huji2014/15

This course explores the social, cultural, and intellectual history of the Jewish communities in late Ottoman Empire. The course examines in depth the challenges met by the communities in Damascus, Casablanca and Jerusalem, and the different individual and collective strategies employed to face them. The course will contextualize these communities within the history of the Ottoman Empire in a period of modernization and European intervention. Students will be introduced to the developments and disagreements in the historiography of the Ottoman Empire and of Ottoman Jewry. Topics include: modernism and colonialism; education in the Jewish communities; philanthropy and poverty; European Jewry and Ottoman Jews; reactions to nationalism; Arab-Jewish relations; Jews and the Christian Mission and the different experiences of women and men. Previous knowledge of Jewish history, the Middle East, or the Ottoman Empire is helpful, but not required.