Jewish StudiesProgram

This course seeks to help students better understand the Bible and appreciate its role as an authoritative collection of sacred texts for Jews and Christians. The Bible is a difficult book, one that is demanding on many levels. In order to read the Bible intelligently, it is important to understand the historical and cultural backgrounds of the biblical writings. This course explores the history and geography of ancient Near Eastern civilizations that shaped the experience of ancient Israel and, later, the Greek and Roman imperial contexts that shaped Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity. The focus of the course, however, is on the biblical narrative itself and the particular ways that the story of Israel and its covenant with God was represented in scripture: in tales, poems, hymns, dialogues, and genealogies. A basic goal of the course, then, is to promote intelligent, well-informed reading of the Bible. Also important is the willingness to read the Bible closely and critically, with a view toward larger questions raised by biblical texts: how is God to be known and understood? What is the purpose of human life in the world? What moral obligations ought to structure our common life? Does human history have direction and purpose? What is the good and how do we follow it? The Bible takes up these questions and many more. Though an ancient anthology shaped by the succession of Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman empires, the Bible is not merely a product of its original contexts. Millennia of transmission and interpretation have made it a product of history in a much more extended and dynamic sense. In this course, we will examine larger questions raised by the biblical writers and consider the ways that the Bible has shaped, informed, and guided Jewish and Christian ways of life.

Utilizing the textual and archaeological evidence, this course introduces students to the lands, cultures, and peoples associated with the Hebrew Bible, New Testament, and Qur’an. Geographically, the lands of the Bible encompass what is often referred to as the Cradle of Civilization or Fertile Crescent – an arc-shaped region defined by the Nile, Jordan, Tigris and Euphrates river valleys. Today this crescent includes the modern countries and regions of Egypt, Israel, the Palestinian territories, Jordan, Syria, southeastern Turkey, and Iraq. Spanning ten millennia of history (ca. 9000 BCE-750 CE), this course explores a series of landmarks in the history of human development, which are considered together with Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions. These include the birth of religion and the agricultural revolution (Garden of Eden), the first cities and the invention of writing (Tower of Babel; Patriarchal/Matriarch traditions), Egyptian imperial rule in Canaan (Exodus), the collapse of the Bronze Age (Emergence of Israel), impact of empire (united and divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah), Alexander the Great and the Roman imperial expansion to the east (world of Jesus and development of rabbinic Judaism), Byzantine Palestine (expansion of Christianity), and the Islamic conquest of the Holy Land. Through an integration of numerous disciplines, including historical geography, archaeology, ancient history, biblical studies, epigraphy, and anthropology, students will investigate the interaction between the cultures of the ancient Near East and the religious traditions that developed in the lands associated with the Bible, a relationship that continues to shape the region and the world until today.

Israel is often portrayed in media and popular society in incomplete or distorted terms. In some cases, it is presented as a troubled, violent, dangerous place, as a place permeated by long-standing hatred between Jews and Muslims, Israelis and Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians. In others, the focus is on the state’s role as the center of Judsiam–a home of the “chosen people” and the source of inspiration for one of the world’s great monotheistic religions. Some present it as a model for how a democracy can succeed under trying demographic, historic, and geopolitical circumstances. Others frame Israel as a place of conflagration (armageddon) that will usher in a messianic period or as a nation-state with a discriminatory regime that privileges its majority population over its minority and administers oppressive policies over Palestinians in the occupied territories it captured in the 1967 War. While there are elements of truth in each of these presentations, the full picture of Israeli society is much richer and more complex.

This course teaches students to cut through the mythology, and develop a more accurate understanding of what Israel is in the 21st century. Since Israel is a culturally, ethnically, and religiously diverse society, it is only possible to understand the true nature of modern Israel through exploring the many sub-groups that comprise the Israeli citizenry. The course looks at Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jews (both religious and secular), Muslim and Christian Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel, Ethiopian-Israelis, Russian-Israelis, Bedouins, and Druze. For each group, it looks at demographics, background histories, migration patterns, institutions, cultural norms, values, and practices. We will look at what is important to each group, how they see and organize themselves, and how they understand and experience the world around them.
The course aims to convey an understanding of the geographic, demographic, and social-historical context in which Israelis live as well as the diversity of Israeli culture. Students will be challenged to be critical readers of Israeli society and the way it is represented and to strive for measured, evidence-based analyses.

This course meets the Bachelor of Arts degree requirements. Through a combination of readings, lectures, discussions, and research projects, students will learn to master the subject material of the course and acquire basic skills important to the study of humanities. Students will learn to read academic books, as well as original documents, to formulate arguments, and to write analytical essays and papers. Analyses of this type will provide students with techniques for formulating, identifying, and judging academic arguments and presentations in many fields of learning other than Jewish Studies. The topics chosen for these seminars will introduce students to some of the major figures, historical, literary, religious, and sociological developments in Jewish Studies. By concentrating on these topics, the students will better understand the cultural assumptions of different groups and societies. Although the course will focus on a specific topic, the instructor will aid the student in seeing the larger implications of the issues and controversies discussed in the class. The international and intercultural aspects of the topic will consistently be considered. The course will require students to express their ideas as well as to gather information through research, discussion, and writing. It will consistently challenge students to consider social behavior, the nature of the community, and the value of scholarly work as these relate to the particular topic of the seminar. The course fulfills the first-year requirement, as well as one of the humanities requirements in general education or a Bachelor of Arts humanities requirement. The first-year seminar will be offered twice per year with an enrollment limit of 20 per section.

This course meets the Bachelor of Arts degree requirements. Through a combination of readings, lectures, discussions, and research projects, students will learn to master the subject material of the course and acquire basic skills important to the study of humanities. Students will learn to read academic books, as well as original documents, to formulate arguments, and to write analytical essays and papers. Analyses of this type will provide students with techniques for formulating, identifying, and judging academic arguments and presentations in many fields of learning other than Jewish Studies. The topics chosen for these seminars will introduce students to some of the major figures, historical, literary, religious, and sociological developments in Jewish Studies. By concentrating on these topics, the students will better understand the cultural assumptions of different groups and societies. Although the course will focus on a specific topic, the instructor will aid the student in seeing the larger implications of the issues and controversies discussed in the class. The international and intercultural aspects of the topic will consistently be considered. The course will require students to express their ideas as well as to gather information through research, discussion, and writing. It will consistently challenge students to consider social behavior, the nature of the community, and the value of scholarly work as these relate to the particular topic of the seminar. The course fulfills the first-year requirement, as well as one of the humanities requirements in general education or a Bachelor of Arts humanities requirement. The first-year seminar will be offered twice per year with an enrollment limit of 20 per section.

This course offers an academic introduction to the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament). The course will move through the Hebrew Bible in a roughly historical sequence oriented toward the order of the prose books of the Hebrew Bible, with special topics and issues integrated into the course along the way. The course’s primary focus will be on the texts and contents of the Hebrew Bible, seeking to understand the biblical writings from a historical perspective. Attention will be given to such issues as ancient authorship, date and history of composition, social and historical setting, audience, literary shape, narrative techniques, major themes and ideas, religious perspective, political ideology, archaeology, comparative ancient Middle Eastern data, etc. Important topics of discussion also include: gender and sexuality, law, ritual, historiography, scribalism, ethics, Israelite religion, post/de-colonialism and empire, apocalypticism, the Dead Sea Scrolls, canonization, race and ethnicity, disability, and more. Additionally, this course will treat the interpretive contexts that have shaped and continue to shape the modern study of the Hebrew Bible.

This course meets the Bachelor of Arts degree requirements. This course provides an introduction to the collection of early Christian writings that make up the New Testament. It begins with an examination of the first-century context in which these writings took shape-one overshadowed by the Roman empire, influenced by Hellenistic culture, and based, above all, on varieties of Judaism. From there, the course takes up a few guiding questions. How, in this ancient context, did the first Christians understand and portray the figure at the center of their communities, Jesus of Nazareth? What do the New Testament writings reveal about the beliefs and aspirations of these communities as they advanced a movement that would, in time, become among the most consequential in world history? By the end of the course, students will have gained knowledge of the historical context of New Testament writings and an understanding of why the New Testament has been such an important and influential collection of writings.

This course focuses on the history and historiography of the Holocaust from 1933–1945. In addition to cultivating intellectual skills, such as critical analysis and concise presentation, the primary purpose of this course is to provide an in-depth overview of the Holocaust. The course will touch on various aspects of the Holocaust, including the function of the “Ghettos”, the role of the mobile killing units, extermination camps, Jewish resistance, the role of the Allies, Holocaust trials, and the question how the Holocaust can be compared with other genocides. The course will analyze the Holocaust using historical, literary, and philosophical approaches.

This course provides an introduction to the history of Christianity. It traces, specifically, the development of the Christian movement from its beginnings as a small Jewish sect in Jerusalem to its unlikely emergence as the religion of the Roman Empire and, finally, its subsequent spread and development in Europe, Asia, and Africa. In form and structure, the course is historical, following figures and events in a more or less chronological sequence and taking up questions of causality, influence, and social identity. Yet the course is also concerned with the ideas, concepts, and philosophical viewpoints that have shaped Christianity and given it a certain intellectual coherence over time. The course begins with first-century construals of messianic identity and also with the figure of Jesus, as he was portrayed in the New Testament gospels. It then follows the first generations of the Christian movement, considering it within the context of first-century Judaism and the early Roman empire. Topics include persecution, martyrdom, and the important contributions of Origen. The middle section of the course looks at the second, third, and fourth centuries through three lenses, as it were: the office of bishop, the rise of monasticism, and the realities of empire. Bishops, monks, and emperors all shaped Christianity in essential ways, creating a rich and complicated spiritual, moral, theological, intellectual, and geo-political legacy for generations to come. The final third of the course looks at the development of Christianity beyond the fourth century in geographical groupings including churches in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, western Europe, Byzantium, and the Slavic lands. It is hoped, in all of this, that students will gain an understanding not only of Christian history but also of what made – and what makes – Christianity a distinctive and influential religion.

This class studies how art, literature, film, and other media can help us to gain a perspective on one of the most horrific events in human history, the Holocaust: the genocidal murder of more than six million men, women, and children (mostly Jewish) under the Nazi regime during World War II. We will also examine the theoretical questions involved in any attempt to capture what appears to be beyond our comprehension, in terms of moral outrage and the sheer scale, inhumanity, and bureaucratic efficiency. To this end we will study literary works, such as Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz, films such as Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, Roman Polanski’s The Pianist, and Roberto Benigni’s Life is Beautiful, as well as photographs, poems, artworks, installations, museum architecture, the design of monuments and other artifacts. We will also examine questions of memorialization (Holocaust museums and memorials), national guilt, survivor’s guilt, stigmatization, and the ethics of historical representation.

This class studies how art, literature, film, and other media can help us to gain a perspective on one of the most horrific events in human history, the Holocaust: the genocidal murder of more than six million men, women, and children (mostly Jewish) under the Nazi regime during World War II. We will also examine the theoretical questions involved in any attempt to capture what appears to be beyond our comprehension, in terms of moral outrage and the sheer scale, inhumanity, and bureaucratic efficiency. To this end we will study literary works, such as Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz, films such as Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, Roman Polanski’s The Pianist, and Roberto Benigni’s Life is Beautiful, as well as photographs, poems, artworks, installations, museum architecture, the design of monuments and other artifacts. We will also examine questions of memorialization (Holocaust museums and memorials), national guilt, survivor’s guilt, stigmatization, and the ethics of historical representation.

This class studies how art, literature, film, and other media can help us to gain a perspective on one of the most horrific events in human history, the Holocaust: the genocidal murder of more than six million men, women, and children (mostly Jewish) under the Nazi regime during World War II. We will also examine the theoretical questions involved in any attempt to capture what appears to be beyond our comprehension, in terms of moral outrage and the sheer scale, inhumanity, and bureaucratic efficiency. To this end we will study literary works, such as Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz, films such as Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, Roman Polanski’s The Pianist, and Roberto Benigni’s Life is Beautiful, as well as photographs, poems, artworks, installations, museum architecture, the design of monuments and other artifacts. We will also examine questions of memorialization (Holocaust museums and memorials), national guilt, survivor’s guilt, stigmatization, and the ethics of historical representation.

This course covers the origins of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and how the issues at stake changed over time, up to the present day. The course situates the conflict in the history of the Middle East and the larger context of international relations, including the Cold War and the end of the Cold War. Topics include regional warfare and its significance, efforts at peacemaking, and social, economic, and cultural developments among Israelis and Palestinians.

This course studies the developments of right-wing totalitarianism in the twentieth century with special emphasis on Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, which provided the roots for fascist developments in the modern world. The course concerns itself with understanding the social, political, and economic contexts of fascism, its governing assumptions, ideals, and values, how it worked in practice, and its consequences and historical implications. Another focus will be on the question of why these illiberal, anti-democratic, and ultimately murderous regimes appear to have appealed to many groups during the 1930s and 1940s, not only within Italy and Germany, but also within broader European society.

This course studies the developments of right-wing totalitarianism in the twentieth century with special emphasis on Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, which provided the roots for fascist developments in the modern world. The course concerns itself with understanding the social, political, and economic contexts of fascism, its governing assumptions, ideals, and values, how it worked in practice, and its consequences and historical implications. Another focus will be on the question of why these illiberal, anti-democratic, and ultimately murderous regimes appear to have appealed to many groups during the 1930s and 1940s, not only within Italy and Germany, but also within broader European society.

The course offers a survey of the history of the Middle East from the rise of Islam to the present day. The course introduces students to structures of power, society, and economy in three distinctive periods: 1) the rise of Islam and the caliphal era; 2) the pre-modern Ottoman era; 3) the modern era. The course also introduces students to some of the art, architecture, and literature of each period. Students will thus gain some depth in each period of history and acquire a broad view of change over time.

The history and memory of the Holocaust, the Armenian, Cambodian and other forms of genocide are often taught separately in different disciplines. This course will examine them together through the various ways different societies dealt with, experienced and understood these. Using the extensive literature on the history of genocide this course further suggests ways in which these tragic events affected and were entangled by each other’s. Specific content will vary according to individual instructor, but topics may include victim cultures, ethnic cleansing, trauma, human rights, dark tourism, memorials, architecture as well as the general impact of these tragedies on global politics, or the way the memories of the tragedies were entangled with the civil rights and other struggles in American and global history.

The territorial expansion of the Roman empire brought its inhabitants into contact with a vast array of ancient peoples, from the Germans and Britons of the north to the Carthaginians and Meroites of the south and the Arabs and Iranians of the east. This course will explore the encounters between the Romans and these foreign peoples, investigating how the Romans understood them, and how they understood the Romans. Classes will be centered on topics like the Roman army; the representation of foreigners in Greek and Latin literature; the study of Rome’s enemies from an internal, non-Roman perspective; and long-distance trade and cultural exchange.

History of Zionist thought and politics to the foundation of Israel 1948.

Jews have been part of Middle Eastern societies for thousands of years. They flourished at times and endured hardships at others, but they have been part of every significant social and cultural transformation of the Middle East. In this class, students will discuss the significant contribution of the Jewish community to the development of various Middle Eastern societies throughout the centuries. Students will critically read and analyze primary sources and secondary literature. We will delve into national historiographies of places such as Morocco, Egypt, and Iran-to name a few-and seek to discover a nuanced narrative of Jewish histories of the region. We will also analyze popular culture products, such as documentaries, television, and literature. The course will follow a chronological and thematic order, and will examine Jewish history in conjunction with global and interregional processes in the Middle East and beyond, such as colonialism, imperialism, nationalism, relations with the West, the formation of the modern nation states of the Middle East, and the Israeli-Arab conflict.

The primary goal of this course is to gain an advanced level reading fluency in Biblical Hebrew prose. To this end, the course will emphasize matters of language-nominal and verbal morphology, syntax, lexicon, etc.-and include weekly reviews of important elements of Classical Biblical Hebrew grammar. For each class, students will translate select Biblical Hebrew prose texts by making use of essential scholarly tools for the reading and interpretation of the Hebrew Bible. Additionally, students will be introduced to later strata of Biblical Hebrew prose and ancient biblical manuscripts during the second half of the semester. This course may be repeated for credit.

Explores major figures and trends in Jewish philosophy and their influences on other philosophical traditions.

The primary objective of this course is to encourage students to have a reflective stance on Jewish thought. Students will learn what comprises Jewish thought and how it is distinguished from theology. They will learn what role religion plays in philosophical thought and what is at stake for a philosophy that emerges from a particular religion. This course will give students perspective on how Judaism links to other philosophical movements, for example, the enlightenment of the modern period. It will enable to think about Judaism from a theoretical perspective, adding a new dimension to what they might study from historical, sociological, or literary viewpoints. Some questions we will consider include: In what ways does it converge/diverge, with the philosophical strains that influence it? In what ways have particular events in history shaped Judaic thinking? Does Judaism, or Judaic thinking, have an essence? If so, what is it? What does Judaism mean for the Jews, and what does it mean for others? And finally, what role does mysticism have in the play between religion and philosophy? Students will be evaluated by written work (short papers and a longer seminar paper) and a class presentation.

Political, economic, and social changes in Turkey, Iran, Israel, and the Arab countries in the twentieth century; Arab-Israeli conflict.