JEWISH STUDIES AND RELATED COURSES 2025-2026
Jewish Civilization
The Jewish civilization sequence may be used to fulfill the College’s general education requirement in civilization studies. It is a three-quarter sequence that explores the development of Jewish culture and tradition from its ancient beginnings through its rabbinic and medieval transformations to its modern manifestations. In the first two quarters, through investigation of primary texts—biblical, Talmudic, philosophical, mystical, historical, documentary, and literary—students will acquire a broad overview of Jews, Judaism, and Jewishness, while reflecting in greater depth on major themes, ideas, and events in Jewish history. With the first two quarters as preparation, the third quarter of Jewish Civilization will offer courses on different topics that will vary year to year.
It is recommended, though not required, that students take these courses in sequence. Students who register for JWSC 12000 will automatically be eligible to take JWSC 12001. In order for a third-quarter course to qualify as a civilization course for the general education requirement, the student must also take Jewish Civilization I and II. Jewish Civilization III courses, however, may also be taken as an independent electives.
JWSC 12000 (= RLST 22010; NEHC 22010; MDVL 12000; HIST 11701) Jewish Civilization I – Ancient Beginnings to Medieval Period
01) Autumn T/Th 11:00 – 12:20 pm James Adam Redfield
02) Autumn T/Th 12:30 – 1:50 pm Larisa Reznik
03) Autumn T/Th 3:30 – 4:50 pm Larisa Reznik
JWSC 12001 (= RLST 22011; NEHC 22011; HIST 11702) Jewish Civilization II – Early Modern to 21st Century
01) Winter T/Th 11:00 – 12:20 pm Larisa Reznik
02) Winter T/Th 12:30 – 1:50 pm Larisa Reznik
03) Winter T/Th 3:30 – 4:50 pm Orit Bashkin
JWSC 12009 Jewish Civilization III – Philosophical Responses to the Holocaust
Spring T/Th
Larisa Reznik
This course examines a range of philosophical responses to the problem of living and acting in the wake of the Holocaust, which called into question every philosophical, theological, and cultural piety of Western civilization: the existence and goodness of God; the actuality of historical progress; the ability of the modern nation-state and its laws to secure freedom and equality for individuals among religious and cultural differences; the capacity of art, culture, and education to make people good and ethical; the power of human reason to decipher good from evil and to guide human action accordingly. We will explore these questions together with a set of methodological concerns around how to study, represent, and memorialize the Holocaust and other historical atrocities, asking: is the Holocaust best approached as a unique historical event or should it be studied together with the histories of enslavement, imperialism, and colonialism? Is there something about the very nature of modernity that generates fascism? What stories can be told, how should they be told, and who has the right to tell them? What forms of knowledge, institution-building, and culture-making might be called upon to honor the victims of past atrocities and generate resources for resisting present and future ones? Course materials may include film, photography, and texts by Adorno, Levinas, Arendt, Levi, Césaire, Fanon, Kofman and others.
JWSC 12012 (YDDH 21726, RLST 22016) Jewish Civilization III: The Holocaust: Victim's Voices
Spring
Jessica Kirzane
This course approaches the history of the Holocaust through the literature of witness produced by its victims. Through an examination of a range of sources, primarily literary art (fiction, memoir, poetry) as well as video testimony and visual art, students will consider major concerns in the study of the Holocaust such as representation, authority, memory, testimony, translation and language. Students are advised that these readings will bear witness to human suffering and human cruelty, and they should be prepared to encounter emotionally taxing material. This course is part of the Jewish Civilization sequence, though the earlier two sections of the sequence are not prerequisites for this course.
JWSC 12013 (= RLST 27721, ANTH 23916, CMLT 27721, FREN 27721, GLST 27721) Jewish Civilization III – The Jewish Question and the Color Line
Spring
Kirsten Collins
This class opens with a simple question: Why are Jewishness and Blackness represented as both comparable and conflicting in the twentieth century? The answer sometimes appears just as simple: because they are divided by what W.E.B. DuBois called the problem of the twentieth century, the color-line. But such an answer not only glosses over the varied racial and religious identities of Jewish and Black people throughout history, it also begs another question: What is the relationship between race and religion and how is it overdetermined by Christianity and political construct known as “the West”? Examining the relationship between Jews, religion, and race on an international scale, this course begins with the Dreyfus Affair in France and crosses the Atlantic to discuss how that relationship changed through two world wars, the Civil Rights Movement, the politics of Black Power, and the global rise of discourses on colonialism and feminism. Drawing on historical and philosophical works by Jean-Paul Sartre, Frantz Fanon, Albert Memmi, and James Baldwin as well as literary classics by Nella Larson and Sarah Kofman, this course traces out how Jewishness and Blackness have been reconstructed over and over in relation to each other and in reference to the concepts of gender, race, religion, and colonization that continue to circulate in political discourse today.
Course Note: Students who wish to take this course for Civilization Studies credit must also take Jewish Civilization I and II. The course may also be taken as an independent elective.
Additional Courses
Autumn 2024
Undergraduate or Co-undergraduate/graduate Courses
JWSC 20120 (= BIBL 31000, NEHC 20504/30504, RLST 11004, HIJD 31004, FNDL 11004) Introduction to the Hebrew Bible.
Autumn T/Th 9:30 – 10:50 am
Jeffrey Stackert
The Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) is a complex anthology of disparate texts and reflects a diversity of religious, political, and historical perspectives from ancient Israel and Judah. Because this collection of texts continues to play an important role in modern religions, new significances are often imposed upon this ancient literature. In this course, we will attempt to read biblical texts on their own terms and will also contextualize their ideas and goals with texts and material culture from ancient Mesopotamia, Syro-Palestine, and Egypt. In this way, we will discover that the Hebrew Bible is fully part of the cultural milieu of the ancient Near East. We will read a significant portion of the Hebrew Bible in English, along with selections from other ancient Near Eastern texts as well as secondary literature. This course will include discussion sections.
JWSC 20770 (= FNDL 20770, CMLT 20770, RLST 20770) In the Beginning: Reading Genesis Now
Autumn T 2:00 pm–4:50 pm
Na’ama Rokem
How does one begin something new? What accounts for our ability to do things that have not not been done before or to create something new? And how can we draw on this fundamental human capacity in moments of crisis? This seminar turns to the Hebrew Bible to think through these timely questions. We will read the book of Genesis in different English translations, think of its reception through the millennia that have passed since it was created, and reflect on its relevance to our current moment of crisis. Featuring museum visits and visiting artists and poets, this seminar will explore human creativity and invites students to mobilize their own capacity to make new beginnings.
JWSC 23413 (= HIST 22213/32213) Without a Label: The Emergence of Modern Jewish Self in the 19th Century
Autumn Th 8:00 – 10:50 am
Svetlana Natkovich
How does one come to comprehend and mediate themselves in a society that does not presuppose their existence as autonomous, dignified subjects? As Europe was transitioning from absolutist monarchies to nation-states, Jewish communities were trying to reinvent themselves in a world where their very existence challenged the new premises about a “proper” society. In between, there were individuals who tried to understand their Jewishness in this new, changing reality. The course will concentrate on modernized Jewish individuals, predominantly in Central and Eastern Europe, who fashioned new models of modern Jewish existence in the 19th century. Paradoxically, their literature was written in languages and through literary models that weren’t adjusted to convey the story of Jewish modernity. During the course, through detailed analysis of the literature and the existential conditions of the Jews, we will discuss the dynamics of modern self-fashioning and the role of literature in this process.
JWSC 23480 (= PLSC 23480/33480, DEMS 23480) Without a Label: The Emergence of Modern Jewish Self in the 19th Century
Autumn M 1:30 – 4:20 pm
Limor Yehuda
How do law and politics interact in contexts of deep national division? What are the limits of international law, human rights, and liberal democracy in addressing violent conflict? And what alternatives arise when conventional approaches—such as territorial partition and a focus on individual rights—fall short? This course explores these questions through the case of Israel-Palestine, examined in comparative perspective alongside other divided societies, including Northern Ireland, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Cyprus. Students will analyze how legal frameworks—both domestic and international—shape, constrain, or enable political arrangements in protracted conflicts. Core concepts such as sovereignty, self-determination, and the tension between individual and collective rights will be explored through competing understandings of peace and justice. Drawing on the emerging framework of Collective Equality, the course invites critical reflection on the foundational principles needed to support sustainable models of conflict transformation.
JWSC 24109 (= RLST 24109) Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah Project
Autumn F 9:30 am – 12:20 pm
Sheila Jelen
Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah (1985) is a 9 ½ hour film comprised of Holocaust testimonies—by survivors, perpetrators, and bystanders. It represents the streamlining of 150 hours of film footage collected over the course of nearly a decade all over the world. In this class, we will explore the film and the discourses that have grown up around it, such as the nature of Holocaust representation, the ontology of Holocaust testimonies, and the limits of translation in understanding the history of the Holocaust. We will work with the outtakes from the film at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum to better understand the narrative Lanzmann constructed not only through what he chose to include in the final cut, but also what he chose to exclude. As we analyze Lanzmann’s magnum opus, we will also explore associated films – by Lanzmann and by others – that grew out of Shoah and that shed further light on it. A final “Outtakes” project will give students the opportunity to suggest their own version of the film, with materials from the archive.
JWSC 26314 (= RLST 26314, MDVL 26314) Judaism and Science
Autumn T/Th 2:00 – 3:20 pm
Yehuda Halper
We shall examine how Jewish thinkers examined the interplay between science and the Jewish intellectual tradition, with particular focus on the Middle Ages and Renaissance. This course will explore questions such as: Is the study of science opposed to the study of Jewish texts? Should one study science differently from the way of studying traditional Jewish texts? Are different logical syllogisms appropriate for science and for religious texts? Additionally, we shall examine the materials and formal structures that Jewish thinkers had to study science. We shall begin with the introduction of translations in the 12th-13th centuries among Hebrew readers who had no access to Universities and continue through to the opening of (some) Universities to Jewish students in the 15th and 16th centuries. Readings include Maimonides, Jacob Anatoli, Gersonides, Albo, Judah Messer Leon, Alemanno, Isaac Abravanel, and Obadiah Sforno.
JWSC 28995 (= CMLT 28995/38995, GNSE 20155/30155, RLVC 38995, RLST 28995) Queer Love Poetry
Autumn T/Th 11:00 – 12:20 pm
Anna Elena Torres
This course examines the long history of queer love poetry, from the ancient world to postmodernism. Its readings are particularly interested in how modernists claimed literary lineages of queer poetics, queered social practices and communal literary spaces, and reinvented verse forms to reflect queer eros. We will study works from Russian, Hebrew, Yiddish, Spanish, Greek, and several other languages. No prerequisites. Open to undergrad and grad students.
JWSC 29700 Reading and Research
JWSC 29900 BA Preparation Course
Winter 2025
Undergraduate or Co-undergraduate/graduate Courses
JWSC 22906 (= RLST 22906, HIJD 32906) The Book of Ezekiel
Winter
Simeon Chavel
This course introduces the historical world around the Book of Ezekiel, the literary world portrayed within Ezekiel, the book's literary characteristics, and its meaning. The course is geared both to readers of the Bible in English and to readers of the Bible in Hebrew. Simeon Chavel
JWSC 26706 (= RLST 26706, HIJD 36706) Humor and Judaism in the Middle Ages
Winter
Yehuda Halper
We shall examine medieval Jewish humoristic writings of 12-14th Spain and Southern France against the backdrop of the curious fact that the authors of these writings were also some of the most important medieval Jewish philosophers of the period. Is it coincidence that Aristotelian philosophers also wrote lasting works of humor? Did they see their humoristic writings as diversions from their philosophical and scientific activities or part of a larger project? If the latter, what kind of philosophical content could be in these writings? Is such humor a skeptical approach to serious science? Does it reflect deeper ethical questions? Does humor provide a place to question religious tenets? To approach these questions we will read the central writings of these thinkers, beginning with Joseph Ibn Zabara’s Book of Delights, then turning to Immanuel of Rome’s Canto’s, then Qalonimos ben Qalonimos’ Eben Bohan and Purim parody, and finally turning to Gersonides’s Purim parodies. We shall take into consideration questions of genre such as the influence of the Arabic maqamat, Italian parodies, and French farces.
JWSC 27660 (= RLST 27660, RLVC 37660, HIJD 37660) Animals and Jewish Literature
Winter
Anna Elena Torres
This course explores the representation of animality in Jewish literature and visual art. We will explore questions of animal ethics and ecological entanglement across a range of secular and religious genres, from folklore and poetry to Hasidic tales and rabbinic narrative. Writers will include Kafka, Sholem Aleichem, Celan; artists will include Soutine, Chagall, Sarah Shor, and more.
JWSC 29700 Reading and Research
JWSC 29900 BA Preparation Course