Time Schedule:
Richard Block
C LIT 396
Seattle Campus
Offered by visitors or resident faculty. Content varies.
Class description
German Jewish Writers: Enlightenment to Auschwitz
What does it mean to seek equal status as a citizen when the primary marker of one’s identity, that of being Jewish, is indicative of a dream to return to Zion? How does one demand of the other, the Jew, that (s)he become German when the very notion of “Germanness” is vague, uncertain, and forever changing? These are the primary questions that will structure our discussions during the term. We will also be interested in the tragic trajectory that proposed solutions to these problems assumed. In other words, we will seek to understand why for Jews the eventual solution to their predicament in Germany was to abandon dreams of assimilation and argue for the birth of a Jewish state. Conversely, we will examine how religious anti-Semitism led to racial anti-Semitism and finally to genocidal anti-Semitism. That is, how for Germans the solution to the “Jewish problem” became a final one: the extermination of all Jews from the globe.
The course will also pursue a second trajectory, namely, the messianic in Jewish thought. How does the coming of the messiah or the fact that he has not yet arrived affect the disposition Jews assume toward their own lives? How do they read history? How do they conceive of truth when truth is not yet revealed save through ritual law? And finally, what does revolution have to do with the Jewish notion of messianism?
(w/SISJE 295/GERMAN 295/CHID 270)
Student learning goals
1. The history of Jewish-German assimilation in the modern era.
2. The modern notion of Jewish messianism
3. An ability to read literary and cultural texts closely.
4. An ability to construct an argument based on evidence from close readings of selected texts.
5. An understanding of the difficulties of the "other" seeking to integrate into a dominant culture.
6. The relationship of language and theology.
General method of instruction
lecture and discussion
Recommended preparation
none
Class assignments and grading
Significant reading, preparation of analysis of important quotes from reading, and debates with other students based on arguments raised in the text.
Hour-take home quizzes which demand 1 1/2-page elucidation of a trenchant quote and a final essay of 5-7 pages based on the earlier essays.
