Course Description:

This 4 week course will explore 4 periods of active Jewish military resistance to outside occupation and efforts to commit genocide of the Jewish ethnicity. The four periods include the Greco Roman period from Antiochus to the Roman destruction of the Kingdom of Judea; resistance to Christian Medieval and Renaissance subjugation of the Jewish communities of France, England, Spain and Portugal; Jewish resistance in Europe to pogroms to fighting back against the Nazis during the Holocaust and finally, the story of Jewish resistance and military development in Israel from WWI and the development of the Jewish Brigade and the creation of the Haganah and Irgun to the creation of the IDF.

Lesson 1: Armed Jewish resistance to the Greeks and Romans 300 BCE to 120 CE

Lesson 2: Fighting back against Christian anti-Jewish attacks from the crusades to the inquisition

Lesson 3: Fighting back against Russian, Polish, Ukrainian pogroms and resisting the Nazis

Lesson 4: Defending Eretz Yisrael—the creation of the Jewish brigade, the Haganah, Irgun, the Stern Gang and the IDF.

WEDNESDAYS, 7:00-8:30pm (EST)

Dates: Mar. 15, 22, 29; Apr. 19

About the Instructor:

Dr. Samuel Edelman has served as the first executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East and Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles. Currently he is one of the founding faculty members of the new Academic Council for Israel, and its executive director, and a member of the Academic Engagement Network (AEN).  Edelman is  an Academic Fellow and an adjunct professor of Israel Studies and Zionism of the Sue and Leonard Miller Center for Contemporary Judaic Studies at the University of Miami and a lecturer at Florida Atlantic University LifeLong Learning Society and for the Miami-Dade CAJE. He is the former Director of the Israel on Campus Coalition Academic Affairs Department and the National Academic Network and its Fellows Program.  He is also an emeritus professor of Jewish, Israel and Holocaust Studies as well as Rhetoric and Communication Studies. In addition to being one of the key academics fighting against BDS on campuses and in academic professional organizations, he continues to lecture and teach on subjects such as Anti-Semitism, Genocide, Holocaust and resistance, the Arab Israeli conflict, Zionism, the Arab Spring, The Changing Map of the Middle East, Jewish Peoplehood, the history of Israel and more. Edelman is also the co-director of the California State Center of Excellence in Holocaust, Genocide, Human Rights and Tolerance Education. Edelman is currently completing a new book entitled the Age of Hate with his wife and colleague, Prof. Carol Edelman.