Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Beyond Basics: Modern Jewish History — Session 1

Prof. Michael A. Meyer
Welcome to our most recent blog experiment!  As I explained in class last night, as we immerse ourselves in the complexity of modern Jewish history, I hope the Temple blog will become a place for discussion, questions, and comments.  After each session, I will post some thoughts or questions to get the conversation started.

Much of our class last night was devoted to Michael Meyer's seminal essay, "Where Does the Modern Period of Jewish History Begin?" in which he surveys how the great historians of the last two centuries have responded to that question.  We did not have time to discuss a quotation I brought from one of Meyer's earlier works, in which he gives his own description of the "Jew in the modern world."
For the Jew in the modern world Jewishness forms only a portion of his total identity. By calling himself a Jew he expresses only one of multiple loyalties. And yet external pressures and internal attachments combine to make him often more aware of this identification than of any other. Conscious of an influence which Jewishness has upon his character and mode of life, he tries to define its sphere and harmonize it with the other components of self.
Such Jewish self-consciousness—while not entirely without precedent in Jewish history—has been especially characteristic of the last two centuries. In the considerable isolation of the ghetto, Jewish existence possessed an all-encompassing and unquestioned character which it lost to a significant extent only after the middle of the eighteenth century. It is with the age of Enlightenment that Jewish identity becomes segmental and hence problematic.
Michael A. Meyer, The Origins of the Modern Jew (1967)
In this description, Meyer returns again and again to expressions of fragmentation ("portion of his total identity," "multiple loyalties," "components of self," "Jewish identity becomes segmental").

How does this observation square with our experience?  Do we feel that our identities are "segmental" or divided?  Are we aware of our Jewishness as a "component of self," sometimes in tension with other aspects of our identity?  Do you think this experience of complex/multiple identities is part of what makes us modern?

Feel free to comment on those questions or anything else that interested you from the class or readings.  I look forward to your comments, and see you next week!

5 comments:

  1. I'm not sure I understand Meyer's suggestion that a "segmental" identity is uniquely modern--and problematic. It would seem that, even in the relatively isolated pre-modern ghetto, Jews must have derived some portion of their identities from, for example, their geographic and linguistic context. That is, the identity of pre-modern Jews in North Africa would have differed from that of Jews in Eastern Europe. Accordingly, some segmentation of identity would have existed prior to the modern era, and it's not clear why that segmentation should be viewed as problematic.

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  2. As the complex beings that we are, it stands to reason that we would, INEVITABLY, have become more deeply involved in the worlds around us. I don't think this "fragmentation" makes us less Jewish. Instead, I think it makes us more whole as individual people...combining our love of our Jewish "Community" and our need to become a part of the exciting and enlightened worlds in which we live. Any time a people lives within the aura of freedom of thought and encouragement to learn, that people blossoms!!!!

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  3. Based on the information and discussions in our course on Modern Jewish History, it seems that a definition of a modern Jew is as follows:
    “A modern Jew is included in the family of citizens where every individual is treated with dignity and respected as equal in the eyes of the law, and each Jew’s safety and his pursuit of happiness is not subject to the whims, decisions and permission of some external authority and his religion is considered as being only one part of his whole which whole also includes his philosophy, knowledge, politics and his public and personal life, and indeed is an inner private and voluntary part of his whole at that.”

    Question:

    If Iran obtains a nuclear weapon and a means for its delivery, it seems that every single criterion in this definition of a modern Jew has been violated, especially the criterion in which the Jew’s safety and his pursuit of happiness is not subject to the whims, decisions and permission of some external authority because this criterion is solely within the control of the Ayatollahs who could have Israel completely destroyed in an instant merely be ordering the use of the nuclear weapon.
    This raises the question in my mind: “in spite of all the modern science, economics, liberal and human arts in today’s Israel, is a Jew living in Israel in 2012 a ‘modern Jew’”?

    Terry G.

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  4. At the end of our last session (#3), Rabbi Fabricant presented a slide with the phrase which included a question mark "Jewish nationalism?." My Google search of Jewish nationalism in the pre-Zionism context has not indicated a consensus about the use of this term, which pops up in late-18th century/19th century Jewish-history scholarship. Perhaps Rabbi Fabricant and other members of our group could briefly elaborate on this subject.

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  5. I have undertaken further investigation on Jewish nationalism prior to the formal development of late 19th-century Zionism. It is a loose cultural concept denoting a people tied together by history, literature, language. Arising out of the Enlightenment and the rising nationalist movements in Europe, Jewish nationalism marked a view of Jewish identity from Jews prior living in separate, largely isolated communities. Because Jewish nationalism had a heavy secular element, it was controversial when it surfaced in the late 18th century. A renewed emphasis on Yiddish and secular Jewish folk tales are manifestations of this cultural movement.

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