Jewish History in Central and Eastern Europe

The objective of this course is to provide the participants with an in-depth insight into the history, culture, religion, and literature of the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe. The course covers all the stages of Jewish presence in these parts of Europe equally, starting with the emergence of the Jewish settlement in Central Europe in the Middle Ages, proceeding to the modern period, with a special emphasis on the ideological and political context leading to the horrors of the Holocaust, and concluding the course with a full coverage of the post-Holocaust era and the contemporary situation of Jewish communities in the European Union and elsewhere in Europe. One of the goals pursued in this course is to make the students aware of the uniqueness of the Ashkenazi culture, its identity, religious tradition, and literature. At the same time, however, the students will be led to perceive this uniqueness embedded in a larger picture of the variety of the Jewish diaspora groups whose common identity has been glued together by religious traditions and collective memory the origin of which goes back to Antiquity.