This class will approach Jewish history from the point of view of its fragmentation into conflicting groups (variously named as parties, sects, movements, parties, denominations, or sub-ethnicities) and study the dynamics of opposition and coexistence in different historical periods. Observers of the contemporary Jewish world, and of Israel in particular, often characterize its political and cultural situation by a deep schism. While the opposition to the Gaza War and on the judicial reform stands in the foreground of political controversies since 2023, it overlaps with other contentions in Israel’s “multi-cleavage society”: left and right, secular and religious, Ashkenazi and Mizrahi. The historical narrative in the present will compare contemporary situation with past moments of ideological and social division, and it will show the memorial traces in which the latter have served as models to interpret the present.
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