Goals
Many history courses study the past and interpret it in a manner that increases our understanding of previous eras. The goal of this course is to study Jewish history as a tool to strengthen Jewish memory. More than acquiring information
of the past, Jewish memory is about using the past in order to make sense of our lives and to deepen our individual and collective identities in the present.
Dramas was created as a response to the difficulties in teaching a history course in thirty weeks. A new approach was taken, one in which historical texts would be used, but would not be seen as an overall attempt to survey Jewish history.

Lesson Outline
1. We Are What We Remember
2. Introduction to the Biblical Period
3. A Biblical Debate about Kingship
4. Prophets as Religious Critics of Society
5. The Return to Zion: The Dream and the Reality
6. Introduction to the Second Temple and Rabbinic Period
7. The Hasmonean State: A Jewish State
8. Internal Tensions: Controversies of the Sadducees and Pharisees
9. Struggling with Roman Rule
10. Early Christianity: Challenges and Responses
11. Eretz Yisrael and Babylonia
12. Introduction to Medieval Period
13. How “Golden” was the Golden Age of Spain?
14. “Who is a Jew?”: The Complexities of Jewish Identity in 14th-15th Century Spain
15. Between Despair and Hope: Reactions to the Spanish Expulsion of 1492
16. Jewish Communal Life in Medieval Ashkenaz: External and Internal Perspectives
17. The Image of the Jew in Medieval Christianity and Medieval Christian Anti-Semitism
18. Sanctifying God’s Name: The Ethos of Jewish Martyrdom in Medieval Ashkenaz (Germany)
19. Living in Anticipation: Waiting for the Messiah in Medieval Times
20. Shabbtai Tzvi: The Limits of Heresy, Dissent and Personal Autonomy
21. Introduction to the Modern Period
22. Cultural Enlightenment and Political Emancipation: The Jews and Modernity in Western Europe (I)
23. Intellectual and Religious Responses to Modernity: The Jews and Modernity in Western Europe (II)
24. Haskalah and Its Opponents: The Impact of Modernity in Eastern Europe (I)
25. From Haskalah to Zionism: The Impact of Modernity in Eastern Europe (II)
26. The Holocaust Part I: Nazism as Ideologies and Practice
27. The Holocaust Part II: Contrasting Jewish Experiences of the Holocaust
28. The Challenges of Statehood: Understanding the “Zionisms” of 1948
29. Multiple and Fragmented Identities: Jews in the Contemporary World
30. Past, Present and Future: Thoughts on the Study of Jewish History

Curriculum
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