MORE ON JOEL BEININ'S ONLINE COURSE. Daniel H Jacobs, the writer of the Stanford Review article, e-mails in response to my comments:

This is my first time following my article onto the blogosphere so bear with me. Your comment on my article in the Stanford Review was interesting. I believe the Nachmanides' synagogue was established by Nachmanides' pupils shortly after his death, but you described that as a "minor point." Joseph Caro did publish his work during the Ottoman period, but the example was meant to show that a productive Jewish community existed. The more major point is whether Beinin knows that a Jewish community existed continuously between 70-1516. Undoubtedly he does know. In my article I stated that Beinin's lectures IMPLIED there was no such community, meaning that his lectures were deliberately deceitful, intended to omit Jewish history, but cleverly to maintain deniability if actually called for his words. The class, as you know from the course description you downloaded, is intended for novice historians. I did download Beinin's lecture transcripts and have the videos at my house. Here is the pertinent transcript from week one:

"The total number of Jews was about 25,000, and they lived in the four Jewish holy cities of Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed and Tiberias. Some of them had lived in Palestine since the 16th Century when Ottoman authorities invited Jews who had been expelled from Spain to settle in Palestine. These were religious Jews, not Zionists. They came to the Holy Land to study Jewish religious texts and to be buried there."

The purpose of Beinin's lectures is to imply, without actually saying so, that most Jews left with Titus and came back due to Arab hospitality. If you were one of the 50 odd students who had little background, that is what you would have believed. It is brilliant, comical and evil all at the same time.

In a second e-mail he adds:

Beinin made a deliberate point of equating Jewish and Palestinian national claims. Therefore he omitted/minimized Jewish life in Palestine from 70 CE until the beginning of Zionism in the 19th century, stated that Jewish and Palestinian nationalism began "about the same time," and postulated that Palestinians might have originated from the Canaanites, and restricted Jewish archaeological finds to the "Wailing Wall." The combination of thoughts seems like a deliberate omission from an historian, who is quite eloquent and knowledgeable in many respects, and presents ideas very similar to the "history" emanating from the Palestinian National Authority, while cleverly protecting his deniability. My conclusion is that the historical talk at the very least deserves filling in. Readers can decide for themselves if they believe his omissions were dishonest.

Again, I do not have access to the course materials, and would not want to judge it on the basis of the limited information I have. If anyone else who took it wants to comment, drop me a note.