recommended  readings :

IV. / 7. Herzog, The process of emancipation from the Congress of Vienna to the Revolution of 1848/1849 [pdf]

V. / 2. H. Rogger, The Jewish policy of late tsarism, a reappraisal [pdf]

V. / 4. D. Levin, The Sovietisation of the Baltics and the Jews [pdf]

See also other studies of Sections IV. and V. of the Reader !

14. course : Friday, November 6. .

- Anti-Judaism and Anti-Semitism

15. course : Friday, November 6

- Assimilation and religious reform

16. course : Monday, November 9. Seminar work

            Mandatory readings :

VI. / 5. M. Rozenblit, Intermarriage and conversion (Vienna) [pdf]

X. / 13. I. Bartal, „Storms in the South”, 1881-1882. (The pogrom wave

 in Russia) [pdf]

            Recommended readings :

VI./ 2. M. Silber, The social composition of the Pest radical reform society [pdf]

VI./ 6. W. O. McCagg, Jewish conversion in Hungary in modern times [pdf]

VI. / 8. T. M. Endelman, Jewish converts in Warsaw [pdf] 

VI. / 13. I. Bartal, Hasidim, mitnagdim and maskilim (Poland) [pdf]

VI. / 14. J.C.H. Blom, Religious life, (sub)culture, and pillarization (the

Netherlands) [pdf]

X./ 5. J. Frankel, „Ritual murder” in the modern era. The Damascus Affair of 1840 [pdf]

X./ 6. M. Shafir, Anti-Semitism without Jews in Romania [pdf]

X./ 11. J.C.H. Blom, Assimilation, integration, and antisemitism (the Netherlands) [pdf]

X./ 12. S. J. Zipperstein, The 1871 Pogrom . the city as Netherworld [pdf]

X./ 14. H. Rogger, Was there a Russian fascism ? The Union of Russian People [pdf]

X./ C15. C. Iancu, Anti-Semitic legislation (Romania) [pdf]

X./ 15. C. Iancu, Factors in the rise of anti-Semitism (Romania) [pdf]

X./ 17. J. Klier, The occult element in Russian Judeophobia [pdf]

X./ 18. Marcus, The onslaught of fascism (in Poland) [pdf]

            See also the other studies of Sections VI. And X. of the Reader !

17. course : Friday., November 13.

            - Assimilation and professional restratification

18. course : Friday, November 13.

- Assimilation and education

19. course : Monday, November 16. Seminar work

Mandatory reading :

IX. / 3. G. Cohen, ’Ideals and Reality in Austrian Universities’ [pdf]

IX./ 4. V. Karady, Social mobility, reproduction and qualitative schooling

differentials in Ancien régime Hungary [pdf]

Recommended readings :

IX./ 9. M. Rozenblit, Education, mobility, and assimilation : the role of the gymnasium (in Vienna) [pdf]

IX./ 10. I. Livezeanu, The nationalisation of secondary schools (Romanian

Bukovina) [pdf]

IX./ 8. D. Levin, Religious education (Litvania) [pdf]

See also the other studies of Section IX. Of the Reader !

NO COURSES TILL NOVEMBER 30 !!!

20. course : Monday, November 30. Seminar work.

Mandatory readings :

VIII./ 9. I. Oxaal, W. Weitzmann, The Jews of pre-1914 Vienna. An

exploration of basic sociological dimensions [pdf]

VII./ 1. T. Van Rahden, Intermarriages, the ’New Woman’ and the situational ethnicity of Breslau Jews from the 1870s to the 1920s [pdf]

Recommended readings :

VII./ 6. M. A. Kaplan, For love or money : Jewish marriage strategies [pdf]

VII./ 7. P. E. Hyman, Seductive secularisation (of Jewish women) [pdf]

VIII. / 10. J. Lestchinsky, The industrial and social structure of the Jewish

population in interbellum Poland [pdf]

VIII./ 11. V. Konstantinov, The socio-economic structure of the Jewish

populations of the USSR from the 1960s to the 1980s [pdf]

See also the other studies in Sections VII. And VIII. of the Reader !

21 course: Friday, December 4.

            - Assimilation and strategic status mobility 

22. course: Friday, December 4.

- Politics and Jews. Jewish Politics

23. course: Monday, December 7.     Seminar work

            Mandatory readings:

XI. / 6. E. Mendelsohn, Geography (of Jewish political options) [pdf]

XI./ 7. J. Marcus, Political Parties (in Poland) [pdf]

            Recommended readings:

XII. / 7. E. Rackman, Violence and the value of life : a Halakhic view [pdf]

XII. / 8. L. Hersch, Jewish and non Jewish criminality in Poland [pdf]

XII. / 1. J. M. Efron, The „Kaftanjude” and the „Kaffeehausjude” : two models of Jewish insanity [pdf]

XI. / 3. D. Levin, Political activity on the „Jewish street”(in Lituania) [pdf]

XII. / 9. V. Karady, Denominational dimensions of crime in early twentieth century Hungary [pdf]

            See the other studies of Sections XI. and XII. of the Reader!

24. course : Friday, December 11.

Deviance, Crime, Alcoholism, Violence 

+ Exam paper as a homework to be sent to the Professor by December 11 (midnight).