Lecture 4: Jewish History and the History
of Antisemitism
Preliminary
roll-call & return journals
remarks on journals; grammar and spelling (Nazi, Nazi's; Nazis,
Nazis')
professor's harangue
Universality and Particularity in learning
from the Holocaust
Alexander / Dawidowicz; textbook pages
6-10
Jewish history: READ THE TEXTBOOK!! some important points:
varying definitions [pp. 36, 52, 53: use of collective singular]
"competition" with Christianity from 4th century
onward
religious antisemitism
superstition and "blood libel"
persistence of traditions (Ukrainian Chmelnicki massacres)
Enlightenment and emancipation
nationalism, politics and settlement patterns
science and "racial" antisemitism
control, power and superstition (text p. 62): the dislocations
of modernization
the "Dialectic of Enlightenment"
The Rothschild family (compare: Ford, Dupont, Roosevelt, Gates,
…)
Meyer Amschel Rothschild (1744-1812): antique and coin dealer,
then banker
loaned money to Crown Prince and Elector William of Hesse-Kassel
married 1770, 10 children
5 sons ran bank with European branches (Manchester, Paris,
Vienna); railway investments
after 1848: public stock issue; charitable work
Film "Image before my Eyes," 1980 documentary on
Jewish Life in Poland, 1870s-WW2
[15 minute clip not shown due to technical difficulties; will
be shown at a later date]