HIS 185C Communism, Nationalism, and Zionism: Comparative Radical Jewish Politics

Comparative in approach, course examines Jewish radical politics across Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and the Americas in the late 19th and 20th centuries. How did radical politics afford Jews greater agency in contexts that otherwise excluded them? What tensions arose with religious, nationalist, and internationalist obligations? What drew so many Jews across so many diverse contexts to focus on radical leftist politics? What, if anything, links Jews and radical politics across such diverse contexts? Through primary sources, memoirs, scholarly works, films and more, students compare Jewish engagement in radical leftist movements in several nodes, including Russia (and the former USSR), Poland, France, Egypt, Iraq, Morocco, Israel, Argentina, Mexico, and the USA among others.