Please share this information with as many people as possible so that
interested people may hear about it. Thanks

Eszter Andor
Jewish Studies Coordinator
Central European University, Budapest, Hungary




Dear Colleague,


A summer course entitled  Integration and Distinctiveness in Multicultural
Settings: The Variey of Jewish Identities in Eastern and East-Central
Europe, 1700-1989" will be offered by Michael Silber (Hebrew University,
Jerusalem) in conjunction with the 1998 CEU Summer University. This
graduate level course which takes places from 6 to 24 July is geared toward
faculty and advanced graduate students interested in the major religious,
cultural and political trends in East and Central European Jewish history.
As is the policy of the Summer University, full scholarships are available
for participants from Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet
Union.
However, Western participants will have to pay a tuition cost of $200 per
week of instruction. Unfortunately, SUN can offer only a very limited
number of tuition waivers.
Please note that preference will be given to new applicants over former SUN
students.
Please find enclosed a detailed program and the list of courses, as well as
an application form. I would really appreciate it if you could help us
promoting the SUN programs among your colleagues and contacts or any
interested professionals. If you have any questions or would like to
receive application forms, please contact Eszter Andor through email
(andore@ceu.hu) or at the address below.

Yours sincerely,
Eszter Andor
Jewish Studies Coordinator




Summer University Office
1051 Budapest, Nador u. 9.
Hungary
E-mail: summeru@ceu.hu (for information and general correspondence)
sunreq@ceu.hy (for requesting application forms) sunappl@ceu.hu (for
submitting applications)
WWW site: http://www.ceu.hu
"Integration and Distinctiveness in Multicultural Settings: The Variety of
Jewish Identities in Eastern and East-Central Europe, 1700-1989" (6-24
July, 1998)
Course Directors:        Michael K. Silber, Hebrew University, Israel
Hillel Kieval, University of Washington, USA
Resource Persons:        Immanuel Etkes, Hebrew University, Israel
Israel Bartal, Hebrew University, Israel
Michael Stanislawski, Columbia University, USA
Rashid Kaplanov, Jewish University in Moscow
Ezra Mendelsohn, Hebrew University, Israel
Jonathan Frankel, Hebrew University, Israel
Andras Kovacs, ELTE, Hungary


As a dispersed minority, two basic issues confronted Jews in the modern
era: achieving integration into their host societies and maintaining a
meaningful and flourishing Jewish identity and culture. These two goals
were often seen as part of a zero-sum game where universal principles
underpinning integration were seen as eroding the particular Jewish
identity and its cultural and political  expressions. In the emancipating
host societies and states in the West, integration was often coupled with
demands for conformity, and the legitimacy of preserving a particularistic
culture and identity was often called into question. But what of the
eastern lands?
During most of the modern period, the majority of world Jewry lived on the
territories of the Russian and Habsburg empires and their successor states,
a very heterogeneous region with great national and religious diversity,
however, one that could not be characterized as very liberal. What
implications did this have for both integration into the host societies as
well as the preservation of Jewish distinctiveness and particular
collective identity?
To the predicament that Jews found themselves in there was no one solution.
An impressive spectrum of ideologies sought to resolve the tensions between
integration and distinctiveness. Above all, it was an arena where every
solution was sharply challenged and contested, creating in practice a wide
variety of  Jewish identities in the different lands of eastern and
east-central Europe.
With these themes in mind, we will explore the history of the Jews in the
Russian and Habsburg Empires, as well as the "nation-states" that succeeded
them after World War I, up until the collapse of communism. At times the
two empires posed an interesting contrast to each other as well as to the
nation-states in the West. But at other times there were surprising
convergences.
This graduate level course seeks to present an up to date synthesis of the
last few decades of scholarship in modern eastern european Jewish history
by some of the outstanding authorities in the field.
The course will be divided roughly into three parts, each a week long. The
first part will introduce the setting, dealing with the most important
religious, cultural and political developments in the Polish Kingdom and
later in the Russian Empire, from enlightened absolutism up until 1880. The
successes and failures of integration by the state, society and the
nationalist movements, will be explored alongside the powerful polemics
over these issues as well as the sharp fissures that made their appearance
within the Jewish community, with the rise of the new Hasidic movement, its
opponents (Mitnagdim), the Musar movement, and the Haskala (Jewish
Enlightenment).
The second week is devoted to the history of the Jews of the Habsburg
empire from the enlightened absolutism of Joseph II to the dissolution of
the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy.at the end of World War I. Here the
Kulturkampf between the Orthodox and the reformers over the desirability of
integration and the limits of Jewish distinctiveness will be much sharper
than in both eastern and western Europe. The role of nationalism as well as
the rise of modern antisemitism will be central issues, as well as the
explosion of Jewish creativity in the major urban centers of the empire.
The third week is devoted mainly to developments in the interwar and the
postwar periods.
Modern Jewish politics arose in Russia at the end of the nineteenth century
when Jewish nationalism and socialism sprouted a bewildering array of
political parties and ideologies each with its own peculiar solution to the
twin problems of universal integration and particular distinctiveness. The
first World War proved to be a crucial watershed in the history of the Jews
both in the Soviet Union and in the new successor states of east-central
Europe. The new conditions presented new opportunities and constraints to
the perennial choices facing modern Jewry.  The course concludes by
bringing the narrative up to our very day.
Course Calendar
I.      Eastern European Jewry, 1700-1880 (6 to 19 July)

Introduction (Silber)
1.      The Hasidic Movement: The Besht, the Founder of Hasidism, and his
Circle
(Etkes) 2. From an Esoteric Circle to a Popular Movement, 1760-1815 (Etkes)
3. Opposition to Hasidism: The Gaon of Vilna and R.  Hayyim of Volozhin
(Etkes) 4. The Musar Movement and the Lithuanian Yeshiva in the Nineteenth
Century (Etkes) 5. The Galician Haskala (Bartal) 6. Jews and Poles (Bartal)
7. Creation of Modern Hebrew and Yiddish Culture (Bartal) 8. The Beginnings
of Jewish Nationalism (Bartal) 9. The Russian State and the Jews, 1772-1855
(Stanislawski) 10. The Russian Haskalah (Stanislawski) 11. Jews and the
Great Reforms (Stanislawski) 12. Creation of a Russian-Jewish Culture,
1850-1917 (Stanislawski) 13. Non-Ashkenasi Jews in European Russia 18th to
20th centuries (Kaplanov)

Other activities
9 July late afternoon: Mini-conference 1: students' presentations 12 July:
Field trip 1: the Jewish Museum and Jewish Archives (Silber)
II.     Habsburg Jewry, 1780-1920 (13 to 17 July)

14. The Reforms of Enlightened Absolutism under Joseph II, 1780-1790
(Silber) 15. Haskala, Reform and Orthodoxy, 1780-1840 (Silber) 16.
 Nationalism and Revolution, 1825-1850 (Silber) 17. Religious Kulturkampf
and Emancipation, 1840-1870 (Silber) 18. Ethnic Conflict and Secondary
Acculturation (Kieval) 19. Antisemitism, 1880-1914 (Kieval) 20. Varieties
of Jewish Nationalism, 1880-1918  (Kieval) 21.  Fin-de-siecle urban culture
(Kieval)
Other activities
19 July: Field trip 2: Jewish Budapest (Silber)

III.    Eastern and East-Central European Jewry, 1880's-WW II (20 to 24 July)

22. Jews and other Minorities in Interwar East Central Europe
(Mendelsohn) 23. Jewish Politics in Interwar East Central Europe
(Mendelsohn) 24. The Jews in East Central Europe: Integration,
Acculturation, Assimilation, Nationalization (Mendelsohn) 25. The Jews
of Interwar East Central Europe: Historiography and Competing
Narratives (Mendelsohn) 26. 1881 and the Development of Modern Jewish
Politics until the First World War (Frankel) 27. War, Revolutions and
the Transformation of the Jews, 1914-1927 (Frankel) 28. Jews under the
Regime of Stalin, 1928-1953 (Frankel) 29. Eastern European Jews in the
Post-Stalin Era, 1953-1998 (Frankel) 30. The Jews in Hungary in the
Post-War era (Kovacs) Conclusion
Other activities
22 July late afternoon: Mini-conference 2: students' presentations

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