This course offers an introduction to the history and culture of Jews in the Middle Ages under Islam and Christianity. A central question of the course will be why medieval Muslim-Jewish relations were marked by less conflict and violence than medieval Christian-Jewish relations in the West. At the same time, we will seek to understand the origins and functions of various myths about the medieval Jewish experience: namely, of an interfaith utopia among Muslims and Jews, and of the perpetual oppression of Jews by Christian society (the "lachrymose conception of Jewish history"). In order to understand interfaith relations during the Middle Ages, we will consider within a comparative framework such issues as medieval Jewry's political status, economic role, communal organization, and family life. We will also pay special attention to Jewish cultural and intellectual developments, such as the flowering of Jewish poetry and philosophy in Islamic lands and the great output by rabbinic scholars in the Ashkenazic world. This is a foundational course for Jewish Studies moderators.

On the eve of the First World War, Eastern Europe was home to the largest Jewish community in the world. This course will explore the history and culture of this community from the mid-eighteenth century to 1914. The first part of the course will examine the "world apart" created by Eastern European Jews. We will focus on the religious, educational, and ethical ideas and practices which distinguished the traditional Jewish community from its immediate neighbors and from Jewries in other parts of Europe. The second part of the course will address this traditional community's responses to modernity in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Important themes include the rise of socialism, Zionism, and secular Jewish culture (in Yiddish and Hebrew) among Eastern European Jews and Jewish reactions to political unrest, nationalism, and anti-Semitism in tsarist Russia. This class will involve close reading of a range of primary sources, including folktales, memoirs, short stories, and religious texts. Prerequisites: a course in Jewish history or Eastern European history, or permission of the instructor.