2020 Winter Program

Course List · January 3 – 23, 2020

Jewish Charlatans, Crooks, and Weirdos

Instructor: Eddy Portnoy

Jewish History is largely about elites and the cultures they produce. In other words, businessmen, scholars, rabbis, artists, scientists, and their ilk have long been the major focus of Jewish historians. The two-fold reason for this is firstly aspirational and, secondly, a desire to prove our value to an often doubting world. But what would we find if we looked at the other end of the spectrum, at the bottom of the Jewish barrel, where the dregs and the ne’er do wells of Jewish society do their business? Though criminals and imbeciles are not the typical subjects for historical research, it is a disservice not to include the lowest echelons of society in the historical record. Moreover, their lives were often rich in Jewish culture in spite of their unusual circumstances. This class will present an overview of the underbelly of Jewish society during the late 19th and early 20th century, including some of its most colorful characters.

The Secret Death of Isaac Babel

Instructor: Jonathan Brent

Lionel Trilling wrote that “no event in the history of Soviet culture is more significant than the career, or, rather, the end of the career, of Isaac Babel” and offered the view that he was arrested because of his affair with the wife of Nikolai Yezhov, the head of the NKVD; Cynthia Ozick has expressed another widely shared opinion that Babel “was devoured because he would not, could not, accommodate falsehood”; when asked why someone had been arrested, Anna Akhmatova once shouted, “What do you mean what for? It’s time you understood that people are being arrested for nothing.”

Was Isaac Babel a martyr to art and truth? A victim of Stalin’s antisemitism, the jealousy of a vindictive husband in a position of power, or another random casualty in the brutal chaos and cacophony of Stalin’s Great Terror?

In this class, using NKVD documentation and other sources, we will reassess these different views and beliefs.  Why does this matter?  Unlocking the secret of Babel’s arrest, torture and execution helps us understand the mechanism of Stalin’s power, the significance Trilling referred to, and the abiding tragedy of Jewish culture in the Soviet Union.

Conspiracy Theories, Antisemitism, and the Far Right

Instructor: Spencer Sunshine

From the Executive Office to neo-Nazi gangs, conspiracy theories permeate Far Right politics. These narratives have roots in medieval Christianity, but in the last two centuries have frequently cast Jews as the malicious agent which seeks to destroy society. This class will explore how conspiracy theories are structured; what their relationship to antisemitism is; and how they function on the Far Right today, including coded and metonymic antisemitism. As a class we will read and watch Far Right primary texts and videos. If time permits, we will have former conspiracy theorists Skype in to discuss both how they became involved—and left—these circles.

Women Writing in Yiddish

Instructor: Anita Norich

How many female Yiddish poets can you name? What about short story writers? Novelists?  For most readers, the numbers decline rapidly with each question. Although many poets have been translated into English, prose translations are relatively new. Women were said to have written no novels or to have written “domestic” novels in Yiddish. Recent archival research has revealed how wrong that assumption is. Women’s stories and novellas were published in the most important Yiddish periodicals as early as the 1880s. Among the novelists are some well-known poets.  

In this course, we will read and discuss literature written by women (in English translation, with Yiddish texts provided for those who want them). Several of the authors we consider may be familiar to some; others are virtually unknown. There are too many names to list here, but they include writers as diverse as Tsilye Dropkin, Rashel Veprinski, Kadya Molodovsky, Ana Margolin, Fradel Shtok, Lili Berger, Chana Blankshteyn, Rochel Faygenberg, Shira Gorshman, Miriam Karpilove, Miriam Raskin, Chava Rosenfarb, Bas Malke, Salomea Perl, Izabella, and more. The inclusion of women who wrote prose revolutionizes our understanding of Yiddish culture and literary history. In addition to previously published translations, we will read new, as yet unpublished translations of several of these authors.

The Music of Avrom Goldfaden’s Shulamis—The Quintessential Yiddish Operetta

Instructor: Ronald Robboy

“One can say that I more compiled than composed. But I think that compiling can also be practiced as an art.” So wrote Yiddish theater founder Avrom Goldfaden in a self-appraisal that cannily threaded the needle between romantic artist and colorful impresario. The music he created for a series of operettas—above all, for Shulamis (1880)—provided a template for the astonishing growth of Yiddish popular culture that blossomed within the span of a single generation. Goldfaden drew upon the music of French, Italian, and German opera; upon cantorial, Hasidic, and secular Yiddish folk song; and even upon Torah cantillation, all of which he mixed and matched in a distinctive musical alchemy. But he also composed original melodies, as, for example, that of the most famous song in Shulamis, “Rozhinkes mit mandlen” (Raisins and Almonds).

This seminar will offer a short overview of Goldfaden’s career and the significance of the music and story of Shulamis, and then take a deep dive with close readings of “Rozhinkes” and some of the other musical numbers. We will read their texts, listen to how the music is structured, and see why all that matters to how music and text worked together to achieve the composer’s dramatic aims. We will, of course, identify sources that Goldfaden borrowed and stole. But beyond that, we will demonstrate exactly what he did with those sources, how he adapted them and how his modifications, large and small, yielded the distinctive voice of, yes, a composer of note.

Philosemitic Violence: Antisemitism in Contemporary Poland Before the Authoritarian Turn

Instructor: Elżbieta Janicka

Today’s Polish philosemitic narrative is based on a vision of Poland’s “multicultural past” that was unexpectedly destroyed by “two totalitarianisms.” One of the assumptions behind it is that addressing antisemitism exacerbates antisemitism and the most effective way of dealing with this murderous prejudice is to spread attractive, positive messages about Jews and the “common past,” to “talk about life instead of death.” Often acclaimed—including in the United States—as a “new opening in Polish-Jewish relations,” philosemitic narrative has also become a popular educational tool dismissing the comprehensive narratives of the past as “too confrontational” or “too horrible.”

What is at the stake in this vision and this approach? How does it work in practice and what does it result in? Why may spreading positive messages about a “common past” be a form of exclusion and violence? Referring to historiography for setting the context, making use of representations of Jewish history in transatlantic popular culture and using analytical tools elaborated by critical theory, we will discuss chosen examples of post-2000 Polish philosemitic initiatives.

These initiatives fall under a new analytical category, “Philosemitic violence,” which refers to a socio-cultural dimension often neglected up to now. Our scrutiny—through the lens of long-term processes and persistent cultural patterns—should allow for a better understanding of the realities of the East European existence of the Jewish Diaspora and of the Holocaust. The Holocaust will be reconsidered through the lens of its local context and in a continuum with the violent realities of its eve and its aftermath, as well as its long shadow in a “country with no Jews.” We will explore how and where antisemitism remains a non-negligible community building force and one of the most powerful political tools behind the collapse of liberal democratic institutions.

Poetry and Creative Writing Workshop

Instructor: Irena Klepfisz

The course will ask participants to focus their writing on Jewish themes and experiences (contemporary and historical) and will address questions of what is Jewish writing.  Each participant will be given the opportunity to present his/her work for analysis and group discussion.  Samples by published poets and exercises challenging participants to experiment with different forms will be provided by the instructor.

Jewish Latin American Literature

Instructor: Ilan Stavans

A detailed, in-depth exploration of the central themes, motives, context, and authors of modern Jewish Latin American literature, analyzing not only how Jews look at themselves but how they are perceived by the environment and from abroad. Antisemitism, immigration, individual and collective exploration, feminism, Israel, and the Holocaust, among other topics, will be included. Principal writers studied are Jorge Luis Borges, Clarice Lispector, and Moacyr Scliar, as well as Sholem Aleichem, Pablo Neruda, and Isaac Bashevis Singer.

View Past Courses

2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012