Spring 2020
COM 345 / JDS 345 / ENG 246
One Text, Many Angles: Merchant of Venice
This course will place Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice at the center of a many-sided scrutiny. It is a play about love, about the law (and the Law), about commerce, about Europe's discovery of the farther world, about the everlasting lure of Venice, about same-sex desire, about what it means to be a Jew, and about what Christians imagined it meant to be a Jew. The play also inserts itself in a nexus that includes many other texts, ranging from the Bible to Boccaccio to Marlowe to Philip Roth.
Instructors: Leonard Barkan
Office of the Registrar
ENG 356 / AMS 359 / JDS 377
Topics in American Literature: American Jewish Writers: Citizens, Immigrants, and Iconoclasts
American Jewish Writers adopt a variety of personae: rabbis and rascals; native-born citizens and immigrants; traditionalists and iconoclasts. Why these strategies--and how they shaped the body of fiction, poetry and nonfiction prose that we know as "American Jewish Literature"? We'll consider the historic sweep of American Jewish writing, from the 18th to the 21st century, focusing on four waves of Jewish immigration: from Austro-Hungary and Prussia, Eastern Europe, Nazi Germany, and the USSR. Students will pursue original research using the holdings of the Firestone's superb Milberg Collection of Jewish American Writers.
Instructors: Esther Helen Schor
Office of the Registrar
HIS 359 / JDS 359
Modern Jewish History: 1750-Present
This course will place Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice at the center of a many-sided scrutiny. It is a play about love, about the law (and the Law), about commerce, about Europe's discovery of the farther world, about the everlasting lure of Venice, about same-sex desire, about what it means to be a Jew, and about what Christians imagined it meant to be a Jew. The play also inserts itself in a nexus that includes many other texts, ranging from the Bible to Boccaccio to Marlowe to Philip Roth.
Instructors: Yaacob Dweck
Office of the Registrar
JDS 202 / REL 202
Great Books of the Jewish Tradition
This course is intended to introduce students to the classical Jewish tradition through a close reading of portions of some of its great books, including the Hebrew Bible, the Midrash, the Talmud, the Passover Haggadah, Maimonides's Guide for the Perplexed, the Zohar, and Spinoza's Theological-Political Treatise. We will pay particular attention to the role of interpretation in forming Jewish tradition.
Instructors: Ra'anan Shaul Boustan
Office of the Registrar
JDS 224 / REL 217
Art and Judaism in the Ancient World
Jews have often been thought of as a "nation without art," who disparaged the visual and discouraged artistic creation. But the reality is very different: Judaism has a rich tradition of artistic production as well as a long history of reflection on the role that objects and images should play in religious life. Using both textual and artistic sources, this course explores the nature and function of art in ancient Judaism, from the Hebrew Bible to the end of late antiquity. A particular focus will be on Jewish attitudes toward and engagement with the visual and material cultures of the wider societies in which Jews lived.
Instructors: Ra'anan Shaul Boustan
Office of the Registrar
NES 221 / JDS 223
Jerusalem Contested: A City's History from Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Perspectives
Jerusalem is considered a holy city to three faiths: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In this course, students will learn the history of Jerusalem from its founding in pre-biblical times until the present. Over the course of the semester, we will ask: What makes space sacred and how does a city become holy? What has been at stake - religiously, theologically, politically, nationally - in the many battles over Jerusalem? Is a city that is so deeply contested doomed to endless tension or does history offer more hopeful precedents?
Instructors: Jonathan Marc Gribetz
Office of the Registrar
REL 342 / JDS 343
Apocalypse: The End of the World and the Secrets of Heaven in Ancient Judaism and Christianity
This course studies the rich corpus of revelations composed by ancient Jews and Christians about the end of the world, the fate of souls after death, the secrets of the cosmos, and God's heavenly abode, placing them in their historical contexts and considering them in relation to the development of Judaism and Christianity from the Hebrew Bible through late antiquity. Among the works to be considered are Enoch (an anthology of ancient Jewish apocalypses about the antediluvian patriarch), Daniel (Hebrew Bible), Revelation (New Testament), and Ezra (Apocrypha).
Instructors: Martha Himmelfarb
Office of the Registrar
REL 343 / JDS 339 / NES 303 / HEB 343
Intermediate Biblical Hebrew
We will read the selections from the Hebrew Bible in the original Hebrew, considering aspects of translation and Hebrew grammar and syntax, as well as the historical, literary and religious contexts of the books.
Instructors: Philip Zhakevich
Office of the Registrar