History

Course

First it was the Normans now it’s the Angevian’s. In this class we will discover how the next ruling family of England, the Plantagenet’s, changed England. Henry II, grandson of William the Conqueror, is the first of the Plantagenet’s who hails from Anjou France. As King of England Henry rules more territory in France than the King of France, he is responsible for much of our current legal system and instigated, intentionally or not, one of the most famous murders in history.  His sons Richard the Lionheart and John Lackland have reputations as one of the best and the worst kings of England, are these reputations justified? And Henry’s wife Eleanor of Aquitaine has a fascinating history all on her own. We will conclude our examination of the first half of the Plantagenet rulers with Henry III, who ruled over England for 50 years as a weak king who was forced to set up Parliament and was a great patron of medieval architecture. 

"NEW" Rise of the West in World History - 6 classes

This course begins with the civilizations of the Americas, Africa, and the Pacific Islands on the eve of the discovery of the New World.  That discovery and the wealth that was extracted from the Americas completely changed the relationship of Western Europe to the rest of the world.  The center of the world economy and civilization moved from the Middle East and the advanced civilizations of India and China to Western Europe.  In Europe the center was not the countries on the Mediterranean like Greece and Rome, but those that jut out into the Atlantic: Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, France and England.  A major source for this course is Yuval Noah Harari’s book Sapiens. 

Chassidism: The movement and the early masters; a brief history of Chabad Chassidism and thumbnail sketches of the seven Lubavitcher rebbes; why the first rebbe, supported the Czar against Napoleon; the Lubavitcher rebbes on Zionism and the State of Israel; the enigmatic life and ideas of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson; u-u-uforatztah: The Tzivos HaShem ("Army of God") and the beginnings of the proselytizing campaigns; Lubavitch and the struggle for Soviet Jewry; the Crown Heights Riots of 1991; Moshiach! Moshiach! Moshiach!: The notion of the dead rebbe as Messiah and the doctrine of a Second Coming: Is this an abandonment of Jewish core beliefs?

In these Power Point presentations we survey the history, culture and origin myths of various schismatic, sectarian, quasi, crypto and pseudo Jewish communities around the world. Among them: Samaritans of the West Bank and Holon, Israel; Karaites of Trokai, Lithuania and Daly City, CA; Qemont of NW Ethiopia; Pashtun of Afghanistan; Chala of Bukhara; Donmeh of Istanbul; Ibos of Biafra; Hebrew Israelites of Dimona; Shin Lung of Mizoram and Manipur, India, and more.

Historical outline of the Netherlands to 1600; origin theories of Dutch Jewry; the growth of the Sephardi colony in Amsterdam; Rembrandt’s Jew: profile of Amsterdam’s Chief Rabbi and Renaissance man, Menashe ben Yisroel; the suicide of Uriel da Costa and the excommunication of Baruch Spinoza; the Haskalah and its impact on Dutch Jewry; Eastern European Jewish migrations into the Netherlands; Dutch Jewry and the Holocaust; Dutch Jewry from the post-WWII period to the present.

95% of the population of Ireland is Catholic,

5% is Protestant,

I am the Chief Rabbi of the rest

--Immanuel Jakobovits, Chief Rabbi of Ireland (1948-1959)

Topics to be discussed in this lecture: Various Irish myths of an ancient Jewish origin; why Oliver Cromwell invited Jews to Ireland; the Litvaks of Dublin’s “Little Jerusalem”; the Limerick riot (1904) and anti-Semitic violence in late 19^th century Cork; Dublin’s (future Lord Mayor) Robert Briscoe and the founding of Sein Fein; biographical sketches of famous father and son Irish Jews: Irish and Israeli Chief Rabbi Isaac Herzog and Israeli President Chaim Herzog;

“James Joyce’s Jew”: The role of Leopold Bloom in his epic novel, Ulysses; are ye a Catholic Jew or a Protestant Jew?: demise of Irish Jewry.