Lectures in Jewish History and Thought. No hard questions, please.
Who, exactly, wrote down the foundational texts of the Oral Torah? Who is responsible for the compiling of the Talmud? These were some of the questions addressed to Sherira Gaon, the Rosh Yeshiva of the great city of Pumbedita in Babylon in 987 by a young Rabbi in Tunisia. His famous response, preserved for over a thousand years, is an impressive survey of the Jewish intellectual tradition, leading up to the establishment of the greatest Talmudic centers in Jewish history.
Vladimir Ze’ev Jabotinsky (1880-1940) was one of the most influential political thinkers in the first half of the twentieth century, founder of the Revisionist movement.
Wrongly accused of espionage, Captain Alfred Dreyfus was sentenced to Devil’s Island on the basis of remarkably tenuous evidence. May critics, including the famous writer Emile Zola, argued that Dreyfus was unfairly charged simply because he was a Jew in the French army. As evidence mounted that another officer was guilty, the Dreyfus Affair exposed the persistence of pervasive and deep-rooted antisemitism, questioning how effectively Jews were accepted in French society a full century after they were first emancipated.
Photo: Aryeh Abramson looks out over Iroquois Falls, Ontario, Canada, where he spent the Sukkot vacation visiting his grandparents.
Captured by the Roman General (and later Emperor) Vespasian while defending the Galilee, Josephus ultimately turned against his coreligionists and served as an advisor to the forces besieging Jerusalem during the first Roman-Jewish War. His first-hand observations of the destruction of the Temple and the collapse of Jewish sovereignty are an exceptionally important source for Jewish history–but are they reliable? Taking the name of his Roman patrons, he went on to a brilliant literary career as a prolific apologist for Judaism, but do his later works compensate for his affiliation with the Romans?
The Fall 2013 lecture series in Jewish History is scheduled to resume this Wednesday evening at 8:30 pm, Young Israel of Bal Harbour, 9592 Harding Avenue. The lectures are free and open to the community.
The summer of 1321 was plagued with rumors that Jews had entered into a conspiracy with lepers (some versions also included Muslims) to poison the wells of Europe, resulting in mass hysteria and mob violence. King Philip V was eventually able to quell the movement, but it resurfaced twenty years later in a much more potent form as the Black Death swept through Europe.
Beloved for his children’s stories, Henryk Goldszmidt wrote under the pen name Janusz Korczak.
A lifelong advocate for children’s rights, he ran an orphanage in Warsaw that was world-famous for his innovative pedagogic techniques.
Imprisoned in the Warsaw ghetto during the Nazi occupation, he continued to serve in this capacity until the terrible order to deport the Jews to the Treblinka death camp in August 1942. He refused all offers of personal rescue, choosing rather to remain with his young charges right to the very end.
For a larger discussion of the five historical narratives, please see my article The end of intimate insularity: new narratives of Jewish history in the post-Soviet era, in Acts of Symposium “Construction and Deconstruction of National Histories in Slavic Eurasia,” originally delivered at Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan, on July 10–13, 2002.
Henry Abramson 