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