Description
Jewish History 202
This course contains video lessons, reading material, research, and assignments.
College credit is based on the final exam.
The proficiency exam for this semester long equivalent course will require the student to display a broad knowledge of the history of the Jewish people from the times of the destruction of the Second Temple until the establishment of the State of Israel.
Topics include:
The Tannaim
Jabneh and the work of reconstruction
R. Akiva and the bar Kochba revolt
Rabbi Judah the Prince and the Mishna
Amoraim in Eretz Yisrael
Amoraim in Babylon
Political developments in the Roman Empire
Religious oppression
Completion of the Talmud
The Savoraim
The Geonim,
The Exilarchs
The Karaite schism
Hasdai ibn Shaprut
Rise of Islam
Jewish life in Northern Europe
Rabbenu Gershom
Rashi and the period of the Rishonim
Rashi, the Tosaphists
The Crusades
Conditions in Medieval Europe
Expulsion of the Jews from England and France
North Africa and Spain
The RIF, Maimonides
Nachmanides
Asher ben Yechiel and the TUR
The decline of Spanish Jewry
The Marranos
The Inquisition
Expulsion from Spain and Portugal
R. Yosef Karo, the Shulchan Aruch and later authorities
Golden period of Polish Jewry
R. Moses Isserles
Prague and Rabbi Loew
Shabtai Zvi and false messiahs
the Chmielnicki massacres (1648)
The Baal Shem Tov and the rise of Hassidism
The Gaon of Vilna
Moses Mendelssohn and Jewish Emancipation
Mitnagdim and Maskilim
The rise of the Reform movement
The Jews of Russia
Emigration to the United States
Hovevei Zion and Bilu
World War I
The Balfour Declaration
The rise of Zionism
The interwar years
World War II and the Holocaust
The birth of the State of Israel