Lecture Fifteen: Stepping Stones to Modernity
Stepping Stones to Modernity
Late Middle Ages:
- Christian interest in Hebrew language and Kabbalah (Jewish mystical literature)
- Ghettoization of Western European Jewry
- Migration of Jewry to Poland and the East
17th Century Humanism
- Amsterdam: Spinoza and the birth of legal studies
- England: Tolerance—Readmission of Jews to England under Cromwell
18th Century Enlightenment
- Civil Emancipation
- France: Voltaire and the Philosophes
- debates on citizenship after the Revolution
- Germany: “Aufklaerung”—Kant/Lessing
- Moses Mendelssohn (1727-1786)
- Religious Reform
19th Century: Romanticism, Historicism, Nationalism
- Eastern European situation
- Wissenschaft des Judentum (Scientific Study of Judaism): Protestant Paradigm
- late 19th century brings two reactions
- German Unification
- rise of racial antisemtism
- Zionism
20th Century: Migration, Relocation, Destruction and Rebirth
- Move to North America
- German Jewry during last of the Empire
- World War I reshapes Europe
- German Jewry during Weimar
- Shoah
- birth of the state of Israel
Citation: Signer, M. A. (2007, March 14). Lecture Fifteen: Stepping Stones to Modernity. Retrieved November 23, 2009, from Notre Dame OpenCourseWare Web site: http://ocw.nd.edu/theology/jews-and-christians-throughout-history/lecture-fifteen-stepping-stones-to-modernity.
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