Historiansplaining: A historian tells you why everything you know is wrong

Michael of "Xai How Are You" and I discuss the history of the Chasidic / Hasidic movement, a Jewish lay mystical and pietistic movement, which applies the insights of Kabbalah to everyday life and prayer, and which originated among Ashkenazi Jews in Eastern Europe in the 1700s, flourished in the 1800s, survived the pogroms and world wars, and in recent years has been reborn as both a pillar of Orthodox Judaism and a bridge to the Reform and secular worlds. Please support historiansplaining podcast and hear all lectures, including the previous Myth of the Month on the "Founding Fathers" -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632 Suggested further reading: "Hasidism: A New History," by Biale, Assaf, Brown, Gellman, Heilman, Rosman, Sagiv, and Wodzinski.

Michael of "Xai How Are You" and I discuss the different ways that Jews have distinguished themselves into groups and sub-groups, from the Biblical tribes to the Sephardic and Ashkenazi ethnic groups to the modern Reform, Orthodox, and Conservative movements. We lay the groundwork for an upcoming discussion of the origins and character of Chasidic Judaism. Please support historiansplaining podcast and hear all lectures, including the previous Myth of the Month on the "Founding Fathers" -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632

We consider the narrative structure, symbols, and meanings of the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in the context of the Middle Ages and the Arthurian cycle, and how the movie has been adjusted to speak to modern sensibilities. I argue that the Green Knight myth has relevance today as a parable about shame. "I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time." Previous lectures on the Arthur Cycle: 1. Creating King Arthur: https://soundcloud.com/historiansplaining/myth-of-the-month-12-the-arthur-cycle-part-1-making-king-arthur 2. The Rise and Fall of Camelot: https://soundcloud.com/historiansplaining/myth-of-the-month-12-king-arthur-pt-2-the-rise-and-fall-of-camelot 3. The Historical King Arthur: https://soundcloud.com/historiansplaining/unlocked-myth-of-the-month-12-finale-the-historical-king-arthur Please support this podcast and hear all lectures, including the previous Myth of the Month on the "Founding Fathers" -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632

How did the early colonists in Virginia know that they could profitably grow a species of tobacco from South America? They learned about it from the series of mostly short-lived English, French, and Dutch colonies and outposts in tropical South America, between the Amazon and Orinoco rivers, in the area called "Guiana." We discuss with historian Melissa Morris how these early colonies, despite being almost totally forgotten by historians, left a lasting imprint on the Americas, and reveal the haphazard and unpredictable nature of early global empires. Please support this podcast and hear the entire lecture on the Nag Hammadi discovery -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632

I mark the milestone of surpassing 100 patrons with a thank-you and a clip of my patron-only lecture, "Doorways in Time: The Great Archaeological Finds -- 2: The Nag Hammadi Library," which deals with the discovery a massive trove of Egyptian documents blowing the lid off of the secretive Gnostic movement of mystical Christianity in the early church. Please support this podcast and hear the entire lecture on the Nag Hammadi discovery -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632

Released to the public after one year for patrons only: Archaeology, geography, linguistics, textual analysis -- all of these fields of knowledge must be brought to bear on a centuries-old question: Was there a "real" King Arthur? Answer: It's complicated. We discuss the likelihood that some "historical" personage underlies the layers of legend. Please support this podcast and hear all lectures, including the previous Myth of the Month on the "Founding Fathers" -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632 Suggested further reading: Higham, "King Arthur: The Making of the Legend."

1066 -- the year of the Battle of Hastings and the Norman Conquest -- is the most famous date in English history. Few understand, though, that far more happened in this cataclysmic and pivotal year than just the Norman defeat of an English army on a field in East Sussex. The culmination of centuries of shifting struggle over control of England, the events of 1066 show how even epochal changes in a society can hinge on minor accidents of timing, weather, health, and personal whim. Image: Modern re-enactors representing Harold Godwinson's army at Hastings. Please support this podcast and hear all lectures, including the previous Myth of the Month on the "Founding Fathers" -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632

Were the Dutch proto-capitalists? Were they Americans before America? What was the Dutch East India Company, and how did it work? I talk to Deborah Hamer -- historian, research associate at the Omohundro Institute, and associate editor of the New York history blog Gotham -- to discuss her work on marriage and gender in the early Dutch colony in Batavia (as they called the conquered city of Jakarta), how it illuminates the Netherlands' obsessive efforts to create a stratified, orderly, and moral Protestant society in Southeast Asia, and what it reveals about the wider European colonial mindset in both Asia and America. Please support this podcast and hear all lectures, including the previous Myth of the Month on the "Founding Fathers" -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632

Who the heck are the "Anglo-Saxons," and why are Americans getting all lathered up about "Anglo-Saxon institutions"? Find out where the Anglo-Saxon myth came from and how over the past three hundred years it's been used to justify Parliamentary supremacy, the Rhodes Scholarship, the American entry into World War I, immigration restrictions, and college admission quotas. You never knew you were suffering under the Norman yoke, but now you do. Please support this podcast and hear all lectures, including the previous Myth of the Month on the "Founding Fathers" -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632 Image: Statue of King Alfred, Winchester Previous lectures about the original Anglo-Saxons: -on Dark Age Britain: https://soundcloud.com/historiansplaining/crossing-the-water-britain-in-the-dark-age -on Anglo-Saxon England and the Vikings: https://soundcloud.com/historiansplaining/anglo-saxon-england-and-the-vikings-757-1066 -on the Sutton Hoo treasure: https://soundcloud.com/historiansplaining/doorways-in-time-the-great-archaeological-finds-1-the-sutton-hoo-treasure Suggested further reading: -Dino Buenviaje, "The Yanks are Coming Over There," https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5cc4h9md; -Paul Kramer, "Empires, Exceptions, and Anglo-Saxons," http://archive.oah.org/special-issues/teaching/2002_03/article.html

Travellers, Tinkers, Gypsies, Kale, Scottish Travellers, Gypsy Travellers, Romani Gypsies, Romanichal, Pavee, Showmen, Van People, Boat People, Bargers – All of these multivarious peoples, with different ancestries, religions, and traditions, their different languages, dialects, and “cants,” share in common a longstanding itinerant lifestyle and the distinct identity that stems from it. Roving all around the British Isles and sometimes settling down, the various tribes of Travellers have provided metal goods, horses, music, and entertainment to British and Irish markets for centuries, but have become the flashpoint of political fury and even of violence in the twenty-first century. Please support this podcast and hear the recent lecture on the Founding Fathers! -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632 Suggested Further Reading: Katherine Quarmby, "No Place to Call Home"; Becky Taylor, "Britain's Gypsy Travellers: A People on the Outside," https://www.historytoday.com/archive/britains-gypsy-travellers-people-outside "Genomic insights into the population structure and history of the Irish Travellers," https://www.nature.com/articles/srep42187 "Apocrypha to Canon: Inventing Irish Traveller History," https://www.historyireland.com/20th-century-contemporary-history/apocrypha-to-canon-inventing-irish-traveller-history-2/