Why did Eastern European Jewry come to embrace Zionism in the late 1800s? Was it inevitable that the revival of a Jewish national community in Eretz Yisrael (Land of Israel) would entail confrontation with the existing Palestinian Arab community and repeated wars with its Arab neighbors? How did a movement among a minority of Jews become the normative outlook for most Jews in the late 1900s? Why haven’t efforts to resolve the conflict since the 1979 Israeli-Egyptian Peace Treaty succeeded? We will address these and other questions without presuming to offer definitive answers. All points of view are welcome and will be respected. Each session involves a brief presentation and discussion of 50 pages of required reading per week. Maximum: 20 students. Taught by Prof. Joel Beinin.

Registration will open at noon on Jan. 15. The classes are intended only for Havurah members, on a first-come-first-served basis. To accommodate the significant number of people who have expressed an interest in the class, Prof. Beinin has generously offered to teach two sessions, one that begins at 4:30 pm and another that begins at 7:00 pm.