History and Religion of Second Temple Judaism -- The Jewish Child, from the Bible to the Holocaust (2020 Boccaccini), course

History and Religion of Second Temple Judaism: The Jewish Child, from the Bible to the Holocaust (MIDEAST 335) is a course offered by Gabriele Boccaccini in the Winter 2020.

Description

What is the role of children, boys and girls, in Judaism? Although the religious education of children in the family has always been a major concern in Judaism, children are rarely presented as role models in the Hebrew Bible. Since Hellenistic-Roman times (in Second Temple Judaism and the New Testament) we can see more attention being paid to children, which led Jews (and Christians) to stress the importance of schooling and formal education even outside the family. Children however were not recognized as autonomous until the nineteenth century, when Jews and Christians in Europe and the United States got involved in the general cultural debate on children's rights, which also led to the establishment of the first youth organizations. The course will focus in particular on the "ideal" role that Jews attributed to children based on their reading and rereading of ancient scriptures, and on the Holocaust as a very special chapter in the experience of the Jewish child, when thousands of children in total abandonment found themselves forced to take their destiny in their own hands, in the struggle to survive, in hiding, in ghettoes or concentration camps.

The Bible

The Obedient child

Christian Origins

• Child Mary
• Child John the Baptist
• Child Jesus
• Suffer Little Children (Jesus and the Children)

• Living in an Hostile World (The Pious Child)
• From Daniel to the present
• Saints of the Church
• S. Dominic Savio, 14 years (1857

The Child martyr

• From the maccabees to the present
• Woman with seven sons (Maccabean Persecution)
• Saints of the Church
• St. Vitus (4th cent.) -- St. Agnes of Rome, Age 13 (4th cent.) -- S. Maria Goretti (19

The contested child

• The Blood Libel
  • William of Norich (England, 1144)
  • Harold of Gloucester (England, 1168)
  • Robert of Bury (England, 1181)
  • Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln (England, 1255)
  • Werner of Oberwesel (Germany, 1287)
  • Andreas Oxner (Austria, 1462) -- cult suppressed in 1994
  • Simon of Trent (Italy, 1475)
  • Gabriel of Białystok (Belarus, 1690) -- canonized in 1820; cult suppressed during the Soviet period; revived in 1992

• The convert.
  • The kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara (1858)

After the Emancipation

Jewish Orphanages (late 19th-cent - early 20th cent. until WW2)

• Orphanages in the United States
• Orphanages by Janusz Korczak and Stefania Wilczyńska

Schools