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HU Credits:
2
Degree/Cycle:
2nd degree (Master)
Responsible Department:
History of Jewish People & Contemporary Jewry
Semester:
1st Semester
Teaching Languages:
Hebrew
Campus:
Mt. Scopus
Course/Module Coordinator:
Ofer Ashkenazi
Coordinator Office Hours:
please email us to schedule
Teaching Staff:
Prof. Amos Goldberg,
Prof. Ofer Ashkenazi
Course/Module description:
The course will focus on the concept of "leisure" as a category for analyzing various experiences in Nazi occupied Europe. The term "leisure" refers to the organization of time in modern society and is associated with a variety of identities, worldviews, and emotions. Scholars of leisure have emphasized its importance for understanding the significance of basic modern practices—ranging from tourism and consumption to the formation of new cultural communities and the vernacular creation of images—and their role in influential social, economic, and political processes. "Leisure" also played a crucial role in the processes of Jewish modernization in Europe in the years preceding World War II. In the seminar, we will explore whether and how this category can be relevant to Holocaust research and how we can use it to better understand the experience in the face of mass violence. The course discussions will highlight the important role of "leisure" in the new landscapes created by the National Socialist regime in Germany and Europe, and the forms of behavior that emerged within these spaces. We will examine the academic literature on the topic and analyze various primary sources, including private journals, short stories, newspaper reports, photographs, and films.
Course/Module aims:
Learning outcomes - On successful completion of this module, students should be able to:
The aim of this graduate seminar is twofold. It provides broad knowledge of new approaches to the study of the Holocaust, and it provides the analytical tools for students who will want to conduct further, in dept research on this topic.
Attendance requirements(%):
Teaching arrangement and method of instruction:
Class discussions, analysis of primary sources.
Course/Module Content:
Theories of "Leisure."
Leisure and modern Jewish experience.
New Organization of time in Nazi Germany.
Institutions of Jewish leisure in Nazi Germany.
Jewish vacations under Nazism.
Spaces of leisure in the Ghetto: Coffee shops.
Theater and Street peformance in Warsaw Ghetto.
Leisure and proapaganda: Theresienstadt.
Soccer in Auschwitz: leisure in the "Zone of Interest."
Food and Jewish experience under Nazi occupation.
"Leisure" of prisoners in concentration camps.
Required Reading:
The full list will be provided in the beginning of the semester. In addition to various primary sources, the reading list includes:
Respite, 2008
Rudy Koshar, “Seeing, Travelling, Consuming,” Histories of Leisure, 1-26
Rudy Koshar, “Germans at the Wheel: Cars and Leisure Travelling in Interwar Germany,” Histories of Leisure, 215-230
Jacob Borut, “Antisemitism in Tourist Facilities in Weimar Germany,” Yad Vashem Studies 28 (2000): 7-50.
Emma Zohar, Within the Pale of Pleasure: Polish Jewry and the Pursuit of
Happiness (1918-1939), forthcoming 2025, 316 pp., The Zalman Shazar Center
Press, Jerusalem.
Martina Sterber & Bernhard Gotto, eds., Visions of Community in Nazi Germany Social Engineering and Private Lives, Oxford University Press, Oxford UK, 2014
Swett, Selling Sexual Pleasure in Nazi Germany,” Pleasure and Power, 39-66
דוד ויצטום, קהילת תרבות על פי תהום: הקולטורבונד והעיתונות היהודית, 2023
משה צימרמן, "ספורט גרמני וספורט יהודי", עבר גרמני, זכרון ישראלי
גיא מירון, להיות יהודי בגרמניה הנאצית, 2023
Ofer Ashkenazi and Guy Miron, “Jewish Vacations in Nazi Germany,” Jewish Quarterly Review, 2020.
Edward Westermann, Drunk on Genocide: Alcohol and Mass Murder in Nazi Germany, Ithaca: Cornell University Press 2021
Debarati Sanyal, A Soccer Match in Auschwitz: Passing Culpability in Holocaust Criticism, Representations , Vol. 79, No. 1 (Summer 2002), pp. 1-27
Additional Reading Material:
Grading Scheme :
Essay / Project / Final Assignment / Referat 80 %
Submission assignments during the semester: Exercises / Essays / Audits / Reports / Forum / Simulation / others 20 %
Additional information:
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