Jewish Civilization 2025–2026
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 am – 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 am – 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.