Lesson 1: "Polish Partition and the Birth of Galicia"
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Summary: As we enter the mid-nineteenth century, Galician Jewry has been set on a different course than other formerly Polish Jews living under Tsarist or Prussian rule. The impact of Enlightened Absolutism – even after the reversal of many of its reforms in the post-Josephinian age – would only grow over time. We will next move on to consider the most important Jewish movements of the early nineteenth-century, Hasidism (which achieved some of its greatest success in Galicia) and the Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment, which entered Eastern Europe through the Austrian province.
Recommended Reading:
Israel Bartal, “Austria and the Jews of Galicia, 1772-1848” in: The Jews of Eastern Europe, 70- 81
Stanislaw Grodzinski, “The Jewish Question in Galicia: The Reforms of Maria Theresa and Joseph II, 1772-1790” in Polin 12: Focusing on Galicia (1999), 61-72
Nancy Sinkoff, Out of the Shtetl: making Jews modern in the Polish borderlands, 203-25
