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Jewish Identity Challenged and Redefined

Jewish Identity Challenged and Redefined. Part I. Who am I? Why?. Are there things on your partner’s list that you would have added to your list if you could have written down more than five things?

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Jewish Identity Challenged and Redefined

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  1. Jewish Identity Challenged and Redefined Part I

  2. Who am I? Why? • Are there things on your partner’s list that you would have added to your list if you could have written down more than five things? • What experiences/environments/people influenced your identity today?________________________________________ • If you were a Jew living in western Europe prior to emancipation, what would you write?

  3. How does acculturation and assimilation effect Jewish identity? • Acculturation • Cultural modification of a group through interaction involving intercultural exchange and borrowing with a different culture. • Assimilation • The process of being absorbed into the cultural tradition of population or group.

  4. Jewish Identity I • Assimilationist Responses • Estrangement • Feels like an outsider • Conversion • Leave their religion, often for practical reasons • Jewish Self-Hatred • Loathe everything Jewish about themselves

  5. Jewish Identity II • Affirmation Responses • Jewishness as a unique sensibility • There is a unique Jewish character • Defiance of anti-Semites • Desire to keep anti-Semites from winning • Religious Faith • Religious connection to being Jewish • Other Responses • “Holocaust Jew”

  6. Estrangement I • Solomon Maimon (1753-1810) • Shlomo ben Joshua born in Poland • Traditional Education but wanted a secular education • Changed his name • Wanted to convert to Christianity

  7. Estrangement II • “My Emergence from Talmudic Darkness” (1793) • Describes his experience in a traditional yeshiva • Title conveys his view of his early life • Juxtaposes darkness of Talmudic study with lightness of secular education

  8. Conversion I • Abraham Mendelssohn (Bartholdy) (1776-1835) • Liberal Jewish Upbringing • German Banker • Changed his name to Bartholdy – less Jewish • Didn’t have son circumcised • Converted to Christianity

  9. Conversion II • “Why I Have Raised You as a Christian” (1820) • On occasion of dauther’s confirmation • Religion was man made and changeable • Confirmation as a Christian meant world would accept her • Conversion • Sometimes act of faith • Often way to assimilate

  10. Next Class • Think About: • Do you know examples of assimilationist and/or affirmationist Jews? • Preview: • Self-Hating Jew document study • Examples of Affirmation Identities • What it meant to be a Holocaust Jew

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