2.3.5 Jewish identity

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From the course by University of California, Santa Cruz

The Holocaust: The Destruction of European Jewry

130 ratings

University of California, Santa Cruz

The Holocaust: The Destruction of European Jewry

130 ratings

The Holocaust: The Destruction of European Jewry is an adaptation of an on-campus course that has been co-taught by Murray Baumgarten, Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature (Literature Department), and Peter Kenez, Professor Emeritus (History Department), for over 20 years at UC Santa Cruz. In this course, you will explore the Holocaust from the overlapping perspectives of literature and history—through memoirs, historical documents, poetry, documentary footage, filmic representations, and novels. You will expand your knowledge of the literature of the Holocaust, Eastern and Western European Jewish communities, the origins and development of antisemitism, the establishment of labor and extermination camps, resistance movements, and the Holocaust as a problem for world history. There is more than one way to take this course: You can complete all of the activities (and earn a Verified Certificate) or only the activities that are most interesting to you. Whatever you choose to do, we encourage you to find a havruta (a study partner) in your community or in the Coursera community so that you can experience the course in a more interactive and meaningful way.

From the lesson

Prelude to the Holocaust

In this module Profs. Baumgarten and Kenez discuss the changing demographics and political landscape of early 20th century Eastern Europe, Jewish identity, the Bildungsroman, Silvano Arieti’s The Parnas, Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz, Aharon Appelfeld’s Badenheim 1939, and Elie Wiesel’s Night.

2.3.1 Jewry of the Russian Empire18:11

2.3.2 The Russian state16:05

2.3.3 Changing demographics9:21

2.3.4 Pogroms in the Russian Empire and the USSR13:48

2.3.5 Jewish identity7:08

Meet the Instructors

Murray Baumgarten
Distinguished Professor of English & Comparative Literature
Literature
Peter Kenez
Professor Emeritus
History

Peter is trying to give you a quick

overview of a series of social movements

that transformed Jewish culture, and

Jewish life situations from the 19th to the 20th century.

And one of the things he suggested

is that the Jews thought of themselves now, not as just

individual groups of people in different areas,

but they were now living, a huge number, in the Pale of Settlement.

They were all speaking a common language.

And one of the things that happened is that the Jews of the Pale of Settlement

develop a separate Jewish culture,

separate from the Russia that they're part of.

And this is different from

what happens to the Jews of Western Europe, and he'll talk to you about that.

However, these Jews have limited

economic possibilities, and

limited, very limited, political opportunities.

And comes the crisis, what do they do?

They can immigrate.

They can become Zionists.

They can become Jewish socialists because

they're thrown out of the regular socialist party.

But what he's told you implicitly

is that these Jews now have bonded with each other.

And what we also see is a huge upsurge of Jewish cultural expression

including a great Yiddish literature, Sholem Aleichem is one,

but a great Hebrew literature suddenly comes into being.

And later on, the Soviets will

admire the Jews for their cultural creativity.

Another thing that happens is because of the telegraph and the telegram.

Jews are now connected to each other as they were not in the past,

including the large Jewish population that's growing in the United States.

And the Jews of Western Europe who take an interest

in what's happening to the Jewish communities In the Pale of Settlement.

So, one pogrom happens in 1903 and takes place in the town of Kishinev, and

this produces a very famous Hebrew poem by

Hayim Nahman Bialik, called the City of Slaughter.

As pogroms go, there weren't so many people killed.

Couple of hundred, a few rapes, a lot of breaking of stuff, but

this becomes a focal point that galvanizes the Jewish community.

And this is before the murders that Peter talked about from the Civil War.

But this rouses people to see

the situation of the Jews in the Russian empire as terrible.

And this leads to all kinds of responses,

including the notion that the Jews have no future in the Russian Empire.

Therefore, destroy the Russian Empire by becoming a Bolshevik, emmigrate

to the United States or Western Europe, or

imagine yourselves as part of a country of your own.

And these Jews, who are not the one Herzl thought would go to Palestine,

become the backbone of modern Zionism.

If you're interested in the literature,

look at Isaac Babel who writes brilliantly about a number of things and

he has a wonderful story about a pogrom called, The Story of My Dovecot.

He raises pigeons, the young boy, dovecot.

And he has a another wonderful story called Gedali,

which is about how just an average Jewish shopkeeper

has to deal with these series of social movements

that are happening as a result of the crisis,

and we have to keep separate,

the different Issues of the different kinds of crises.

But the upshot is, as Peter says, you have three choices.

Emigrate to America, become a Zionist,

or become someone who wants to in a Jewish way, change Russia.

And all of those happened.

>> The Fiddler on the Roof.

>> And that's of course, The Fiddler on the Roof, by Sholem Aleichem.

>> The three daughters.

>> And there are three daughters.

How many of you have seen Fiddler on the Roof?

>> [LAUGH] >> Okay, so you've seen that.

And one of the great issues in Fiddler on the Roof is

the way in which Jewish tradition is changing and yet

Jewish tradition is continuing, therefore the famous song.

>> The three daughters choose the three different.

The three daughters choose the three different ways.

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