CSJO-CU8.5

=CSJO-Grade 8 Lesson 8.5 (CSJO-Template)=

In eastern and southern Europe, matters became worse as peasants could no longer earn a living from their farms because of 1) imports of inexpensive meat and wheat from the US and Argentina and 2) decreasing size of farms as the land was divided among the children and further subdivided with each generation. Unlike Western Europe, there was little industrialization to absorb the peasants looking for work. In Russia, during the rule of Tsar Alexander III, Jews were blamed for the assassination of his father (Tsar Alexander II in 1881) diverting anger for the economic distress away from the government (Wine, Sachar) towards a favorite scapegoat. Jews suffered savage state-sanctioned pogroms and were subjected to repressive laws (forcible expulsion to urban areas of the Pale of Settlement, greatly reduced educational and employment opportunities) that impoverished at least 40% of them (Sachar). The fact that one of the conspirators in the assassination was Jewish helped establish Jewish guilt and gain acceptance, if not approval for Jewish oppression in the press and popular mind. When Nicholas II became Tsar in 1894, the Russian government responded to threats of revolution by instituting a reign of physical terror and economic repression that would kill thousands of Jews, destroy homes and shops and reduce the Jews to a state of abject poverty which did not end until the Russian Revolution of 1917(Sachar). The response of over 2 million Jews to the economic hardship and state injustices was mass immigration to the United States and other countries.
 * TITLE:** Secular Jews: Organizing in response to antisemitism
 * GOAL:** Explore development of secular humanistic Jewish ideas for dealing with rampant antisemitism that emerged in Europe in the last quarter of the 19th century including Diaspora nationalism, Yiddish based culture and Zionism in several forms.
 * MATERIALS:** Timeline cards: BANK PANICS, 1873; DREYFUS AFFAIR, 1894; ASSASSINATION OF TSAR ALEXANDER II, 1881;NICHOLAS II BECOMES TSAR, 1894; MASS IMMIGRATION TO US,1880--1914. Youtube video of Dreyfus affair & computer. Texts of 3 strategies for maintaining Jewish identity (see **Introduce New Material** below) plus texts on people mentioned for each strategy (Simon Dubnov, Chiam Zhitlovsky, Ahad Ha'am, Theodore Herzel, King David, Rabbi Kook, Rabbi Kohler) and pictures/drawings of these people plus pictures of an Orthodox and a Reform rabbi. Large poster paper. Markers. Lined paper & pencils.
 * LESSON:**
 * 1. Gain the attention of the learner:** Students, without speaking, first order themselves by height, then by shoe size, then by birthday. Students will next play two truths and a lie. Each person tells 2 true facts about themselves and 1 false fact. The group must decide which statement is the lie.
 * 2. Relevant past learning:** The lessons on Reform and New Orthodox Judaisms looked at the formation of Jewish movements which responded to modernity by secularizing to various degrees but still retained God and his worship as an important component. Today we will look at the origin of Jewish groups that eliminated notions of God altogether as they responded to the increasing antisemitism in Europe during the last quarter of the 19th century.
 * 3. Introduce new material:** Bank panics started the economic depression of 1873 to 1879 in Europe and created great hardship. In Western Europe, Jews were blamed by association with the many Jewish leaders in banking. Following the panics, antisemitism increased and once again became respectable culminating in the Dreyfus Affair in France from 1894 to 1906 (Show video on Dreyfus Affair).

Thus, in both Eastern and Western Europe, rising antisemitism crushed the hope of Jews to assimilate into the larger non-Jewish culture and stimulated their looking for other ways to maintain their Jewishness including:
 * 1) Jewish Diaspora Nationalism - Jews should set up autonomous areas in the Disapora
 * 2) Simon Dubnow (1860 - 1941)
 * 3) Russian intellectual who until the rule of Alexander III, saw assimilation as the best path for Jews. Afterward felt that knowledge of Jewish history would give Jews a sense of pride in their heritage and would replace religion as the glue that bound Jews together
 * 4) Promoted idea that Jews need their own place to develop cultural centers where they would have autonomy but still be under the rule of a country (e.g. Russia)
 * 5) National Rights
 * 6) Anti-Zionist
 * 7) Emphasize Yiddish and Yiddish culture
 * 8) Create their own schools
 * 9) Chaim Zhitlovsky (1865 - 1943) (Freidenreich, pp 91 - 93)
 * 10) Russian raised as an Orthodox Jew who as teenager gave up Judaism and tried to assimilate.
 * 11) After pogroms, felt socialism and Yiddish language would unite the Jewish people and help them resist assimilation basing Jewish life on [a trans-state] nationality rather than solely on religion. Felt socialism intimately bound to Diaspora nationalism.
 * 12) Came to America and sparked creation of American Yiddish school movement to foster Jewish/socialist values, to separate Jewish life from religion and thereby create a new addition to American cultural pluralism (in which individual cultures are retained, as opposed to the prevailing idea of America as a melting pot where everybody may start out differently but ends up the same). Folkshul and other CSJO schools are direct descendents of those earlier schools.
 * 13) Originally socialist, in mid 1930's he become a strong Communist, and lost most of his followers but the schools and other institutions he promoted continued to thrive until the anti-Communist fervor of World War II and subsequent years.
 * 14) Jewish Palestinian Nationalism
 * 15) Political Zionism: Jews should form a politically autonomous entity in what was then called Palestine
 * 16) Moses Hess - first to propose the idea in "Rome and Jerusalem" in 1863
 * 17) Political Zionism is thus at most 150 years old. Before then, the Jewish dream of a large-scale return to Zion had to do with a Messiah who would lead a military/political takeover of Palestine and restore Jews to authority over the land of Israel, reestablishing Jewish religious law, including Temple sacrifices
 * 18) Theodor Herzl - assimilated, secular French Jew - acted without knowing the ideas of Hess, proposed establishment of country ruled by Jews, for Jews. He was prompted by development of strong antisemitism in France exemplified by the Dreyfus affair. He began organizing the Zionist movement that eventually led to the creation of the modern State of Israel.
 * 19) Spiritual Zionism - Ahad Ha'Am (1865 - 1927) - born Asher Ginsburg in the Ukraine and raised as a Hasid with deep knowledge of the Jewish religion. Taught himself secular subjects, was influenced by the Haskalah and abandoned religion.
 * 20) Some Jews should return to Israel to set up Hebrew-based culture under the Ottomans or other non-Jewish rulers. Jews would not become the political rulers
 * 21) By living in the land of Israel, Jews would absorb the spirit of the land and Jewish people. They would develop a uniquely Jewish culture expressed in Hebrew
 * 22) Most Jews would and should remain in the Diaspora looking to Jerusalem for their cultural inspiration
 * 23) Jewish Messianism - traditional rabbinic idea which included the return to Zion, to Eretz Yisrael (land of Israel)
 * 24) In rabbinic tradition, the Messiah, a direct descendant of King David, will lead the takeover of Palestine by the Jews with the result that:
 * 25) All Jews, both living and dead (bodily resurrection), will return to Palestine
 * 26) Jewish Kingdom will be restored with the Messiah as the king
 * 27) All rabbinic laws will be restored, including animal sacrifice at the rebuilt Jerusalem Temple
 * 28) Most Orthodox Jews were anti-Zionist - Since Zionism doesn't wait for the Messiah, it interferes with God's plan for Messiah to reestablish Zion
 * 29) Some religious Zionists - e.g. Rabbi Kook - Mizrahi - believed secular Jews are doing God's work by bringing about the state of Israel.
 * 30) When did we see something like this before? (When the Jews were defeated by the Babylonians, instead of saying that the Babylonian gods were stronger than Yahweh, the Jews said that Yahweh was so powerful, he could command the Babylonian army to conquer Judah in order to punish the Jews for their wicked deeds.)
 * 31) Reform originally anti-Zionist - e.g. Rabbi Kohler - organizer of the 1885 Pittsburgh Platform committee, which said Judaism is a religion and not a nationality or people. Thus, there is no reason to go back to Israel and no desire to re-institute the practices of animal sacrifice in a rebuilt Jerusalem Temple. By the 1937 Columbus Platform, Reform supported creating a Jewish homeland.

4. **Provide guided practice**: Draw a timeline on the whiteboard and give each student a card with an event or date. Students with date cards will tape their cards in order on the board first. Next, explain causes of antisemitism (as stated in Introduce New Material) and have the students with event cards mark their event on the timeline as you explain. When you get to the Dreyfus Affair, you can opt to show students a Youtube video of the event at: [] 5. **Provide small group practice**: Split up class into 3 groups (Jewish Diaspora Nationalism, Jewish Palestinian Nationalism, Jewish Messianism) to learn different strategies for maintaining Jewishness when subjected to lethal anti-Semitism. Students will first read a text on their group's strategy plus text and pics of the leaders associated with it. Following the reading, together they will draw a FaceBook page with the ideas and people associated with each strategy. Students will reunite as a class and teach each other about each strategy (they can do it by talking about the leaders associated with it). Hang up the cut outs too! 6. **Provide independent practice**: Students will independently reflect on and write which strategy they most identify with or come up with their own solution. 7. **Close the lesson**: Students, together, will discuss their opinions (as written in independent practice). Next, say, "Many think that the Jews today, like ourselves, are facing a much greater problem than antisemitism. They say that the pull of the free and tolerant society we live in will prevent all but the most religious Jews from surviving and that the only hope for Secular Jewish survival is for many, or all, Jews to go to Israel-- as Ahad Ha-Am and Herzl and Nordau said. Others say that antisemitism may again unite the Jews-- and some may even hope for antisemitism because it will unite the Jews against a common enemy. Still, others agree with Dubnov and Zhitlovsky that the Jews can develop and maintain a culture in the Diaspora, and thus keep their identity, even without religion. This is what we are doing here, today-- carrying out the mission defined by people like Dubnov and Zhitlovsky. Can we succeed?" Discuss current issues of maintaining Jewish identity today. VOCABULARY: Diaspora, Zionist, Messiah, antisemitism
 * REFERENCES:**
 * 1) Wine, Sherwin T. (2012-10-10). A Provocative People: A Secular History of the Jews. IISHJ/Milan Press. Kindle Edition.
 * 2) Sachar, Howard M. (2007-12-18). A History of the Jews in the Modern World (Vintage). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
 * 3) []
 * 4) Freidenreich, Fradle Pomerantz (2010), **Passionate Pioneers, The Story of Yiddish Secular Education in North America, 1910 to 1960**. Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc.

On the timeline, find the people Ha'Am, Dubnov, Zhitlovsky and the groups Naturalists, Secular, Zionist, Socialist, Yiddish.

Prior to the late 1700s, Jews were generally culturally and politically conservative, trying to align themselves with powerful leaders who would help protect them when such protection was needed.

Jews started to become more daring culturally and religiously with the Haskalah (~1780). Jews in Russia started to become more politically daring after the assassination of Tsar Alexander II (~1880). With death of the Tsar, the Jews no longer had friends or sympathizers in the political establishment, much less the other classes from the Tsar down to the Russian peasants. The only way to liberate themselves and relieve their oppression was to unite with the oppressed Russians and overthrow the political establishment, namely the Tsar. Between 1881 and 1900, many Jews became secular, politically radical and active in Jewish labor Bund which was a secular, socialist, organization looking to work with Russian socialists to overthrow the Tsarist regime

In Western Europe, increasing antisemitism, illustrated by the Dreyfus Affair, caused previously-assimilated secular Jewish thinkers and leaders to seek ways, including political Zionism, to ensure the survival and safety of the Jewish people.

