Jewish Memory from the Exodus to the Holocaust
INSTRUCTORS
COURSE DESCRIPTION
The Jewish religious and cultural tradition invokes representations of collective history with such an intensity that Judaism has been called a “faith of memory.” This observation recommends Jewish memory as a particularly revealing example of premodern and modern engagement with the past. The class will explore both the sacralized form of remembrance shaped by the biblical imperative zakhor (remember!) and its ramifications in modern secular and non-Jewish contexts. The first half of the class encompasses the textual and ritual expression that Jewish religious practice has given to historical myths and narratives such as creation, revelation, election, and messianic redemption from collective catastrophe. The class program includes the reception of these models in other religious traditions, especially Christianity, and the second half of the class will study how in contemporary Jewry these religious traditions were transformed into secular rituals of commemoration. The contemporary Jewish world is marked by the rise of official memorial policies organized by communities, associations, and the Israeli state, in cooperation as well as in tension with the memories of individuals, families, and ethnic subgroups. A particular emphasis will be placed on the memory of the Holocaust, whose global reception led once again to an ambiguous universalization of the Jewish tradition of remembrance.
LIST OF CLASSES
- THEORETICAL INTRODUCTION
- MEMORIAL NARRATIVES
- TIME AND RITUAL
- SPACE AND EXILE
- COMMEMORATING THE INDIVIDUAL
- ACCULTURATED JEWISH MEMORY
- NATIONAL MEMORIES IN ISRAEL
- HOLOCAUST EDUCATION
- TRAUMA AND TESTIMONY
- UNIVERSAL SYMBOLISM
- WAR OF MEMORIES
- COMPARATIVE APPROACHES TO JEWISH MEMORY