In the late 18th and early 19th century European Jewry encountered modernity and enlightenment values. There were four basic reactions to this encounter, which created four ideal-type Modern Jewish identities defined by their relation to religion, enlightenment and nationalism: Torah im derekh Eretz, Ultraorthodoxy, Jewish Secularism and Zionism. The course investigates these identities and their 20th century developments and their variations both in Israel and the Diaspora.
The course’s theoretical framework is contemporary existential thought in social psychology and anthropology, which assumes that human beings cannot live without cultural meaning systems that provide structure and the illusion of symbolic immortality, i.e. belonging to a larger whole that survives the individual. It also assumes that identities are formed and changed by challenges and problems that need to be solved, like Judaism’s encounter with modernity.

Credits
The course will be run as a seminar. After initial introductory lectures, students will present analyses of figures paradigmatic for a modern Jewish relating to the question: what cultural, intellectual, religious and personal problem situations did these figures encounter, and how did the identities they evolved present a solution for these problems?
These presentations will be the basis for papers to be handed in to meet the course’s requirements.