Jewish History & Thought - UW Stroum Center for Jewish Studies

The United States should embrace its legacy of compassion towards immigrants and refugees, not its history of xenophobia

Americans should remember their history as immigrants and refugees, says Prof. Kathie Friedman-Kasaba, and how xenophobic restrictions have targeted many groups in the past.

By Stroum Center for Jewish Studies|2018-07-03T13:09:21+00:00July 3rd, 2018|Categories: Jewish History & Thought|Tags: History, Human Rights, Refugees, Social Justice|1 Comment

What the Jews of the Iberian Peninsula can teach us about political power & minority status

Graduate Fellow Vivian Mills shows how all-too-familiar patterns of discrimination and exclusion affected Sephardic Jews in the Middle Ages.

By Stroum Center for Jewish Studies|2018-07-25T17:35:32+00:00February 12th, 2018|Categories: Jewish History & Thought, Sephardic Studies|Tags: Graduate Student Writing, Jewish History, Middle Ages, Sephardic, Social Justice, Spain, Student Writing|0 Comments

Video: Jonathan Israel on Spinoza as a Revolutionary

Professor Jonathan Israel explores Spinoza's role as a revolutionary thinker and precursor to the modern human rights movement in the 2017 Stroum Lectures in Jewish Studies.

By Kara Schoonmaker|2017-09-25T16:29:17+00:00July 20th, 2017|Categories: Digital Jewish Studies, Jewish History & Thought, Our Events, Video|Tags: Enlightenment, Europe, History, Jonathan Israel, Philosophy, Spinoza, Stroum Lectures|0 Comments

Spinoza & Modern Jewish Philosophy 2017 Conference

This international conference, in combination with the 2017 Stroum Lectures, explored the myriad ways in which Spinoza has contributed to the development of modern Jewish philosophy.

By Stroum Center for Jewish Studies|2017-07-26T12:40:23+00:00May 22nd, 2017|Categories: Jewish History & Thought, Our Events|0 Comments

Spinoza, Industrialization, and the Nineteenth-Century Ethos of Repose

Professor Tracy Matysik traces philosophers' early critiques of capitalism and its breakneck pace, and finds a surprising remedy in Spinoza's ideas about God.

By Stroum Center for Jewish Studies|2017-09-04T22:41:00+00:00May 17th, 2017|Categories: Jewish History & Thought, Spinoza & Modern Jewish Philosophy|Tags: Europe, Germany, Philosophy, Spinoza, Stroum Lectures|0 Comments

The Greatest Thing: Spinoza, Loving God, and Being Loved in Return

Professor Benjamin Pollock brings together multiple philosophers' perspectives on love and the Divine to argue that our ideas about "true love" are deeply entwined with our sense of God and ourselves.

By Kara Schoonmaker|2018-06-21T16:01:32+00:00May 11th, 2017|Categories: Jewish History & Thought, Spinoza & Modern Jewish Philosophy|Tags: Goethe, Spinoza|0 Comments

The Haskalah: Jewish Modernity & Shame

Professor Yitzhak Melamed argues that the German Jewish Enlightenment movement, the Haskalah, was motivated by a profound sense of shame.

By Stroum Center for Jewish Studies|2017-09-04T22:41:04+00:00April 26th, 2017|Categories: Jewish History & Thought, Spinoza & Modern Jewish Philosophy|Tags: Enlightenment, Germany, History|0 Comments

How Did the Enlightenment Shape the Jews?

2017 Stroum Lecturer Jonathan Israel explores how Enlightenment thinkers both fueled anti-Semitism and created greater space for Jewish people in society.

By Stroum Center for Jewish Studies|2017-09-04T22:41:05+00:00April 20th, 2017|Categories: Jewish History & Thought, Spinoza & Modern Jewish Philosophy|Tags: Enlightenment, Europe, History, Jonathan Israel|0 Comments