Catalogue 2022-2023 [ARCHIVED CATALOG]
Jewish Studies
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See: Jewish Studies Program
Director: Marc Epstein;
Steering Committee: Peter Antelyes (English), Andrew K. Bush (Hispanic Studies), Marc Epstein (Religion), Elliott Schreiber(German Studies), Joshua Schreierab (History), Agnes Veto (Religion);
Participating Faculty: Peter Antelyes (English), Andrew K. Bush (Hispanic Studies), Marc Epstein (Religion), Elliott Schreiber (German Studies), Joshua Schreierab (History), Agnes Veto (Religion).
ab On leave 2022/23
Jewish Studies is a multidisciplinary approach to the diversity of Jewish experience. This approach involves studying the creation and reproduction of Jewish culture in multi-ethnic societies in the ancient, medieval, modern, and contemporary world as well as such subjects as languages and translations, texts and images, diaspora and Zionism, law and religion, and the cultural construction of Jewish identities.
Major
Correlate Sequence in Jewish Studies
Approved Courses
Jewish Studies: I. Introductory
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JWST 101 - Politics, Law, Story Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
The course examines the political dimensions of Jewish thought, approaching questions of power and powerlessness through the concept of authority. Drawing on classical Jewish understandings of law and story, this multidisciplinary study takes up a wide range of texts, from Biblical narratives and classical rabbinics, to the modern novel and contemporary critical theory. Andrew Bush.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
JWST 110 - Venice, the Jews and Europe Semester Offered: Spring
0.5 unit(s)
The intensive class (meeting once a week for the second 6 weeks of Spring semester) and ten day study trip focuses on the urban history of the Jewish Ghetto of Venice, underscoring the wealth of relationships between the Jews and civic society throughout the history of their long residence in the lagoon, in the Veneto, and in Europe and the Mediterranean. It recounts the story of the Ghetto’s settlement, its growth, its architecture, its society, its trades, its daily life, and the relationships between the Jewish minority and the city at large, within the context of its relationships with other Jewish settlements in Europe and the Mediterranean basin. Questions of communal identity and cross-cultural identification are explored, as Venice was a crossroads between Ashkenazic, Sephardic, Levantine and “native Italian” Jewish culture. And material culture plays a crucial role in our course—we discuss everything from the manner in which the unique Jewish silver ceremonial objects created in Venice fuse religious customs and traditions with art, craftsmanship and culture to the ways in which Jews were depicted in art produced for Christians in Venice. And we explore the extraordinary importance of Jewish printing in the city in which the Talmud was first printed. Marc Epstein.
Second six-week course.
One 2-hour period.
Course Format: INT -
JWST 150 - Jews, Christians, and Muslims Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as RELI 150 ) An historical comparative study of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The course focuses on such themes as origins, development, sacred literature, ritual, legal, mystical, and philosophical traditions, and interactions among the three religions. Kirsten Wesselhoeft.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
Jewish Studies: II. Intermediate
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JWST 201 - Jewish Textuality
1 unit(s)
(Same as RELI 201 ) This course addresses characteristic forms of Jewish texts and related theoretical issues concerning transmission and interpretation. On the one hand, canonical texts–Bible, Midrash, Talmud–are considered, including some modern (and postmodern) reactivations of these classical modes. On the other hand, special attention is given to modern problems of transmission in a post-canonical world. The Department.
Prerequisite(s): JWST 101 or permission of the instructor.
Not offered in 2022/23.
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JWST 214 - The Roots of the Palestine-Israel Conflict
1 unit(s)
(Same as HIST 214 ) An examination of the deep historical sources of the Palestine-Israel conflict. The course begins some two centuries ago when changes in the world economy and emerging nationalist ideologies altered the political and economic landscapes of the region. It then traces the development of both Jewish and Arab nationalism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries before exploring how the Arab and Jewish populations fought—and cooperated—on a variety of economic, political, and ideological fronts. It concludes by considering how this contest led to the development of two separate, hostile national identities. Joshua Schreier.
Not offered in 2022/23.
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JWST 222 - Psychological Perspectives on the Holocaust Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as PSYC 222 ) The Holocaust has spawned several now classic programs of psychological research. This course considers topics such as: anti-Semitism and stereotypes of Jews; the authoritarian and altruistic personalities; conformity, obedience, and dissent; humanistic and existential psychology; and individual differences in stress, coping and resiliency. The broader implications of Holocaust-inspired research is explored in terms of traditional debates within psychology such as those on the role of the individual versus the situation in producing behavior and the essence of human nature. The ethical and logical constraints involved in translating human experiences and historical events into measurable/quantifiable scientific terms are also considered. Debra Zeifman.
Prerequisite(s): PSYC 105 .
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JWST 241 - The Land of Israel Before the State of Israel Semester Offered: Fall
1 1 unit(s)
(Same as RELI 241 ) This course deals with the Holy Land in Jewish (as well as Christian and Muslim) reality and imagination before Zionism. Love of and attachment to the Land in religious texts, poetry, art, literature and music, as well as the tensions between such sentiments and diasporist thought; and the collusions and collisions between and among the communities which claimed these attachments from antiquity through the Ottoman Period. Agnes Veto.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
JWST 249 - Unlocking the Bible Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as RELI 249 ) This course has a tripartite aim. First, to familiarize students with the various literary genres of the Biblical corpus — myth, treaty, legal collection, prophecy, political propaganda, historiography — in order to highlight the diversity and richness of the corpus as a literary product. Second, we seek to establish the agenda of some sections of the Biblical text and to understand how the widely different genres can and do contribute to a complex theological message. Finally, we attempt to unveil and analyze the underlying assumptions of the differing scholarly opinions concerning the meaning of the Biblical texts.
In the course of the semester students read important samples of the Biblical texts and will be introduced to the most influential scholarly views of the field. Agnes Veto.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
JWST 254 - A Hundred Gospels and the Confusing, Conflicted Life of Jesus Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as RELI 254 ) Who was Jesus? What does the Bible say about him? How did it come to say what it does? Was he a humble carpenter? A divine being? A revolutionary? A rabbi? Was he learned in ancient wisdom, or simple and charismatic and fresh in his teaching? The sources dance in, about and around the issues as they alternately confirm and confound definitions. The canonical Gospels-accounts of Jesus’ life accepted as authoritative by Christians-number four. But even these four contradict each other and require “harmonization” in the eyes of believing Christians. And they are only four out of ten completely preserved examples. In addition to these ten, there are a further six Gospels describing only the childhood of Jesus, four partially preserved Gospels (including the Gospel of Mary Magdalene), and tens of fragmentary, reconstructed, and completely lost Gospels. Once thing is certain from all of these documents: Jesus wasn’t a Christian. How, then, did he come to be regarded as the founder of a new religion, a religion that would be called Christianity? And how did he come to be understood as God, the Son of God, or both at the same time? Marc Michael Epstein.
Two 75-minute periods.
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JWST 255 - Western Mystical Traditions Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as RELI 255 ) Textual, phenomenological and theological studies in the religious mysticism of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. May be taken more than once for credit when content changes.
Topic for 2022/23a: Hasidism: Roots and Branches. Hasidism, the first reform movement in modern Judaism, was a radical, joyous, grassroots mystical movement, which has, over the years, transformed into an ultra-Orthodoxy. We examine the roots and branches of the Hasidic movement and chart its influence upon and implications for contemporary Jewish life and for the larger picture of spirituality in America, Israel and Europe. Marc Epstein.
Prerequisite(s): Any 100-level course in Religion or Jewish Studies or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
JWST 270 - Diasporas
1 unit(s)
(Same as POLI 270, INTL 270) Topic for 2021/22b: Diasporic Poetics. What is poetic attuned exposure, and how might it possibly intensify the empirical, pragmatic, and ethical understandings of diaspora as an absence of, or alternative to, power? Andrew Bush and Andrew Davison.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2022/23.
Course Format: CLS -
JWST 290 - Community-Engaged Learning Semester Offered: Fall or Spring
0.5 or 1 unit(s)
Course Format: INT -
JWST 298 - Independent Work Semester Offered: Fall or Spring
0.5 to 1 unit(s)
Course Format: OTH
Jewish Studies: III. Advanced
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JWST 300 - Senior Thesis or Project Semester Offered: Fall or Spring
1 unit(s)
Optional for students concentrating in the program. Must be elected for student to be considered for Honors in the program.
Permission required.
Course Format: INT -
JWST 305 - Advanced Hebrew
1 unit(s)
Expansion of language proficiency through intensified study of conversation, culture, literary texts, and other Israeli media. Readings are arranged according to thematic topics and course may be repeated for credit if topic changes.
Three 50-minute periods.
Not offered in 2022/23.
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JWST 315 - Jews, Jewish Identity and the Arts Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
Topic for 2022/23a: American Jewish Literature. This course is an exploration of the American Jewish literary imagination from historical, topical, and theoretical perspectives. Among the genres we cover are novels (such as Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America and Judith Katz’s Running Fiercely Toward a High Thin Sound); plays (Sholem Asch’s “God of Vengeance” and Paula Vogel’s “Indecent”), stories (by Isaac Bashevis Singer, Bernard Malamud, Grace Paley, Melanie Kaye-Kantrowitz, and others), poems (by Celia Dropkin, Moyshe-Leyb Halpern, Irena Klepfisz, and others), essays (Adrienne Rich’s “Split at the Root”), graphic novels (Leela Corman’s Unterzakhn), and TV/films (“Unorthodox”). Topics include the lineages of Talmudic hermeneutics and Midrash, the development of Yiddish American modernism, Jewish feminisms, the (anti)conventions of queer Jewish literatures and the intersections of Jewishness and queerness, the assumptions and strategies of diaspora poetics, and contemporary representations of the Holocaust. Peter Antelyes.
One 2-hour period.
Course Format: CLS -
JWST 330 - Religion, Critical Theory and Politics
1 unit(s)
Advanced study in selected aspects of religion and contemporary philosophical and political theory. May be taken more than once for credit when content changes.
Prerequisite(s): Any 100- or 200-level course in Art or Religion.
One 2-hour period.
Not offered in 2022/23.
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JWST 350 - Confronting Modernity Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
Advanced study in selected aspects of religion and contemporary philosophical and political theory. May be taken more than once for credit when content changes.
Topic for 2022/23a: The Americanization of Jewish Culture: Word-and-Image. The course investigates the formation of American Jewish culture from the period of massive immigration around the turn of the twentieth century to the present through the lens of the interrelationship of word and image in American Jewish cultural production. Among the topics to explore: the filmic trajectory from immigrant labor on the Lower East Side in an early Yiddish-talkie, Uncle Moses, to labor organizing in the gender and racial context of the American South in the 1970s in Martin Ritt’s Norma Rae; the contest between the representations of Anne Frank and the Warsaw Ghetto in creating the framework of an American imaginary of the Holocaust in popular fiction, film and television; the sustained commentaries on European photos and paintings) from an American Jewish perspective by poets Adam Kirsch and Jacqueline Osherow,; and the contrast between art as a means of escape from a parochial Jewish culture in the popular fiction of Chaim Potok, The G-D Project of visual artist Helèn Aylon, and the TV miniseries, Unorthodox, on the one hand; and on the other, Benjamin Zucker’s Talmudic novels and R. B. Kitaj’s Jewish turn and return through his painting as theorized in his Diasporist Manifestos. Andrew Bush.
One 2-hour period.
Course Format: CLS -
JWST 371 - The Fishman Seminar Semester Offered: Spring
0.5 unit(s)
The course is offered by the Fishman Fellow in Jewish Studies, appointed annually to lecture on his/her scholarly concerns in the field of Jewish history, texts or culture. Students are encouraged to take note of the fact that each Fishman Seminar is uniquely offered and is not repeated. Since the topic changes every year, the course may be taken for credit more than once.
Topic for 2022/2023: Toward a Supernatural History of the Jews. How might our understanding of the Jewish past shift if we centered, rather than marginalizing, the occult beliefs, magical practices, and monstrous creatures that have pervaded Jewish written and visual sources over the course of Jewish history? In our modern age, where Jewish identity is routinely disconnected from literal belief in miraculous events, a personal God, or an actual heaven or hell–to say nothing of demons, Golems, and werewolves–is there anything to be learned from a serious engagement with Jewish texts and practices that are predicated on sincere belief in supernatural forces? This course surveys a range of classical and contemporary texts on the Jewish supernatural, and seek to analyze them using methods drawn from the fields of History and Religious Studies. David Shyovitz.
Second six-week course.
One 2-hour period.
Course Format: CLS -
JWST 399 - Advanced Independent Work Semester Offered: Fall or Spring
0.5 or 1 unit(s)
Prerequisite(s): For all 300-level courses unless otherwise specified: one unit at the 200-level or permission of the instructor.
Course Format: OTH
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