HIST230 - Reflections On the Jewish Historical Experience

Tour the Jewish world from the 15th century to the present with Professor Ruderman, as he teaches his final seminar at Penn after a forty-five-year scholarly career! This course will give students the opportunity to read, think, and debate some of the major themes in Jewish intellectual and cultural history, including: Jewish cultural formation in Renaissance and Baroque Italy; The history of Jewish-Christian interactions in early modern and modern Europe; the Jewish engagement in medicine, science, and the natural world in the age of “scientific revolution”; the periodization of Jewish history in the early modern period; the messianic idea in Judaism; and the dialectical relationship of memory and history in Jewish culture. The seminar will devote time to reading and discussing some of the major historical treatments of these subjects as well as a limited selection of primary sources in English translation that illuminate these larger themes.