Lectures in Jewish History and Thought. No hard questions, please.
Devastated and demoralized after the violence of the Khmelnytsky rebellion, the Jews of Europe were astounded to hear that a young Kabbalist named Shabbetai Tsvi had proclaimed himself the long-awaited Messiah.
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.
This is a course trailer for JSH 481: Jewish Biography as History, scheduled for the Fall 2013 semester.
In the summer of 1858, 6-year old Edgardo Mortara, a Jewish boy living in Bologna, Italy, was forcibly taken from his home by Italian police acting at the behest of the Inquisition. It had come to the attention of the Church that a teenage non-Jewish servant girl had performed an “emergency baptism” on Edgardo several years earlier, fearing that he would die of a childhood illness and not be allowed entry into Heaven. Despite strenuous efforts by Jewish communities around the world, Pope Pius IX refused to release Edgardo, who ultimately became a priest in the Augustinian order and devoted his life to converting Jews to Catholicism.
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.
This is a new experiment, suggested by Elya at TorahCafe.com: a weekly, 3-minute “This Week in Jewish History” mini-lecture. I’m trying it out, let me know what you think!
Please click here for the refined, edited version from TorahCafe.com.
Here’s a new version of the Albert Einstein lecture, edited by the wonderful people at TorahCafe.com to include the PowerPoint. It’s basically the same, except without the lame jokes. Click on the icon below to watch the video.
