Revolutionary and Evolutionary Trends in Contemporary Jewish History

Contemporary Jewish history has been rich in both revolutionary events and more gradual but no less significant evolutionary processes. This talk will look from this perspective at several points in Jewish history, including the growth of Hasidism and the sharp opposition it provoked, secularization and assimilation, the emergence of Orthodoxy and non-Orthodox movements in Europe and North America, Zionism as well as the crystallization of a Jewish nationality in the Soviet Union and the State of Israel. An important and often neglected aspect of this history is the fate of Jews in the lands of Islam in the context of imperial expansion and colonialism.

Yakov M. Rabkin is Professor of History at the University of Montreal. His areas of interest include contemporary Jewish history and the history of science. He has published and edited five books as well as over three hundred articles and book chapters. His bestseller “A Threat from Within: A Century of Jewish Opposition to Zionism” (2006) is now available in fifteen languages. His most recent book is “What is Modern Israel?” (2016) published in French, Japanese, and Russian.