Volume 4 No 1 - Journal for the Study of Antisemitism

240 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 4:237
vival and secular recoding of the pan-European vocabulary of Jewish difference
up to the early twentieth century; and the final thematic block deals
with the impact of the cultural lexicon of Jewish difference on the selfperception
and identity of Jews assimilating into European majority cultures
before the Second World War.
Contrary to many preconceptions, the undergraduate classroom is by
far the most challenging testing ground for scholarly theories and analytical
methodologies. Here, researchers turned teachers cannot hide behind generous
page allotments, exhaustive bibliographies, and copious footnotes. The
process of selecting and presenting material from almost two millennia of
Christian and post-Christian experience so it would fit into the Procrustean
bed of an academic term is like packing for a long trip with an impossibly
strict airplane baggage allowance. While the actual set of readings for “The
Imaginary Jew” varies each time the course is taught, the typical syllabus
looks as follows:
Week 1: General Introduction
Week 2. Theological anti-Judaism. Primary readings: Excerpts from the
Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles; apocryphal gospels (Peter; Nicodemus;
Paradosis Pilati). Secondary readings: Excerpts from Jules Isaac’s
The Teaching of Contempt and Hyam Maccoby’s The Sacred Executioner.
Week 3. Theological anti-Judaism. Primary readings: Medieval sermon
stories (exempla) from Joan Young Gregg’s annotated anthology Devils,
Women, and Jews; excerpts from the writings of the Church fathers (the
adversus Iudaeos tradition)—Chrysostom, Cyprian, Tertullian, Augustine.
Secondary readings: Excerpts from Frank Kermode’s The Genesis of
Secrecy, Hyam Maccoby’s Judas Iscariot and the Myth of Jewish Evil, and
George Anderson’s The Legend of the Wandering Jew.
Week 4. The blood libel. Primary readings: Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Prioress’s
Tale”; excerpts from The German Legends of the Brothers Grimm.
Secondary readings: Excerpts from Joshua Trachtenberg’s The Devil and
the Jews.
Week 5. From theology and folklore to literature. Primary reading: William
Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice. Secondary readings: Excerpts
from Michael Echeruo, The Conditioned Imagination; a selection of essays
by Alan C. Dessen, Leslie Fiedler, and other authors.
Week 6. The age of secularization. Enlightenment Judeophilia. Primary
readings: G. E. Lessing, Nathan the Wise; excerpts from Walter Scott’s
Ivanhoe. Secondary readings: Excerpts from Arthur Hertzberg’s The
French Enlightenment and the Jews.
Week 7. The age of secularization. Judeophobia. Primary reading: Nikolai
Gogol’s Taras Bulba.