Modern Jewish History and Theory: A Roundtable

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Abstract

This roundtable brings together scholars of American and Modern European Jewish history to discuss a theoretical framework/category of analysis that does not consider Jewish identification/self-identification as the ontological foundation of researching modern Jewish history. They will respond to the following questions:
1. How important is the degree of Jewish identification and/or self-identification of the author of a source as a measure of whether it should be considered in studies of Jewish history?
2. What questions can we ask and what analysis can we perform to situate sources that may not explicitly reveal Jewish content within the category of “Jewish/Jewishness”?
3. How would the development of a theoretical framework aid in our ability to identify a broader variety of sources for Jewish history?
"Jews are good to think with." They disrupt binary categories, complicate linear narratives, disturb majoritarian models, and offer potential insights because they don't fit neatly into established understandings of the past. Ignoring Jews (as many historians do) simplifies matters. As a historian of U.S. cities, Jews, and culture, Deborah Dash Moore will reflect on some of the ways Jews have been productive of thinking. Darcy Buerkle will reflect on the development of thinking about the construction of Jewishness through gender theory over the last decade and propose ways of reconfiguring evidence, and specifically, the place of the unconscious in German Jewish gender history. Lila Corwin Berman will explore how the regnant identitarian framework of modern Jewish history has served the interests of the twentieth-century American liberal project, where identity validates a politics centered on rights and liberties at the expense of equality. She will suggest how a non-identitarian model of Jewish history would necessitate challenging some of the basic assumptions of liberalism itself. Lisa Silverman will use examples from modern Central European Jewish history to address how conflating antisemitism with the broader relationship between the socially constructed ideals of the Jewish/non-Jewish hinders historical research. Chaya Halberstam will moderate the panel from a vantage point outside the field of modern history but highly invested in new theoretical models for academic Jewish Studies which, in many subfields, remains under-theorized.

Sub Unit

• Interdisciplinary, Theoretical, and New Approaches

Moderator

• Chaya Halberstam, King's University College, University of Western Ontario

Discussants

• Deborah Dash Moore, University of Michigan

• Lila Corwin Berman, Temple University

• Darcy Buerkle, Smith College

• Lisa Silverman, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee