Goucher College

Goucher will offer Judaism, Secularism, Modernity as its core course with several peripheral courses to be developed.

Judaism, Secularism, Modernity

The modern world opened up vistas of possibilities for Jews, but it also posed profound
problems for Judaism as a religious culture. The possibility of political and social
integration, demographic changes, and development of a modern historical consciousness challenged traditional models of Jewish religiosity and identity, and opened up the space for new, secular forms of “Jewishness.”

In this course, we will inquire into the nature and meaning of a “Jewish secular
modernity.” Through an analysis of various forms of literature and media -
autobiography, theological and philosophical writings, political treatises, fiction and
film - we will consider the ways in which the meaning of modern Judaism and the
problem of Jewish identity and commitment in the modern world have been articulated
and contested. We will be attentive throughout to the complex dialectical relationship
between Judaism as a religion and secular manifestations of Jewishness.

Course Outline:

Week I Introduction to the Problem: Secularism, Modernity and the Jews

This week will serve as a general introduction to the question of secularism and the modern Jewish experience. We will work to define the meaning of “the secular,” “secularization” and “secularism,” and consider how these terms may be applied to Judaism. This discussion will provide the theoretical framework for our investigation.

Readings:
• José Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World
• Peter Burger. The Sacred Canopy
• Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular
• Leo Strauss, “Preface to Spinoza’s Critique of Religion”

Week II Judaism before “Modernity”

In this segment of the course, we will inquire into the nature of “pre-modern” Jewish life. We
will consider what Jacob Katz and others have called a “traditional” society” and will also look at the ways in which “secular” aspects of Jewish life already existed within a religiously-dominated milieu.

Readings:
• Jacob Katz, Tradition and Crisis
• Michael A. Meyer, The Origins of the Modern Jew
• David Biale (ed.), Cultures of the Jews

Week III Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza: The first “secular” Jew?

Spinoza has been regarded as the “first secular Jew.” With particular attention to the
Theological-Political Treatise, we will consider Spinoza’s challenge to traditional Judaism, and how this challenge opened the way to rethinking and reframing Jewish identity.

Readings:
• Theological-Political Treatise
• Yovel, Spinoza and Other Heretics, Vol. 1
• Steven Smith, Spinoza, Liberalism and the Question of Jewish Identities

Week IV Mendelssohn & the Question concerning Emancipation

With the prospect of emancipation arose the question of the suitability of the Jews for citizenship and wide-ranging economic opportunities and the nature of Judaism as a religion. For Jews who wished to take part in modern society, the horizon of emancipation required an envisioning of Judaism in light of the new or hoped for social and political reality.

Readings:
• Jacob Katz, Out of the Ghetto; Jewish Emancipation and Self-Emancipation
• Lessing, Nathan the Wise
• Christian Wilhelm Von Dohm, “Concerning the Amelioration of the Civil Status
of the Jews”
• Michaelis, “Arguments against Dohm”
• Mendelssohn, Jerusalem

Week V Solomon Maimon: A journey from tradition to Enlightenment

These sessions focus on Solomon Maimon’s transformation from Polish Rabbi to Enlightenment philosopher. We will place particular emphasis on Maimon’s attitude towards Judaism and its relationship to political life and intellectual enlightenment, and the influence on Maimonides and Spinoza on his intellectual development and thought.

Readings:
• The Autobiography of Solomon Maimon

Week VI-VII The Invention of Judaism as “Religion”

Jewish Emancipation was premised on a state which would treat all individuals as equal under the law. It would therefore come at the price of Jewish corporate existence, and the primacy of Jewish law. Given the collapse of the kehillah and the weakening of the halakhic system it was founded upon, would Judaism wither away in the modern state? Or could it adapt to this new world? Attention will be paid to the Reformers’ articulation of a “sphere” of religion, and the attendant reduction of Jewish religiosity.

Readings:
• Michael A. Meyer, Response to Modernity
• Saul Ascher, Leviathan
• Abraham Geiger, Judaism and its History
• Ludwig Phillipson, The Development of the Religious Idea in Judaism,
Christianity and Mahomedanism, considered in Twelve Lectures on the History
and Purport of Judaism
• S. R. Hirsch, The Nineteen Letters
• Hermann Cohen, Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism

Week VIII The Science of Judaism (Wissenschaft des Judentums)

One of the signals of the development of a secular Jewish consciousness was the emergence of the critical, academic approach to the study of Judaism and Jewish history. In this section we will look at some of the early manifestos calling for a modern critical study of Judaism and Jewish texts, and some of the products of this inquiry.

Readings:
• Eduard Gans, “A Society to Further Jewish Integration”
• Immanuel Wolf, “On the Concept of a Science of Judaism:
• Leopold Zunz, “On Rabbinic Literature”
• Moritz Steinschneider, “The Future of Jewish Studies”
• Abraham Geiger, “Jewish Scholarship and Religious Reform”
• Gershom Scholem, “The Science of Judaism—Then and Now”

Week IX Moses Hess: From Radicalism to a Jewish Nationalism

Moses Hess’ book, Rome and Jerusalem, published in 1862, remains an essential document of the emerging Jewish nationalist consciousness. Hess’ treatise is significant for its unqualified rejection of Liberal Judaism and its description and promotion of a Jewish national consciousness and the political program which emanated from it.i In advocating for this national Judaism, Hess appealed to whom he considered Judaism’s latest prophet: Spinoza.

Readings:
• The Holy History of Mankind
• Rome and Jerusalem

Week X Jewish Nationalism I

Zionism
The term Zionism is derived from the Hebrew word “Zion,” an appellation for the city of
Jerusalem (and sometimes symbolically the Land of Israel). Rather than a single coherent
doctrine or political program, Zionism encompasses a constellation of ideologies and factions, set along a wide political spectrum, with varied tactics and goals. In this segment, we will consider the emergence of Zionism as a secular political movement.

Readings:
• Arthur Hertzberg, ed., The Zionist Idea, introduction
• Shlomo Avineri, The Making of Modern Zionism: Intellectual Origins of the
Jewish State
• Leo Pinsker, “Auto-Emancipation”
• Theodor Herzl, The Jewish State; Old-New Land

Week XI Jewish Nationalism II & III

Cultural or Spiritual Zionism
The Political Zionism of Herzl was driven by Judennot, the “need of the Jews” and not by
cultural concerns. In contrast, Cultural or Spiritual Zionism was mainly worried by “the need of Judaism” brought about by the deterioration of traditional Jewish society and collective identity. The “agnostic Rabbi” Ahad Ha-Am advocated a cultural renaissance which would preserve and revitalize Jewish values in a modern secular vein. Radicals such as Micah Joseph Berdyczewski, Joseph Hayyim Brenner, and Jacob Klatzkin struggled to liberate Jewishness from the religious tradition and the ghetto culture which they believed had stifled its spirit.

Readings:
• Ahad Ha-Am, “The Law of the Heart,” “Flesh and Spirit,” The Jewish State and
the Jewish Problem,” “The Negation of the Diaspora”
• Hayyim Nahman Bialik, “On the Hebrew University”
• Micah Joseph Berdichevski, “Wrecking and Building,” “The Question of
Culture”
• Jacob Klatzkin, Boundaries
• Haim Haziz, “The Sermon”

Labor Zionism
Labor Zionists strove to forge a “new Jew,” grounded in land and labor, and to establish a new Jewish society driven by a secular, humanist faith. Its leading ideologists were the utopian socialist Nachman Syrkin, Ber Borochov, who developed a synthesis of Marxism and Zionism, and A. D. Gordon, whose “religion of labor” was influenced by Tolstoy.

Readings:
• Nahman Syrkin, “The Jewish Problem and the Socialist-Jewish State”
• Dov Ber Borochov, “The National Question and the Class Struggle,” “Our
Platform”
• Aaron David Gordon, “Logic for the Future,” People and Labor,” “Our Tasks
Ahead”
• Berl Katzenelson, “Revolution and Tradition”

Week XII Jewish Nationalism IV

Diaspora Nationalism, the “Bund,” Yiddishism
In contrast to Zionists, some Jewish nationalists, like Simon Dubnow, argued that the Jewish
people did not need to secure a territory, but should work to achieve some degree of national and cultural autonomy in the states in which they dwelled. The Jewish “Bund” strove to synthesize Jewish national identity and socialist practice.

Readings:
• Simon Dubnow, Nationalism and History: Essays on Old and New Judaism
• Chaim Zhitlowsky, “Jews and Jewishness,” “What is Secular Jewish Culture?,”
“The Jewish Factor in My Socialism”
• The Bund, “Decisions on the Nationality Question”

Week XIII-IV Post-Jewish Identities

Jewishness as Politics
• Ludwig Boerne, “Because I am a Jew, I Love Freedom”
• Gustav Landauer, “Jewishness is an Inalienable Spiritual Sensibility”
• Eduard Bernstein, “How I Grew Up as a Jew in the Diaspora”

Zionism as the overcoming of Judaism
• The Young Hebrews, “An Epistle to the Jewish Youth”
• James S. Diamond, Homeland or Holy Land: The "Canaanite" Critique of Israel

Non-Jewish Jews
• Isaac Deutschter, “The Non-Jewish Jew”
• Karl Marx, “On the Jewish Question”
• Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism
• Peter Gay, A Godless Jew


The Messianic Idea in Jewish and World History

This course represents a survey of selected religious and secular movements in the history of
Jewish messianism. After examining Biblical, rabbinic, and related texts for the sources of
messianic expectations, we will study the lives and movements of some of the most prominent claimants – Yeshua (Jesus) of Nazareth, Simeon bar Kokhba, Shabbatai Tzvi, Jacob Frank, and Menachem Schneerson – as well as several lesser-known messianic figures from Muslim lands in the Middle East. Interspersed with these religious movements will be a consideration of Jewish- inspired messianist understandings that fall outside the bounds of Judaism as a religion; for example: Russia’s “New Israel” ideology, Adam Mickiewicz’s heroizing of Polish martyrdom, Karl Marx’s communist utopia, Moses Hess’s proto-Zionism, Walter Benjamin’s anti-Marxist Marxist messianism, Ernst Bloch’s utopia, Emmanuel Levinas’ philosophical commentaries on Talmud, and Jacques Derrida’s postmodern “desertified Abrahamism.” Most of these ideologies represent purely secular manifestations of what might nonetheless properly be termed messianism. The course will not study Christianity per se; however, some reference will be made to its relevance for understanding Christian religion and history.


Jews in Germany between the Enlightenment and the Rise of the Nazi Regime

This course focuses on the history of German Jews from the period of emancipation in the
late eighteenth and early nineteenth century to the end of the Weimar Republic. We will
examine the role of German Jews in German politics, economic life, and culture; the Jewish
enlightenment (“Haskalah”); the rise of anti-Semitism in the nineteenth century; the rise of
the Reform movement; Jewish assimilation and its discontents; and the Weimar Jewish
Renaissance.

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