Order 588882: Read Instructions

Hebrew Theological College

7135 N. Carpenter Road

Skokie, Illinois 60077 (847) 982-2500 ext. 143

Fall 2017

American Jewish History

History 207

T/H 3:45-5:15

Zev Eleff

eleff@htc.edu

Office Hours: By appointment

Course Overview:

This course is a survey of the American Jewish experience from the Colonial Era to contemporary times. The course examines this topic from religious, cultural and social viewpoints. It also studies the nature of “American exceptionalism” in modern Jewish history, as Jews in the United States have reached high social and economic stations without severe threat of antisemitism. Accordingly, the course pays close attention to the relationship between Jews and their American environs and the native cultural of religious pluralism that has enabled the Jewish community in the New World.

Course Objectives:

As a survey, this course is intended to provide students with a breadth of knowledge on the subject of American Jewish history. Students are encouraged to explore historical episodes and concepts in further detail, and are welcome to engage the instructor to identify essential bibliographical material. Students enrolled in this course are expected to evaluate the primary and secondary sources made available to them and analyze them to deduce important themes. Students will be trained and examined on their analysis, as well as their mastery of basic historical facts brought to bear in this course.

Attendance and Participation:

1. Students are required to attend, be prepared for, and actively participate in all classes.

2. Students are required to attend all classes. In the case of absences, a student must communicate with instructor immediately via e-mail.

3. Students absent for over 25% of scheduled classes will have their final grade lowered by one letter grade.

4. Students absent for over 50% of scheduled classes will receive an F (failure) in the course.

Incomplete Policy-Crisis Management:

This is available only to students with extreme and/or extenuating circumstances who

1. Have completed 50% or more of the required course work.

2. Have a grade of “C” or better on completed work.

3. Request the “Incomplete” prior to the week of final examinations of the semester.

4. Complete and submit an “Incomplete Contract” prior to final examinations.

5. The “Incomplete Contract” must be signed by the course instructor and the Dean. Non-compliance by agreed date will result in a permanent grade of FI (Failure/Incomplete).

Academic Integrity

Hebrew Theological College is committed to providing an academic community and learning environment based on honest inquiry and pursuit of knowledge that fosters commitment and adherence to Judaic tenets. The faculty and administration of Hebrew Theological College have specified the following acts as serious violations of personal honesty and academic ideals that jeopardize the quality of education within a Torah environment:

· Submitting as one’s own, material copied from a published source.

· Submitting as one’s own, another person’s unpublished work or examination material.

· Submitting as one’s own, a rewritten or paraphrased version of another person’s work.

· Purchasing, acquiring, and using for course credit a pre-written paper.

· Allowing another to write or research a paper for one’s own benefit.

· Copying electronic or printed media for one’s own use without permission or licensing from appropriate publishers.

· Submitting the same paper for more than one course without explicit permission from the instructor(s).

More information about HTC’s Academic Integrity policy can be found on page 15 of the Student Handbook.

Accommodations:

Any student, who, because of a disability, may require some special arrangements in order to meet course requirements should contact me as soon as possible to make necessary accommodations and share appropriate documentation from the Office of Special Services, provided by HTC’s Disabilities Officer, Dr. Richard Aronoff.

Accommodations will be made, but the professor must be aware of your needs in order to make proper accommodations. It is the responsibility of the student to make these needs known in a timely fashion and to provide documentation prior to the beginning of any semester in which accommodations are desired.

Technology Policy:

HTC bans the use of cell phones, computers and other devices for texting, Web browsing or other non-class related activities during class. This behavior may result in expulsion from the course after a single warning. Electronic devices may not be used during exams, and their use in class is subject to faculty discretion and permission. Only students with documented disabilities who must use such devices may request exemptions as documented.

HTC Resources:

Hebrew Theological College is committed to providing all of our students with various resources and support for academic success. Tutorial services through the Writing Center and Math Center provide assistance in a variety of disciplines. Students should make arrangements to avail themselves of these services. Librarians in the Saul Silber Memorial Library are available to assist students with all their research needs. Students can find information about the library services and resources at http://htclibrary.weebly.com.

Course Requirements:

All texts for the course are available to students via the course’s Blackboard website.

Evaluation and Grading Procedures:

1. Brief analysis paper of 2-3 pages (20%)

2. Midterm (30%)

3. Research paper of 7-10 pages and final (50%)

4. Attendance and participation will determine the grade, up or down, for students who are “on the line” between two grades

Assignments

September 5, 2017:

What of American Jewish History?

The Three Periods of American Jewish History

PRIMARY READING: Jacob Rader Marcus, To Count a People: American Jewish Population Data, 1585-1984, 237-43; Zevi Hirsch Masliansky, Sermons, 201-5.

SECONDARY READING: Jacob Rader Marcus, “The Periodization of American Jewish History,” Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society 47 (March 1958): 125-33; Hasia R. Diner, A Time for Gathering: The Second Migration, 1820-1880, 1-5.

The Cult of Synthesis

PRIMARY READING: Henry W. Schneeberger, Sermon delivered on November 29, 1911, Chizuk Amuno Congregation Archives, Baltimore, Maryland.

SECONDARY READING: Jonathan D. Sarna, “The Cult of Synthesis in American Jewish Culture,” Jewish Social Studies 5 (Autumn 1998-Winter 1999): 52-79.

September 12, 2017:

First Settlements

Coming to America

PRIMARY READING: Gary Phillip Zola and Marc Dollinger, American Jewish History: A Primary Source Reader, 10-13.

SECONDARY READING: Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, “Between Amsterdam and New Amsterdam: The Place of Curacao and the Caribbean in Early Modern Jewish History,” American Jewish History 72 (December 1982): 172-92; Paul Finkelman, “‘A Land That Needs People for Its Increase: How the Jews Won the Right to Remain in New Netherlands,” in New Essays in American Jewish History, eds. Pamela S. Nadell, Jonathan D. Sarna and Lance J. Sussman, 19-50; Yosef Kaplan, “The Sephardim in North-Western Europe and the New World,” in The Sephardi Legacy vol. II, ed. Haim Beinart, 240-87.

American Judaism, Colonial-Style

PRIMARY READING: Zola and Dollinger, American Jewish History, 18-19.

SECONDARY READING: Jacob R. Marcus, “The American Colonial Jew: A Study in Acculturation,” in Tradition and Change in Jewish Experience, ed. A. Leland Jamison, 75-83; Laura Leibman, “Sephardic Sacred Space in Colonial America,” Jewish History 25 (2011): 13-41; Jonathan D. Sarna, “The Mystical World of Colonial American Jews,” in Mediating Modernity: Challenges and Trends in the Jewish Encounter with the Modern World, eds. Lauren B. Strauss and Michael Brenner, 185-94.

September 19, 2017:

In the Early Republic

The Impact of the Revolution

PRIMARY READING: Joseph L. Blau and Salo W. Baron, The Jews of the United States, 1790-1840, 8-11, 50-55; Morris U. Schappes, A Documentary History of the Jews in the United States, 1654-1875, 52-53, 168-71; Blau and Baron, The Jews of the United States, 546-48; Zola and Dollinger, American Jewish History, 61-63, 73-74.

SECONDARY READING: Jonathan D. Sarna, “The Impact of the American Revolution on American Jews,” Modern Judaism (May 1981): 149-60; Jonathan D. Sarna, “The American Jewish Response to Nineteenth-Century Christian Missions,” Journal of American History 68 (June 1981): 35-51; Edward Eitches, “Maryland’s ‘Jew Bill,’” American Jewish Historical Quarterly 60 (March 1971): 258-79.

American Jews in a Free-Market Religious Community

PRIMARY READING: Isaac Harby, A Discourse, Delivered in Charleston, (S.C.) on the 21st of Nov. 1825, before the Reformed Society of Israelites, for Promoting True Principles of Judaism According to its Purity and Spirit, on Their First Anniversary; “The Rebuilding of the Temple,” Daily Courier (March 20, 1841): 2; Rosenfeld “Rev. Mr. Rosenfeld’s Address,” The Occident 5 (May 1847): 79; Paul Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz, The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History, 514; Raphall Morris J. Raphall, The Constancy of Israel: A Discourse Delivered before the Congregation Shearit Israel, Charleston S.C.; Zola and Dollinger, American Jewish History, 79-82; Blau and Baron, The Jews of the United States, 549-60, 588-90.

SECONDARY READING:

James William Hagy, This Happy Land: The Jews of Colonial and Antebellum Charleston, 236-73; Sefton D. Temkin, Isaac Mayer Wise: Shaping American Judaism, 31-103.

October 17, 2017:

The German Jewish Migration

** Brief analysis paper due

The Newcomers

PRIMARY READING: Abram Vossen Goodman. “A Jewish Peddler’s Diary.” American Jewish Archives Journal 3 (June 1951): 81-111; Sefton D. Temkin, “Rabbi Max Lilienthal Views American Jewry in 1847,” in A Bicentennial Festschrift for Jacob Rader Marcus, ed. Bertram Wallace Korn, 589-608; Schappes, A Documentary History of the Jews in the United States, 223-35; Blau and Baron, The Jews of the United States, 803-05.

SECONDARY READING: Avraham Barkai, Branching Out: German-Jewish Immigration to the United States, 1820-1914, 15-64; Hasia R. Diner, Roads Taken: The Great Jewish Migrations to the New World and the Peddlers Who Forged the Way, 51-83.

The Establishment

PRIMARY READING: Zola and Dollinger, American Jewish History, 69, 82-84.

SECONDARY READING:

Bertram W. Korn, “American Jewish Life a Century Ago,” CCAR Yearbook 59 (1949): 273-302; Lance J. Sussman, Isaac Leeser and the Making of American Judaism, 179-208; Dianne Ashton, “The Lessons of the Hebrew Sunday School,” American Jewish Women’s History, Pamela S. Nadell, 24-42; Cornelia Wilhelm, The Independent Orders of B’nai B’rith and True Sisters, 57-114.

October 24, 2017:

The Civil War and the Jews

The “Jew”

PRIMARY READING: Zola and Dollinger, American Jewish History, 94-97, 103-08.

SECONDARY READING: Jonathan D. Sarna, When General Grant Expelled the Jews, 3-49; Bertram W. Korn, American Jewry and the Civil War, 156-88.

A Changed Community

PRIMARY READING: Raphall Congress Prayer; “Morris Jacob Raphall, Chief Rabbi of the New York Jews,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper (March 3, 1860): 219.

SECONDARY READING: Adam Mendelsohn, “Beyond the Battlefield: Reevaluating the Legacy of the Civil War for American Jews,” American Jewish Archives Journal 64 (2012): 83-111.; Naomi W. Cohen, Encounter with Emancipation: The German Jews in the United States, 109-58.

October 31, 2017:

“A Great Awakening”

Out from Religious Depression

PRIMARY READING: Cyrus Adler, “A Jewish Renaissance,” American Hebrew (November 9, 1894): 25.

SECONDARY READING: Jonathan D. Sarna, “The Late Nineteenth-Century American Jewish Awakening,” in Religious Diversity and American Religious History: Studies in Traditions and Cultures, eds. Walter H. Conser, Jr. and Sumner B. Twiss, 1-25; Zev Eleff, “Power, Pulpits and Pews: Religious Authority and the Formation of American Judaism, 1816-1885,” 222-76.

Refurbishing Traditional Judaism in America

PRIMARY READING: Zola and Dollinger, American Jewish History, 153-55; “The Orthodox Convention.” American Hebrew (June 10, 1898): 172-73; H. Pereira Mendes. “What is Orthodoxy?” American Hebrew (June 17, 1898): 199-200; Gotthard Deutsch, Modern Orthodoxy in the Light of Orthodox Authorities.

SECONDARY READING: Robert E. Fierstein, A Different Spirit: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1886-1902, 17-61; Zev Eleff, “American Orthodoxy’s Lukewarm Embrace of the Hirschian Legacy, 1850-1939,” Tradition 45 (Fall 2012): 35-53; Lance J. Sussman, “The Myth of the Trefa Banquet: American Culinary Culture and the Radicalization of Food Policy in American Reform Judaism,” American Jewish Archives Journal 57 (2005): 29-52.

November 7, 2017:

The Great Migration

** Midterm Exam at the beginning of class

The Economics of Migration

PRIMARY READING: People Walk on Their Heads: Moses Weinberger’s Jews and Judaism in New York, ed. Jonathan D. Sarna, 57-83.

SECONDARY READING: Eli Lederhendler, Jewish Immigrants and American Capitalism, 1880-1920, 1-37; Paula E. Hyman, “Immigrant Women and Consumer Protest: The New York City Kosher Meat Boycott of 1902,” American Jewish History 70 (September 1980): 91-105. Pamela S. Nadell, “The Journey to America by Steam: The Jews of Eastern Europe in Transition,” American Jewish History 71 (December 1981): 269-84.

“Germans and Russians”

PRIMARY READING: The Education of Abraham Cahan, ed. Leon Stein, 395-96; “Will he be an Autocrat?,” New York Herald (July 21, 1888): 3.

SECONDARY READING: Moses Rischin, The Promised City: New York’s Jews, 1870-1914, 95-111; Cohen, Encounter with Emancipation, 299-44; Abraham J. Karp, “The Making of Americans: German-Russian Jewish Confrontations in the Process of Americanization,” in Contemporary Jewry: Studies in Honor of Moshe Davis, ed. Geoffrey Wigoder, 45-64.

November 14, 2017:

The Pangs of Acculturation

Eastern European Culture in America

PRIMARY READING: Zola and Dollinger, American Jewish History, 131-40.

SECONDARY READING: Tony Michels, A Fire in Their Hearts: Yiddish Socialists in New York, 69-124; Jeffrey Shandler, “Sanctification of the Brand Name: The Marketing of Cantor Yossele Rosenblatt,” in Chosen Capital: The Jewish Encounter with American Capitalism, ed. Rebecca Kobrin, 255-71; Zev Eleff, “A Far-Flung Fraternity in a Fertile Desert: The Emergence of Rabbinic Scholarship in America, 1887-1926,” Modern Judaism 34 (October 2014): 353-369.

The Methods of Americanization

PRIMARY READING: Zola and Dollinger, American Jewish History, 172-73, 177-80.

SECONDARY READING: Daniel Soyer, Jewish Immigrant Associations and American Identity in New York, 1880-1939, 49-80; Stephan F. Brumberg, Going to America, Going to School: The Jewish Immigrant Public School Encounter in Turn-of-the-Century New York City, 52-94.

November 21, 2017:

The Great War and Protestant America

** Proposals for research paper is due at the beginning of class

“Illegal” Jews

PRIMARY READING: “An Interview Between Hon. Lincoln C. Andrews and Rabbi Simon Glazer,” November 12, 1925, Box 1, Folder 3, MS-269, AJA; Eliezer Ladzinsky. “She’elah Bi-Zmanah.” Hedenu 1 (June 25, 1926): 2.

SECONDARY READING: Marni Davis, Jews and Booze: Becoming American in the Age of Prohibition, 104-64; Libby Garland, After They Closed the Gates: Jewish Illegal Immigration to the United States, 1921-1965, 89-117.

At Home in America?

PRIMARY READING: Zola and Dollinger, American Jewish History, 203, 217-20, 229-30.

SECONDARY READING: Zev Eleff, “The Baptism of Four Little Roxbury Girls and Jewish Angst in America’s Religious Marketplace during the Interwar Period,” American Jewish Archives Journal 65 (2013): 70-91; Leonard Dinnerstein, The Leo Frank Case, 36-76; Neil Baldwin, Henry Ford and the Jews: The Mass Production of Hate, 192-240 Beth S. Wenger, “Budgets, Boycotts, and Babies: Jewish Women in Great Depression” in American Jewish Women’s History, ed. Pamela S. Nadell, 185-200.

December 5, 2017:

Jewish “Movements”

American Zionism

PRIMARY READING: Zola and Dollinger, 168-69, 211-16, 322-26.

SECONDARY READING: Naomi W. Cohen, American Jews and the Zionist Idea, 1-69; Ben Halpern, “The Americanization of Zionism, 1880-1930,” American Jewish History 69 (September 1979): 15-33.

Conservative Judaism and the “Parting of the Ways”

PRIMARY READING: Louis Bernstein. “The Emergence of the English Speaking Orthodox Rabbinate” (PhD diss.), 556. Emanuel Rackman to Jakob Petuchowski, January 12, 1961, MS-653, Box 2, Folder 17, American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, OH.

SECONDARY READING: Michael R. Cohen, The Birth of Conservative Judaism: Solomon Schechter’s Disciples and the Creation of an American Religious Movement, 101-37; Jeffrey S. Gurock, From Fluidity to Rigidity: The Religious Worlds of Conservative and Orthodox Jews in Twentieth-Century America.

December 12, 2017:

The Holocaust

America and the Holocaust

PRIMARY READING: Zola and Dollinger, American Jewish History, 234-35.

SECONDARY READING: Henry L. Feingold, Bearing Witness: How America and Its Jews Responded to the Holocaust, 183-201; David S. Wyman, The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust, 288-307, 311-340.

American Jews and the Holocaust

PRIMARY READING: Eliezer Silver, Address Delivered at the Opening of the Special Conference of Agudas Israel

SECONDARY READING: Feingold, Bearing Witness: How America and Its Jews Responded to the Holocaust, 205-24; Laurel Leff, “When the Facts Didn’t Speak for Themselves: The Holocaust in the New York Times, 1939-1945,” The Harvard International Journal of Press 5 (2000): 52-72.

December 19, 2017:

American Judaism in Post-War America

Suburban Judaism

PRIMARY READING: Zola and Dollinger, American Jewish History, 251, 277-79.

SECONDARY READING: Deborah Dash Moore, To the Golden Cities: Pursuing the American Jewish Dream in Miami and L.A., 53-92; Jack Wertheimer, “The Postwar Suburban Synagogue in Historical Context,” in Text and Context: Essays in Modern Jewish History and Historiography in Honor of Ismar Schorsch, 578-605; Albert I. Gordon, Jews in Suburbia, 85-127.

An Orthodox Renaissance

PRIMARY READING: Solomon Roodman, The Vaccine of Faith, 54-61.

SECONDARY READING: Lawrence Grossman, “American Orthodoxy in the 1950s: The Lean Years,” in Rav Chesed: Essays in Honor of Rabbi Dr. Haskel Lookstein, vol I, ed. Rafael Medoff, 251-69; Zev Eleff, “‘Viva Yeshiva!’: The Tale of the Mighty Mites and the College Bowl,” American Jewish History 96 (December 2010): 287-305; Lawrence Grossman, “The Kippah Comes to America,” Continuity and Change: A Festschrift in Honor of Irving (Yitz) Greenberg’s 75th Birthday, eds. Steven T. Katz and Steven Bayme, 129-49.

December 26, 2017:

Protests and Countercultures

Jews and African Americans

PRIMARY READING: Zola and Dollinger, American Jewish History, 373-74.

SECONDARY READING: Wendell E. Pritchett, Brownsville, Brooklyn: Blacks, Jews, and the Changing Face of the Ghetto, 221-37; Clive Webb, Fight Against Fear: Southern Jews and Black Civil Rights, 169-216.

Feminism, Vietnam, and the “Age of Aquarius”

PRIMARY READING: Zola and Dollinger, American Jewish History, 341-45; “Rav Aaron Decries Civilian Toll in Vietnam; Questions Recent Stand of Jewish Leaders.” Hamevaser (September 30, 1968): 1, Shlomo Carlebach, “The Heart of Tomorrow,” Midstream 16 (May 1970): 66-67; Zola and Dollinger, American Jewish History, 396-99, 427.

SECONDARY READING: Yaakov Ariel, “Hasidism in the Age of Aquarius: The House of Love and Prayer in San Francisco, 1967-1977,” Religion and American Culture 13 (Summer 2003): 139-65, Jack Wertheimer, A People Divided: Judaism in Contemporary America, 95-159; Sue Fishkoff, The Rebbe’s Army: Inside the World of Chabad-Lubavitch, 285-300.

January 2, 2018:

** 7-10 page research paper due at the beginning of class

No class lecture

READINGS AND ASSIGNMENTS*

Schedule is subject to change.

Papers and Exams

BRIEF ANALYSIS PAPER

Due October 17, 2017

Write a 2-3 page paper answering this question: How did Jews in the United States grapple with religion and “Americanism” in the Colonial Era to the early nineteenth century? Use the material and readings assigned so far in our course, and any additional reading you decide to undertake, to understand various views on this question. Write a brief (2-3 double-spaced pages) analysis offering your view, making sure to support it with footnoted references to primary and secondary sources. Do not summarize the articles or attempt to be all-inclusive. Instead, focus on shaping a coherent, well-conceptualized argument supported by your reading. Be sure to use quotation marks around any direct quotes and to footnote them appropriately.

MIDTERM

At the beginning of class, November 7, 2017

Students will sit for a one-hour midterm exam that will include two sections. The first section may be comprised with multiple choice, matching and identification questions. The second section will include short-essay questions to be answered in one to three paragraphs.

RESEARCH PAPER

Proposal for the research paper is due November 21, 2017, at the beginning of class

Students should submit a one-page paper proposal. Topics will be approved by the instructor, who will also offer comments and bibliographical suggestions.

Final draft of the research paper is due on January 11, 2018

This 7-10 page research paper is not meant to be a summary of scholarly opinions. Rather, you are expected to access primary sources to craft an argument that engages some area of American Jewish history, even if the topic was not explicitly covered in the course material or lectures. The paper should include footnotes for all sources used. Be sure to use quotation marks around any direct quotes and to footnote them appropriately.