Jewish Life 1918-1933

1
Lecture 14

• Jewish Life 1918-1933

2
Outline

• Announcements
• Zionism
• Changes in Government
• Judaism
• Art
• Science
• Specificities of interwar American Jewish Culture

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Questions

• Was World War I a Turning Point for world
  Jewry? For whom? Why?
• Why would war affect the history of religion?
• What similarities/differences do we see among
  Jewish politics/cultures of the late 19th century
  and interwar period?

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Changing relationships with government

• new state identifications
• Creation of new states
• Expansion of some states
• Consolidation of new governments
• Movement of some territories (Alsace/Lorraine)
• Russia
• forced the Bund, UJSW, and Poalei Zion to
  dissolve into the Communist party
• Created new Jewish sections
• Purges
• Poland
• Jewish communities in Galicia, Congress Poland,
  and Kresy.

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Judaism

• comfortable rejection of Judaism
• intellectual reformation of Judaism

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Intellectual Reformation of Judaism

• Hermann Cohen
• The Religion of Reason from the Sources of
  Judaism
• Leo Baeck
• The Essence of Judaism
• Franz Rosenzweig
• The Star of Redemption
• Martin Buber
• I/Thou
• Mordechai Kaplan
• Reconstructionist Judaism
• Solomon Schecter

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Other Shifts

• music
• Gustav Mahler
• Arnold Schönberg
• Theater
• Cabaret
• Literature
• Franz Kafka, Stefan Zweig
• Art
• Chagall Lissitsky
• Architecture
• Mendelssohn Bauhaus

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Marc Chagall
9
El Lissitzsky
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Other Shifts

• Science
• Psychology Psychiatry
• Psychoanalysis (Freud)
• Professional Shifts

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U.S. Interwar Years

• Transformative Years
• No Major Immigration
• Restrictionism
• Migration
• New Professions
• Change in Family Life
• Education

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U.S. Interwar Years

• Growing Antisemitism
• Sunday Laws
• Henry Ford
• Father Coughlin
• Judeobolshevism

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U.S. Interwar Years

• Religion
• Feminization of Judaism
• Struggle for Social Justice
• Associational Culture
• Theater
• Radio
• Film
• Written Word