Jews, Anarchism, and the Pursuit of Radical Freedom

Tuition: $300 | YIVO members: $225**

This is a live, online course held on Zoom. Enrollment will be capped at about 25 students. All course details (Zoom link, syllabus, handouts, recordings of class sessions, etc.) will be posted to Canvas. Students will be granted access to the class on Canvas after registering for the class here on the YIVO website. This class will be conducted in English, and any readings will be in English.

Instructor: Tony Michels

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, anarchism captured the imaginations of many Jewish workers in the United States, England, Russia, and other countries. Anarchists played a formative role in the early years of Jewish radicalism and maintained an activist presence for decades to come. There were larger Jewish political movements, but anarchists played a particularly notable role in upholding the ideal of individual liberty against all forms of tyranny, including those on the political left.

Who were the anarchists? What kind of society did they wish to create? What did they achieve? And what are their legacies? This course will explore these questions by focusing on the ideas, politics, and culture of Jewish anarchists within the broad context of modern Jewish politics. We will examine such topics as Jewish nationalism, the Russian Revolution, morality, violence, and free will. And, finally, we will delve into Yiddish literature and the role anarchists played in its development.

Course Materials:
The instructor will provide all course materials digitally throughout the class on Canvas.

Tony Michels teaches American Jewish history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he also serves as director of the Mosse/Weinstein Center for Jewish Studies. He is author of A Fire in Their Hearts: Jewish Socialists in New York, editor of Jewish Radicals: A Documentary History, and co-editor of The Cambridge History of Judaism. Volume Eight: The Modern World, 1815-2000.

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