This course provides the essential conceptual framework for understanding Zionism, the Holocause, and the bizarre anti-Jewish tropes of today’s alt-right and progressive left. It analyzes the dynamics of the Jews’ encounter with modernity: how negotiating that encounter compelled Jews to redefine themselves, or to be redefined by the larger society; how that redefinition led to both citzenship and persecution; and how it led to the emergence of modern religious streams of Judaism, to forms of Jewish political and cultural nationalism, and to a distinctly modern from of Jew-hatred called antisemitism. MW 2:00