| Creating Judaism: History, Tradition, Practice Michael L. Satlow |
Discussion Questions:
1. For the Jewish community of Amsterdam, what was Baruch Spinoza's sin? How do you think the
specific history and context of this community conditioned their response to him?
2. This chapter argues that "Judaism" as we understand it is largely a product of nineteenth
century Germany. Do you agree?
3. Compare a work like Heinrich Graetz's History of the Jews to the Zohar and the Talmud. Do you
think that they attempt to answer similar questions, or do they do fundamentally different cultural
work?
4. Why is the Lithuanian yeshivah just as much a response to modernity as Reform Judaism?
5. Why do you think that so few Jewish "canonical" texts have been produced over the last 400
years?
Resources
The topics that this chapter takes up have a vast primary and secondary literature. The essays in
Biale, Cultures of the Jews, are excellent: Richard I. Cohen, “Urban Visibility and Biblical Visions:
Jewish Culture in Western and Central Europe in the Modern Age,” pp. 731–796; David Biale, “A
Journey Between Worlds: East European Jewish Culture from the Partitions of Poland to the
Holocaust,” pp. 799–860; and, especially, Moshe Rosman, “Innovative Tradition: Jewish Culture in
the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth,” pp. 519–570. Selections of many of the relevant primary
documents can be found in Paul Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz, The Jew in the Modern
World: A Documentary History, 2d ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). See also Jacob
Katz, Out of the Ghetto: The Social Background of Jewish Emancipation, 1770-1870 (reprint
Syracuse Univesity Press, 1998); Michael Meyer, Response to Modernity: A History of the Reform
Movement in Judaism (reprint Wayne State University Press, 1995); David Ellenson, After
Emancipation: Jewish Religious Responses to Modernity (Hebrew Union College Press, 2004).
Multimedia Resources
1. For the Jewish community of Amsterdam, what was Baruch Spinoza's sin? How do you think the
specific history and context of this community conditioned their response to him?
2. This chapter argues that "Judaism" as we understand it is largely a product of nineteenth
century Germany. Do you agree?
3. Compare a work like Heinrich Graetz's History of the Jews to the Zohar and the Talmud. Do you
think that they attempt to answer similar questions, or do they do fundamentally different cultural
work?
4. Why is the Lithuanian yeshivah just as much a response to modernity as Reform Judaism?
5. Why do you think that so few Jewish "canonical" texts have been produced over the last 400
years?
Resources
The topics that this chapter takes up have a vast primary and secondary literature. The essays in
Biale, Cultures of the Jews, are excellent: Richard I. Cohen, “Urban Visibility and Biblical Visions:
Jewish Culture in Western and Central Europe in the Modern Age,” pp. 731–796; David Biale, “A
Journey Between Worlds: East European Jewish Culture from the Partitions of Poland to the
Holocaust,” pp. 799–860; and, especially, Moshe Rosman, “Innovative Tradition: Jewish Culture in
the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth,” pp. 519–570. Selections of many of the relevant primary
documents can be found in Paul Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz, The Jew in the Modern
World: A Documentary History, 2d ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). See also Jacob
Katz, Out of the Ghetto: The Social Background of Jewish Emancipation, 1770-1870 (reprint
Syracuse Univesity Press, 1998); Michael Meyer, Response to Modernity: A History of the Reform
Movement in Judaism (reprint Wayne State University Press, 1995); David Ellenson, After
Emancipation: Jewish Religious Responses to Modernity (Hebrew Union College Press, 2004).
Multimedia Resources
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"East and West" |
| Copyright Michael L. Satlow 2007 All rights reserved Comments? Suggestion? Contact the author! |
Exterior and interior of the Choral Synagogue in St. Petersburg after recent
renovations
renovations
