2026-2027 Catalog

JWSC 12000. Jewish Civilization I: Ancient Beginnings to Medieval Period. 100 Units.

This course provides an interdisciplinary introduction to the textual, geo-political, social, economic, religious, and cultural developments, transformations, and conflicts that shaped Jewish civilization between the first millennium BCE and the end of the Middle Ages. Working both chronologically and thematically, we read a range of primary sources tracking the development of the Jewish biblical canon, Jewish writings from the Greco-Roman period, the formation of rabbinic Judaism, and the changes across the Jewish diaspora brought on by the rise and expansion of Christianity and Islam. Throughout the course, we look at how Judaism was shaped by interactions with neighboring civilizations, as well as the debates Jewish communities had among themselves about what Jewish civilization is or ought to be. Topics covered include the growing significance of textual interpretation; Jewish political and religious vulnerability under foreign rule; anti-Judaism; Jewish religious, cultural, and intellectual creativity; and the role played by class, gender, legal status, and other hierarchies in our sources. Readings may include selections from the Hebrew Bible, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Christian New Testament, Josephus, Philo, Talmud, the Qur'an, the Cairo Genizah, Maimonides, Kabbalah, Crusade Chronicles, and the edict of Jewish expulsion from Spain. All texts are read in English translation.

Instructor(s): Larisa Reznik, James Adam Redfield     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): NEHC 22010, HIST 11701, MDVL 12000, RLST 22010

JWSC 12001. Jewish Civilization II: Early Modern Period to 21st Century. 100 Units.

Introduction to Jewish thought, experience, creativity, conflict, and relations with others from the 17th century to the present in Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas. Ranging across Sephardi and Ashkenazi life, religious and secular culture, philosophy and the arts, politics and the everyday, we focus on three key questions. First, how have Jews faced the theological, intellectual, and normative challenges that modernity has posed to Judaism, and what forms of Jewishness have they created in response? Second, how have Jews confronted the challenges, opportunities, and grave dangers presented to them by the modern political ideologies of liberalism, nationalism, socialism and antisemitism, and how have Jewish political efforts changed or failed to change Jews' condition? Third, what defines the Jewish present after a century marked by extremes of assimilation and extrusion, possibility and violence? We study the unprecedented integration Jews have enjoyed in the US and the radically new forms of Jewish life taking shape in Israel, where a state devoted to cultivating Jewish nationhood and the formation of a majority-Jewish Hebrew-speaking national society have profoundly impacted the lives of both Jews and Palestinians. Our study of the Jewish present engages both conflict and creativity: the violent Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Jewish confrontations with spiraling global tensions, the divides that wrack Jewish life within, and new forms of Jewish art and thought.

Instructor(s): Kenneth Moss Larisa Reznik     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): RLST 22011, HIST 11702, NEHC 22011

JWSC 12003. Jewish Civilization III: Language, Creation, and Translation in Jewish Thought and Literature. 100 Units.

This Jewish Civilization III course will start with two stories from Genesis-the creation story and the story of the Tower of Babel in chapter 11-and consider the intertwined dynamics of language, creation, and translation in Jewish thought and literature. In addition to commentaries on both of these key texts, we will read philosophical and literary texts that illuminate the workings of language as a creative force and the dynamics of multilingualism and translation in the creation of Jewish culture. Through this lens, we will consider topics such as gender and sexuality, Jewish national identity, Zionism, the revival of the Hebrew language, Jewish responses to the Holocaust, and contemporary American Jewish culture.

Instructor(s): Na'ama Rokem     Terms Offered: TBD. Not offered in 2026–27
Equivalent Course(s): NEHC 12003, RLST 22012, CMLT 12003

JWSC 12004. Jewish Civilization III - Mothers and Motherhood in Modern Jewish Culture. 100 Units.

This Jewish Civilization III course will focus on mothers and motherhood in modern Jewish culture. From sentimentalized keepers of Jewish tradition to objects of ridicule burdened by stereotypes of overbearing, guilt-inducing behavior, Jewish mothers hold a prominent role in Jewish self-representations. Writing alongside or against these stereotypes, Jewish mothers themselves have struggled with the obligations and expectations of Jewish motherhood. Engaging with a variety of literary, theological, historical, and pop culture texts, this class explores Jewish feminisms in relation to motherhood, Jewish fictions of motherhood, and the role of motherhood in Jewish religious life and thought. This course includes material from a variety of different contexts for modern Jewish life, but places particular emphasis on American Jewish history and culture.

Instructor(s): Jessica Kirzane     Terms Offered: Spring. Not offered in 2025–26
Note(s): 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.
Equivalent Course(s): GNSE 16004, RLST 22013, YDDH 21724

JWSC 12006. Jewish Civilization III - Jewish Spaces and Places, Imagined and Real. 100 Units.

What makes a ghetto, a ghetto? What defines a Jewish neighborhood? What determined the architectural form of synagogues? Taught in Special Collections in Regenstein Library and making extensive use of the textual and visual sources there, this course will analyze how Jews (in all their diversity) and non-Jews defined Jewish spaces and places. Sources will include: Jewish law and customary practice, cookbooks, etiquette guides, prints, films, novels, maps, memoirs, architectural drawings and photographs, and tourist guides. We may also take a field trip to the Oak Woods Cemetery. The focus will be on Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries, but we will also venture back into the early modern period and across the Mediterranean to Palestine/Israel and North Africa and the Atlantic to the Caribbean and the Americas. We will study both actually existing structures and texts and visual culture in which Jewish places and spaces are imagined or vilified. Parallel to our work with primary sources we will read in the recent, very rich, scholarly literature on this topic. This is not a survey course; we will undertake a series of intensive case-studies through which we will address the larger issues. Assignments include: presentations (individual or collaborative), short papers, Canvas postings, and there will also be the option of making a digital map or an on-line exhibition. This is a limited-enrollment, discussion-based course. No previous knowledge of Jewish history is expected.

Instructor(s): Leora Auslander     Terms Offered: Spring. Not offered in 2025–26
Note(s): In order for a Jewish Civilization III course to qualify as a civilization course for the general education requirement, the student must also take Jewish Civilization I and II. A Jewish Civilization III course, however, may also be taken as an independent elective.
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 11703, RLST 22015, NEHC 12006

JWSC 12007. Jewish Civilization III: Chicago Jewish History and Culture. 100 Units.

In this course, students will explore key moments in Chicago Jewish History and culture. We will read and examine primary source documents from the founding of the city's first Jewish communities, hospitals, and philanthropic institutions to the public performance of Jewish identity at Chicago's World's Fairs to the 2020 Metropolitan Chicago Jewish Population Survey. Drawing upon literary, journalistic, and archival accounts, we will uncover the vibrancy of Chicago's historic Jewish immigrant neighborhoods, Jewish urban politics, and Jewish suburbanization, mapping out a multivocal understanding of Jewish life in the city. The course will have a research project component.

Instructor(s): Jessica Kirzane     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): CHST 21723, YDDH 21723

JWSC 12009. Jewish Civilization III - Philosophical Responses to the Holocaust. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): Larisa Reznik     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): RLST 22017

JWSC 12012. Jewish Civilization III: The Holocaust: Victim's Voices. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): Jessica Kirzane     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): YDDH 21726, RLST 22016

JWSC 12014. Jewish Civilization III: Judaism, Gender, and Sexuality. 100 Units.

This course will look at how Jewish conceptions of masculinity, femininity, and gender beyond the binary are constructed and challenged in different historical contexts, attending to both Judaism on its own terms and in the way Jewish gender and sexuality norms have been shaped by interactions with neighboring communities. We will put "traditional" Jewish sources (from biblical, rabbinic, medieval, and modern periods) in conversation with theoretical work in gender, sexuality, queer, and trans studies in order to think about both how using gender and sexuality as focusing lenses may help us learn something new about Judaism but also how analyzing Judaism, as a case study, might contribute to the wider theoretical conversations in gender and sexuality studies. Topics addressed may include gender and sexuality in the Tanakh and rabbinic culture, sex-segregated ritual and educational spaces, the politics of reproduction (including contraception, abortion, and debates about Jewish "continuity"), the gender politics of Zionism, and differences across different denominations and styles of religious observance (Orthodox, Reform, etc.). We will also look at how Jewish texts, liturgy, rituals, culture, and community are reimagined in light of insights from queer and trans scholarship and activism.

Instructor(s): Larisa Reznik     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): RLST 26904, GNSE 23192

JWSC 20120. Introduction to the Hebrew Bible. 100 Units.

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 meanings 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. To these ends, 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.

Instructor(s): Marshall Cunningham     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): This course counts as a Gateway course for RLST majors/minors.
Equivalent Course(s): NEHC 20504, BIBL 31000, RLST 11004, JTAC 31000, FNDL 11004, NEHC 30504

JWSC 20026. Sounding Israel/Palestine. 100 Units.

In "Sounding Israel/Palestine" we shall look at specific moments when the musics and sound worlds of Israel/Palestine converged, responding to and shaping historical change and conflict. Bi-weekly sessions will take specific historical moments as ways of exploring how music was critical to the processes of change, identity, and accommodation. We begin with moments in Antiquity, among them the moments in which the temples in Jerusalem were destroyed (e.g., 70 CE). and the Miʿrāj, when the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven (ca. 621 CE). Moments marking the patterns of settlement (Yishuv) and political transformation and unrest will mark the chronology of modernity and modernism (e.g., 1917, 1933, 1938). The moments of Israeli statehood and Palestinian Nakba will be of growing significance as the course moves toward the twenty-first century (e.g., 1948, 1967, and 1987). The sounds of the present moment (2023 and beyond)-of the war in Gaza, of the struggle for survival in Palestine, of the mass mediation of dissonant political voices, of breakthrough genres of popular music-will become the texts and contexts for the closing weeks of the course.

Instructor(s): Phil Bohlman
Equivalent Course(s): SIGN 20026, NEHC 20028, RLST 27726, MUSI 20026

JWSC 20114. Sickness, Death, and Dying in the Ancient World. 100 Units.

As Ben Franklin once famously said, "in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes." This was no more true in early America than it was in the ancient world, in which humans invested significant amounts of time and energy responding to the seeming inevitability of death. In this course we will investigate how ancient peoples understood, mediated, mitigated, observed, mourned, sought to escape, accepted, and continued on after death. To do this, we will examine literary, inscriptional, and material evidence from the eastern Mediterranean (Greece, Egypt, the Levant) and Mesopotamia (Assyria, Babylonia, Persia) that reflects how the ancients thought about death and the processes that ultimately led to it. No prior knowledge of religion, the ancient world, or death is required for this course.

Instructor(s): Marshall Cunningham     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): HLTH 20114, NEHC 20115, RLST 20114, CLCV 20114

JWSC 20122. Introduction to the New Testament: Texts and Contexts of Interpretation. 100 Units.

This class introduces students to the texts that make up the New Testament through close readings of representative examples. Through course lectures and readings, students will gain familiarity with the historical, geographical, social, religious, cultural, and political contexts of New Testament literature and the events they narrate. We will also learn about the central literary genres found within the collection of texts that came to form the canonical New Testament, including "gospels," "acts," "letters," and "apocalypses", and we will examine how awareness of genre conventions enhances our reading of these works. Students will also learn about the distinctive theological and cultural viewpoints contained within various New Testament texts. As we learn about the history of biblical scholarship, especially the goals and methods of biblical interpretation, we will practice refining our questions. Assignments and discussion will allow students to develop their skills as attuned readers of both ancient texts as well as modern biblical scholarship.

Instructor(s): Erin Walsh     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): No prior knowledge of biblical literature, the ancient world, or Christianity is expected. The only expectation is commitment to engaged discussion about the challenges of interpretation with classmates holding various viewpoints.
Equivalent Course(s): MDVL 12500, CLAS 32524, RLST 12000, FNDL 28202, CLCV 22524, BIBL 32500

JWSC 20201. Ancient Mediterranean Religions I: Israel, Judah, and Judaism. 100 Units.

This course surveys the history of religion in ancient Israel and Judah in the first millennium BCE. The main topics considered include the major religious ideas and practices attested, their representation in literary sources (especially the Hebrew Bible) and material culture, the role of social, political, and economic conditions in the development of Israelite religion, and the emergence of monotheistic ideas from within a polytheistic culture. A consistent aspect of the course will be comparison between Israel and Judah and other ancient Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cultures.

Instructor(s): Jeffrey Stackert     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Students are encouraged to take all three quarters of this sequence (fall-winter-spring) but it is not required. This class is a Gateway course for the Religious Studies (RLST) program.
Equivalent Course(s): RLST 20101, JTAC 30101, HREL 30101, BIBL 30101

JWSC 20203. Ancient Mediterranean Religions III: Christianity and the Roman Empire. 100 Units.

This course surveys the religious developments around the Mediterranean during the period of Late Antiquity. We will begin with the emergence of the early Christian movement within its first-century Jewish and Roman contexts. In addition to the different ways of being Christian in Late Antiquity, students will learn about other contemporary religious movements, such as early rabbinic Judaism, Manichaeanism, and paganism which continued alongside Christianity. We will then review political, social, and economic trends in the Roman Empire on which Christianity had transformative effects, such gender, care for the poor, and relations between religion and state. In the final weeks, we will delve into foundational theological debates of late antique Christianity and explore their legacies in the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern worlds following the decline of Roman hegemony.

Instructor(s): Omri Matarasso     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): Students are encouraged to take all three quarters of this sequence (fall-winter-spring) but it is not required. This class is a Gateway course for the Religious Studies (RLST) program.
Equivalent Course(s): RLST 20103, JTAC 30103, HREL 30103, CLAS 30103, CLCV 20103, HCHR 30103

JWSC 20237. Hebrew: Modernity and Nationalism. 100 Units.

Modernization and Nationalism are ideas that are closely intertwined with each other and with questions of language: the emergence of nationalism is a modern phenomenon to which ideas about language were central and which, in turn, had a profound effect on the languages of the world and on the study of language. How did the relation between language, nation and state emerge in a historical reality structured by enlightenment, empire, colonialism, industrialization, and globalization? How do discoveries about language influence ideas of nation, and how do ideas of collectivity such as nationhood, ethnicity, and race influence the study of language, indeed the very concept of "a language" and of "different languages"? What does it mean for a language to be modernized? Nationalized? "Revived"? This interdisciplinary class takes the revitalization and vernacularization of Hebrew as a case-study through which to explore some of these questions. Combining perspectives on language from Linguistics, History, Literary Studies, Cultural Studies, Religious Studies and Anthropology, the class looks at discourses, practices and institutional efforts through which Hebrew was modernized, nationalized and romanticized in the 19th and 20th centuries, to examine the complicated relationships between language, nationalism, and colonialism in this period.

Instructor(s): Orit Bashkin, Itamar Francez     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): NEHC 20231, CDIN 20231, LING 20231

JWSC 20300-20400-20500. Elementary Yiddish I-II-III.

The goal of this sequence is to develop proficiency in Yiddish reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills. Touchstones of global Yiddish culture are also introduced through song, film, and contemporary Yiddish websites.

JWSC 20350. Elementary Yiddish in Vienna. 100 Units.

This course introduces students to the fundamentals of the Yiddish language, with an emphasis on developing basic skills in reading, writing, speaking, and listening comprehension. Students will learn the Hebrew alphabet as used in Yiddish and acquire core vocabulary and grammatical structures through communicative practice. The course also incorporates exploration of Yiddish culture from Central and Eastern Europe, including music, literature, visual art, and everyday cultural life, situating the language within its historical and cultural contexts.

Instructor(s): Eidel Malowicki     Terms Offered: Spring. Study Abroad course in Vienna
Equivalent Course(s): YDDH 11500

JWSC 20490. The Plagues in Egypt: Tradition and Composition. 100 Units.

This course will pursue an in-depth investigation of the plagues in Egypt as presented at length in Exodus 7-12 and Psalms 78 and 105 and in brief in several other biblical texts. It will focus especially on source-critical and tradition-historical issues in these texts. All texts will be read in their original languages.

Instructor(s): Jeffrey Stackert     Terms Offered: Spring. Not offered in 2025–26
Prerequisite(s): Strong biblical Hebrew; those with questions about their Hebrew proficiency should consult with the instructor.
Note(s): This course meets the HS or LMCS Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): BIBL 40490, RLST 20490

JWSC 20600. Deuteronomy. 100 Units.

This course is an exegetical study of selected texts from the Deuteronomic source of the Torah (Deut 1:1-32:47). We will focus on the setting of this text within the larger pentateuchal plot, its legal revision, its historical context, and the purpose of its authors in relation to their source texts. This course will serve as the reading course for students coming out of the first year Hebrew sequence, but all students with facility in biblical Hebrew are welcome. All biblical texts will be read in Hebrew.

Instructor(s): Jeffrey Stackert     Terms Offered: Spring. Not offered in 2025–26
Prerequisite(s): At least one year of biblical Hebrew.
Note(s): This course meets the HS or LMCS Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): BIBL 40600, RLST 20600

JWSC 20606. Spinoza and German Thought. 100 Units.

This course provides an introduction to Spinoza's philosophy and his relation to German thought, both prior to and within German idealism. In addition to carefully reading Spinoza's own writings, we will consider rationalist alternatives to Spinoza's metaphysics, the Pantheism controversy, and the acosmism charge. Beyond Spinoza, authors to be read include Leibniz, Moses Mendelssohn, and Hegel.

Instructor(s): Andrea Ray     Terms Offered: Winter. Winter 2025. Not offered in AY 2025–26
Prerequisite(s): Undergrads Only
Equivalent Course(s): PHIL 20606, SCTH 20606, GRMN 24606, SCTH 30606, FNDL 20606

JWSC 20923. Magic, Miracles, and Medicine: Healthcare in the Bible and the Ancient World. 100 Units.

This course examines the complex issues surrounding the body, disability, and medical care in antiquity. It will be guided by a variety of questions, such as what was the root cause of bodily infirmity and disease in antiquity? How did cultural views of sex, gender, and race influence perceptions of the body and what it meant to be able bodied? Such questions are significant when considering what kind of access to healthcare marginalized groups had. In order to explore these questions, we will examine ancient Mediterranean views of medical care through material remains (e.g., magical amulets and healing shrines) and textual evidence (e.g., Galen and Hippocrates). After considering this wider cultural context, we will examine treatments in the Hebrew Bible, New Testament, and early Christianity. We will also explore how Christian concepts of medical care evolved in light of accounts of Jesus as a divine healer. In addition to this ancient evidence, we will engage with modern disability studies and sociological analyses to better orient our readings. At the end of the course, students will be better acquainted with the complex relationship between religion and medicine and how that affects modern healthcare decisions.

Instructor(s): Richard Zaleski     Terms Offered: Spring. Not offered 2025–26
Equivalent Course(s): RLST 20223, KNOW 20223, HLTH 20223, HIST 25305, CCTS 21021, HIPS 20223

JWSC 20924. The Bible Throughout History: From the Dead Sea Scrolls to King James. 100 Units.

While the collection of ancient texts found in modern Bibles appears fixed and is read by many people as a source of edification or theological insight, it has not always been this way. Though absent from most Bibles, there is an entire body of literature commonly known as "rewritten bible": early translations, retellings, or entirely new stories with familiar names and faces that update, retcon, or subvert their "biblical" sources. How might we understand these ancient forms of fan fiction? The class will introduce this corpus (including some of the Dead Sea Scrolls) and its sources, production, and historical contexts. We will confront significant problems in understanding religious texts: how is it that some texts become authoritative while other very similar texts do not? Who gets to retell foundational religious narratives, and within what social or political constraints? What does it mean to relate to sacred texts as artistic prompts or imperfect points of departure? Can a biblical text be rewritten for an entirely different religious tradition? We will consider similar questions for contemporary religious practice, asking: how did rewriting the Bible get started, and has it stopped?

Instructor(s): Doren Snoek     Terms Offered: Winter. Not offered 2025–26
Equivalent Course(s): RLST 20124, FNDL 20124, HIST 29908, MDVL 20124

JWSC 21025. Advanced Yiddish: Reading Academic Yiddish Texts. 100 Units.

What is the language of Yiddish Scholarship? Today, we find Yiddish studies largely in English, Polish, German, and Hebrew - and only rarely in Yiddish itself. But it was only a few short decades ago that Yiddish Studies scholarship was regularly produced in Yiddish, both simply because it was the shared language of its scholarly community and as a defiant activist sensibility that Yiddish could and should remain a language of scholarly inquiry. Through this course, students will read articles from late 20th century Yiddish academic journals such as YIVO Bleter, Yidishe Shprakh, Kheshbn, Leket, and Oksforder Yidish, exploring how academic language activists used Yiddish to express and circulate their research in addition to using it as a language for reading and research. Students will write short response essays and will try their hand at writing their own academically-oriented scholarship in Yiddish. Ultimately, students will be encouraged to produce proposals to give talks in Yiddish about their own scholarship, either for the Farbindungen conference or the Symposium for Yiddish Studies in Germany (Dusseldorf), two contemporary conferences in which presentations in Yiddish are encouraged. Students must have completed intermediate Yiddish or its equivalent to take this course and are encouraged to speak with the instructor if they are unsure about placement.

Instructor(s): Jessica Kirzane     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): YDDH 31004, YDDH 21004

JWSC 22000-22100-22200. Elementary Classical Hebrew I-II-III.

The purpose of this three-quarter sequence is to enable the student to read biblical Hebrew prose with a high degree of comprehension. The sequence is divided into two segments: (1) the first two quarters are devoted to acquiring the essentials of descriptive and historical grammar (including translation to and from Hebrew, oral exercises, and grammatical analysis); and (2) the third quarter is spent examining prose passages from the Hebrew Bible and includes a review of grammar.

JWSC 22203. Kafkas Erzählungen. 100 Units.

Franz Kafka's short stories are read and interpreted in a dizzying array of contexts. For some readers, universal questions of justice, fear, and other aspects of the human condition can be accessed in Kafka's abstractions and applied to their diverse communities. For others, the sheer creative genius of Kafka's prose makes it timeless and universally appealing. Scholarship on Kafka has approached his work using the author's individual and intersectional identities as a failed artist and lover, a multilingual speaker of German and Czech, and a Jewish person in a predominantly Christian multi-ethnic empire to offer allegorical reading of his work. Most recently, Kafka's doodles have been used to suggest additional layers of meaning for his written oeuvre. In this course, we will closely read nine short stories by Kafka. In-class activities will include additional reading and videos that supply context for the approaches to interpreting these short stories mentioned above. Assignments will include analyzing the original German language of the assigned reading based on guided reading questions and social annotation activities. In addition to the reading, all assignments and class discussion will be in German. By the end of the course, students will be able to assert their opinions in German and English on whether additional information on Kafka's biography and historical context of the Austro-Hungarian Empire are important to interpreting his short stories.

Instructor(s): Nicole Burgoyne     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): PQ: GRMN 203 or placement using the German Dept. online exam.
Equivalent Course(s): FNDL 22223, GRMN 22203

JWSC 22300-22400-22500. Intermediate Classical Hebrew I-II-III.

A continuation of Elementary Classical Hebrew. The first quarter consists of reviewing grammar, and of reading and analyzing further prose texts. The last two quarters are devoted to an introduction to Hebrew poetry with readings from Psalms, Proverbs, and the prophets.

JWSC 22906. Book of Ezekiel. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): Simeon Chavel     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): This course meets the HS or LMCS Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): HIJD 32906, FNDL 22906, NEHC 32906, NEHC 22906, BIBL 32906, RLST 22906

JWSC 23405. History of Jews in the Middle East. 100 Units.

This class examines the history of Jews in the Middle East from the early modern period, when many Jewish refugees fleeing Spain and Portugal settled in the Ottoman Empire, to the modern Period, when Jews debated and challenged colonialist, reformist, nationalist, leftist, and secular ideologies. Reading novels, memoirs, and new works in the fields of Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies, we will examine how early modernity and modernity gave birth to new identity formations and new frames of belonging. We will visit the unknown histories of early modern Jews who produced translations and explications of the Hebrew Bible in Arabic, of Jews and Muslims who fought together Christian missionary activities, of Arab Jewish feminists, and of Jewish communists who established anti-Zionist societies in the Middle East.

Instructor(s): Orit Bashkin     Terms Offered: Autumn. Not offered in AY 2025–2026
Equivalent Course(s): NEHC 20228, HIST 25810, RLST 20228

JWSC 23413. Seminar: Without a Label: The emergence of modern Jewish self in the 19th century. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): S. Natkovich     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 22213, HIST 32213

JWSC 23480. Law, Rights, and Democracy in Crisis: Israel and Palestine in Comparative Perspective. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): Limor Yehuda     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): HMRT 23480, DEMS 23480, PLSC 23480, PLSC 33480

JWSC 23526. Diaspora, State, and Nation in Jewish History. 100 Units.

Diaspora, nationhood, statehood - the dangers, possibilities, and ethical problems within each of these seemingly bloodless terms have sometimes generated intense debate and inquiry within Jewish life. This class investigates the intellectual and political history of three such moments. We ask how traditional Judaism negotiated the relationship between cultivating a fulfilling religious existence in dispersion and potent theological traditions of seeing diaspora as Exile from the Holy Land. We investigate new forms of Jewish thought and politics of the late 19th century, when - against the backdrop of wider currents of secularization, nationalism, colonialism, and antisemitism - growing numbers of Jews looked to overcome diaspora through Zionism and other territorial and statist visions while others sought to remake diaspora itself through liberal integrationism, revolutionary socialism, or federalist autonomism. We will examine Jewish political thinking in our own fraught moment, as the ethnonationalist trajectories in Israeli Jewish political culture and society, the renewed enormities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, rising tensions between liberal and Orthodox forms of Judaism in both Israel and the US, and the crisis of the liberal order around the globe provoke debate about the value, morality, potentials, and dangers of Jewish sovereignty and diaspora alike while inciting urgent thinking about the unfolding situation in Israel and Palestine.

Instructor(s): K. Moss     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): NEHC 23526, RLST 27526, HIST 23526

JWSC 23600. Evil: Myth, Symbol and Reality. 100 Units.

From the horrors of the Shoah to violence suffered by individuals, the question of the origin, meaning, and reality of evil done by humans has vexed thinkers throughout the ages. This seminar is an inquiry into the problem of evil on three registers of reflection: myth, symbol, and reality. We will be exploring important philosophical, Jewish, and Christian texts. These include Martin Buber, Good and Evil, Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, Immanuel Kant, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil, Edward Farley, Good and Evil, Hans Jonas, Mortality and Morality and Claudia Card, The Atrocity Paradigm. There will also be a viewing of the movie Seven (1995) directed by David Fincher and written by Andrew Kevin Walker. Accordingly, the seminar probes the reality of evil and the symbolic and mythic resources of religious traditions to articulate the meaning and origin of human evil. The question of "theodicy" is then not the primary focus given the seminar's inquiry into the fact and reality of human evil. Each student will submit a 5-7 page critical review of either Jonathan Glover's Humanity: A Moral History of the 20th Century or Susan Neiman's, Evil in Modern Thought. Each Student also will write a 15 page (double spaced;12pt font) paper on one or more of the texts read in the course with respect to her or his own research interests.

Instructor(s): William Schweiker     Terms Offered: Autumn. Not offered 2025–26
Note(s): This course meets the HS or CS Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): RLST 23600, THEO 33600, FNDL 23600, GRMN 23623, RETH 33600, GRMN 33623

JWSC 23660. The Nature of the Good: The Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. 100 Units.

What is the good act and what makes it so? What do with owe the Other? How does one construct a moral life? Emmanuel Levinas is one of the most important Jewish philosophers of the late 20th century. He produced a large body of dense, intricate moral theory that has come to define post-modern Jewish thought. In this course, we will read two of his most important works closely. In this way, we will consider the development of his thought on such key concepts as "the Other," "substitution," and "Infinity." This course will reflect on a moral puzzle: why do humans chose to be good or evil? This seminar considers his arguments about human relationality, duty, judgment and moral action-the phenomenology of the encounter with the Other, for which he is best known.

Instructor(s): Laurie Zoloth     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): RLST 23760, FNDL 23760, RETH 41600, JTAC 41600

JWSC 23807. History of the Jews in the Russian Empire (1772-1918) 100 Units.

Following the partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1772, 1793, 1795), the Russian Empire transformed from a country with almost no Jewish population to the home of the largest Jewish community in the world. This transformation, as well as additional territorial expansions of the Empire, left its imprint on modern Jewish culture globally and participated in the shaping of multiple modernities in areas that today belong to Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, the Republic of Belarus, and the Russian Federation (all of which possess territories formerly belonging to the Commonwealth), but also in the Republic of Moldova (annexed from the Ottoman Empire), Caucasus areas annexed from Persia, and the Republic of Georgia. During the course, we will review major landmarks in the tempestuous history of the Jewish community in the Russian Empire. The discussions will unfold along two interconnected trajectories: the relationships between Jewish traditional patterns of organization and the innovations induced by Russian conditions, as well as the influence of various aspects of those conditions (legal, social, political, cultural) on Jewish life. In addition to historical and theoretical literature, we will read multiple primary sources, including belle-lettres, autobiographies, archival documents, and more.

Instructor(s): S. Natkovich     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): REES 33807, HIST 23807, HIST 33807, REES 23807

JWSC 24920. Primo Levi. 100 Units.

Witness, novelist, essayist, translator, linguist, chemist, and even entomologist. Primo Levi is a polyhedral author, and this course revisits his work in all its facets. We will privilege the most hybrid of his texts: The Search for Roots, an anthology that collects the author's favorite readings--a book assembled through the books of the others, but which represents Levi's most authentic portrait. By using this work as an entry point into Levi's universe, we will later explore his other texts, addressing issues such as the unsettling relationship between survival and testimony, the "sinful" choice of fiction, the oblique path towards autobiography, and the paradoxes of witnessing by proxy.

Instructor(s): Maria Anna Mariani     Terms Offered: Not offered this academic year
Prerequisite(s): Open to advanced undergrads with consent of instructor.
Equivalent Course(s): ITAL 34920, ITAL 24920, FNDL 24920

JWSC 25000-25100-25200. Introductory Modern Hebrew I-II-III.

This three-quarter sequence introduces students to reading, writing, and speaking modern Hebrew. All four language skills are emphasized: comprehension of written and oral materials; reading of nondiacritical text; writing of directed sentences, paragraphs, and compositions; and speaking. Students learn the Hebrew root pattern system and the seven basic verb conjugations in both the past and present tenses, as well as simple future. At the end of the year, students can conduct short conversations in Hebrew, read materials designed to their level, and write a short essay.

JWSC 25127. Yiddish on One Foot!: Introduction to Yiddish Literature and Culture. 100 Units.

This course will explore the 1,000-year history of Yiddish language, literature, music, and artistic expression, covering key tests in Old Yiddish; the rise of secular literature; modern experiences of urbanization, immigration, and political change; the impact of the Holocaust and contemporary Yiddish life. Knowledge of Yiddish is not required; Yiddish texts will be provided by request and students can arrange to meet with me in office hours to discuss the originals.

Instructor(s): Jessica Kirzane     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): YDDH 25127

JWSC 25300-25400-25500. Intermediate Modern Hebrew I-II-III.

The main objective of this sequence is to provide students with the skills necessary to approach modern Hebrew prose, both fiction and nonfiction. In order to achieve this task, students are provided with a systematic examination of the complete verb structure. Many syntactic structures are introduced (e.g., simple clauses, coordinate and compound sentences). At this level, students not only write and speak extensively but are also required to analyze grammatically and contextually all of material assigned.

JWSC 25600-25700-25800. Advanced Modern Hebrew I-II-III.

This sequence assumes that students have full mastery of the grammatical and lexical content of the intermediate level. The main objective is literary fluency. The texts used in this sequence include both academic prose and literature. Students are exposed to semantics and morphology in addition to advanced grammar.

JWSC 25627. The Self as Other: Introduction to Freud. 100 Units.

This course is an introduction to one of the most influential and controversial thinkers of the twentieth century: Sigmund Freud. With his theory of the unconscious, Freud revolutionized how we understand what it means to be human. We do not act as rational, willful agents, he suggested, but are compelled through life by complexly organized desires and drives, much of which we are not aware of. Many of Freud's terms-such as "Oedipus complex" or "superego"-have become so popularized that they are now part of common parlance, yet they are rarely understood as Freud meant. This course will take seriously the therapeutic imperative of Freud's work and cover his major texts, including his early case studies on hysteria, his theories of psychosexual development and pathology, and his master narratives about the rise of civilization. We will read Freud in his context, learning about the history of psychoanalysis and life in early twentieth-century Vienna. No prerequisites required; this course is open to all students. Readings and discussions in English.

Instructor(s): Sophie Salvo     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): GNSE 25627, GRMN 25627

JWSC 26020. Religion and Visual Culture in the Late Antique Mediterranean. 100 Units.

In this seminar, we examine sacred sites and artifacts of early Christians and their neighbors in the regions around the Mediterranean from the third century to about 750 CE. Case studies will illustrate the wealth of religious art and architecture associated with different religions that existed side by side-Christianity, Judaism, polytheism, and emerging Islam. This course has five main objectives: (1) to examine how the designs of religious spaces, buildings, and objects respond to specific spiritual or ritualistic needs; (2) to gain familiarity with typical features characterizing the arts of each religion or sect; (3) to identify elements of a common visual language that result from shared traditions or artistic cross-pollination; (4) to examine different ways in which material artifacts were employed as means of ideological propaganda; and (5) to study art and architecture as evidence of doctrinal competition and conflict. While this course foregrounds the study of material culture, written sources (in translation) complement the analysis of the visual evidence.

Instructor(s): Karin Krause     Terms Offered: Spring. Not offered 2025–26
Note(s): This course meets the HS or LMCS Committee distribution for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): CLCV 26024, NEHC 26001, ARTH 26001, RLVC 36001, CLAS 36024, ARTH 36001, MDVL 26001, HCHR 36001, RLST 26001

JWSC 26313. Judaism, Medicine, and the Body. 100 Units.

For centuries the "Jewish doctor" has existed as an archetype, but is there such a thing as Jewish medicine? Does Judaism teach a distinct approach to the body, illness, and healing? And more significantly, why should religion have anything to do with one's health today? In this course we will grapple with our assumptions regarding modern Western medicine by discussing topics in Jewish medical thought and ethics. We will study how Judaism - its texts, history, laws, and traditions - intersect with issues of science, medicine, and the body. In particular we will think about how a Jewish approach to medicine, and more broadly a religious approach, might complicate contemporary assumptions about the body and healing. We will also consider how Jewish bodies have been imagined and stereotyped, and think about how that might affect Jewish approaches to disease and medical ethics. This course will thus offer students a way to think about alternatives to assumptions about medicine, the body, and ethics in the secular West, which will be explored both in class materials and in personal projects. No prior work in Jewish studies, medical ethics, or religious studies necessary.

Instructor(s): Ranana Dine     Terms Offered: Autumn. Not offered 2025–26
Equivalent Course(s): KNOW 26313, HIPS 26313, RLST 26313, GNSE 26313, CCTS 21022, HLTH 26313

JWSC 26314. Judaism and Science. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): Yehuda Halper     Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): This course meets the HS or SCSR Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): HIJD 36314, MDVL 26314, RLST 26314, HIPS 23614

JWSC 26527. Walter Benjamin and the Critique of Culture. 100 Units.

This seminar aims to introduce students to the work of Walter Benjamin, one of the most important literary theorists and cultural critics of the twentieth century. More than any other member of the so-called Frankfurt School, Benjamin was committed to bringing German letters into dialogue with other national literary traditions and literature itself into contact with the newly emergent media of his time. He fundamentally changed the way we study both literature and culture to this day. While we will be reading most of his best known works, we will be organizing our syllabus around four major topics: 1) Benjamin's studies of media and technology, especially photography and film, and their impact on literature and culture; 2) his writings on allegory in early modern drama; 3) his essays on modern literature and culture and, more generally, his theorization of modernity; and 4) his theoretical essays on language and history. Reading and discussions in English. A reading knowledge of German is helpful.

Instructor(s): Christopher Wild     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): GRMN 36527, GRMN 26527

JWSC 26606. Reading Your Neighbor's Scripture: Scriptural Reasoning. 100 Units.

Scriptural Reasoning is a method of approaching the scholarly study of texts of the Hebrew Bible, New Testament, and the Qur'an, by reading them as if they are to be understood as in conversation with one another, and as in reception communities that have historically understood them as such. This seminar will explore the practices and methods of a distinctive academic methodology of study, as well as the theoretical and philosophical scaffolding that has emerged from these practices. We will consider both the scholarly work that extends and recommends the practice, and the critiques of the practice. Reading from the perspectives of theology and philosophy, we will consider how the academic reading of Scriptures frames the narrative and the ethical perspectives within the text and how that framing might be disrupted/repaired/interrogated by new exegetical interpretations. Scriptural Reasoning is both a method and a feature of the academy (in journals, in a section at the AAR, and in scholarly books and articles); and it is also a way of making Scriptural reception and interpretation publicly legible. The seminar will allow graduate students an entrance into understanding the Scriptures of their own tradition or research interest, and those of others, with which they may not be conversant, and thus create the possibility for new avenues of comparative scholarship.

Instructor(s): Laurie Zoloth     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): THEO 33300, ISLM 33300, RETH 33300, RLST 26606

JWSC 26612. Early Christian and Late Ancient Jewish Art. 100 Units.

This course will examine the origins, development and historiography of Christian art in the Roman world and into the first centuries of Christian Europe. It will explore this in parallel with the development and historiography of Jewish art in the same period, also known as 'late antiquity', examining issues of the construction of religious identity through images in hegemonic and non-hegemonic contexts, whether as markers of triumphalism or resistance, and investigating also question of the penetration of these religions and their iconographies into the larger Afro-Eurasian context. Course Note: This course will be taught virtually during the last two weeks of the quarter.

Instructor(s): Jaś Elsner     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): BIBL 30612, RLVC 30612, RLST 26612, CLCV 26612, CLAS 30612, ARTH 30612, MDVL 20612, ARTH 20612, JTAC 30612

JWSC 26620. Tradition and Modernity in Jewish Thought and Literature. 100 Units.

The concept of tradition often takes a back seat to modernity but what does it mean to be part of a tradition in the modern world? How does tradition challenge received views and stimulate creativity, against the modern view of tradition as the "dead hand of the past"? How have the concept; ideology; and cultural role of tradition changed in Jewish culture since the Enlightenment? This course explores those questions in three bodies of work: (1) late 18th- to mid-20th-century German-Jewish historians, critics, & theologians; (2) modern Hebrew & Yiddish writers; and (3) their shared biblical, rabbinic, and mystical inspirations. Through close readings of these writers' reflections on their own literary traditions, tradition emerges as both a resource and a problem for Jewish cultural creativity; one that calls for its own theoretical vocabulary and can be set in dialogue with the modern evolution of other traditional cultures.

Instructor(s): James A. Redfield
Equivalent Course(s): RLST 26620

JWSC 26677. American Jewish Experience: Texts and Contexts. 100 Units.

What texts and contexts constitute American Jewish experience? In this class, we will consider the birth of a unique Jewish ethnicity in America, with a deep dive into the literature, the theology, and the politics of American Judaism from the turn of the 20th century to the post-October 7th moment we now inhabit. Beginning with reflections on the protestantization of American Judaism, special attention will be paid to the intersection of ethnic and religious experience in contemporary American Jewish life. With a foray into the boom in American Jewish Passover Haggadahs, we will explore the unique shape of the seemingly oxymoronic American Jewish religious secularism. We will consider Jews, Civil Rights, neo-Hassidism, and the counterculture and read ethnographies of American Jewish immigrant communities and aging urban synagogues. Debates on the silence of the American Jewish community after the Holocaust will be set against the backdrop of the quest to reconstruct East European Jewish life during that same period. Finally, we will explore the powerful growth of Diasporism in American Jewish culture today.

Instructor(s): Sheila Jelen     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): CMLT 46677, CMLT 26677, JTAC 46677, AMER 46677, RLST 26677, AMER 26677, RLVC 46677

JWSC 26702. Arabic into Hebrew: Translation and Cultural Change during the Middle Ages. 100 Units.

Religions, like all cultural phenomena, are akin to organic beings: they change, grow and adapt, absorb and assimilate what they encounter, become transformed constantly in relation to challenges and opportunities - and sometimes react against them. This course will focus on one example of religious-cultural-philosophical adaptation and change through a study of the medieval translation of Arabic and Judeo-Arabic works into Hebrew during the 12th-15th centuries. We will focus on the translations themselves and translation technique, but principally on what was translated and why, when and where, by whom and for whom. All this with an added emphasis on the result: how did Judaism and Jewish culture change through translation - in all its forms - during the high middle ages.

Instructor(s): James T. Robinson     Terms Offered: Autumn. Not offered 2025–26
Note(s): This course meets the HS or CS Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): RLVC 36702, CMLT 36702, CMLT 26702, ISLM 36702, NEHC 26702, NEHC 36702, MDVL 26702, HREL 36702, RLST 26702, HIJD 36702

JWSC 26706. Humor and Judaism in the Middle Ages. 100 Units.

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.

Instructor(s): Yehuda Halper     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): This course meets the HS or LMCS Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): HIJD 36706, RLST 26706, MDVL 26706

JWSC 27651. Women Who Wrote In Yiddish. 100 Units.

This course explores memoirs, plays, essays, poetry, novels, and journalistic writing of women who wrote in Yiddish, as well as a discussion of the context in which they wrote and their reception and self-perception as "women writers." This course will be taught in English with readings translated from Yiddish.

Instructor(s): Jessica Kirzane     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): GNSE 31721, YDDH 31721, GNSE 21721, YDDH 21721

JWSC 27660. Animality and Jewish Literature. 100 Units.

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. No prerequisites. Open to undergrad and grad students.

Instructor(s): Anna Elena Torres     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): ENGL 27660, ENGL 37660, RLST 27660, CMLT 37660, HIJD 37660, CMLT 27660, RLVC 37660

JWSC 27723. Judaism and Ethnography. 100 Units.

Defining ethnography broadly as curiosity about human difference, this course engages close readings in a vast gallery of ethnographic portraits both of and by Jews, from the Bible to the early modern period. Together, we will construct a history of this tradition by tracing patterns in how Jews are represented and how they represent themselves, as well as their own Others, in dialogue with those cultures. While anthropologists and literary theorists will help us to appreciate the diversity and fluidity of Jewish (auto-)ethnography, these thinkers will also turn our critical gaze on Greek, Roman, and European Christian images of Jews and Judaism. This history is not simply a case-study in an overlooked ethnographic tradition but an archive where influential and often oppressive "Western" ways of thinking about human difference have been spawned, cross-fertilized, resisted, and transformed.

Instructor(s): James A. Redfield     Terms Offered: Spring. Not offered 2025–26
Note(s): This course meets the LMCS or SCSR Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): RLST 27653, ANTH 37653, HIJD 37653, ANTH 27653

JWSC 27724. Diasporism in Modern Judaism. 100 Units.

This course will consider the fate of arguments for Diasporic Jewish Identity and thought in the 20th and 21st centuries in philosophical and literary sources and will consider the relationship between debates within Jewish thought and correlates in Black Studies and Post-colonial Studies. Thinkers to be read include Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, Emmanuel Levinas, Jacob Gordon, Jacques Derrida, Sarah Kofman, Susan Taubes, Philip Roth, Fred Moten, Christina Sharpe and others.

Instructor(s): Sarah Hammerschlag     Terms Offered: Spring. Not offered 2025–26
Note(s): This course meets the CS or LMCS Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 27724, ANTH 37724, HIJD 47724, RLVC 47724, RLST 27724, DVPR 47724

JWSC 28319. Iconophobia: The Prohibition and Destruction of Religious Images. 100 Units.

This course examines concepts of art that reflect iconophobia, "fear of images," in the Abrahamic religions-Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Since antiquity, iconophobia has led to theological debates that resulted in the prohibition of images in sacred spaces, rituals, and other forms of religious practice. In extreme cases, iconophobia has caused acts of iconoclasm, the violent destruction of art. In all three religions, fear of idolatry ("idol worship") has been the main cause of iconophobia. We will examine what exactly constitutes an idol and how the definitions of idols differ from iconophile ("image-loving") assessments of religious art. Both iconophobic and iconophile arguments shed light on the various functions and effects of religious images and illustrate their power. Furthermore, they reveal attitudes towards artistic creation, materiality, aesthetics, sensory perception, and truth in art. Most of the topics and readings will focus on the premodern period from antiquity to the 16th century. However, we will also look at some of the effects of iconophobia in modernity. Readings will include, but are not limited to, texts from the Hebrew Bible, Christian exegesis, the Qur'an, Byzantine Iconoclasm, and the Protestant Reformation. Material evidence of iconophobia and iconoclasm from different religious contexts will also be discussed.

Instructor(s): Karin Krause     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 38319, CLCV 28325, RLVC 38319, CLAS 38325, MDVL 28319, ARTH 28319, HCHR 38319, GLST 28319, RLST 28319

JWSC 28449. The End is Near: The Bible and Apocalypse. 100 Units.

The rise of nuclear weapons, the global warming crisis, and the Covid-19 pandemic have reignited debates about the fate and meaning of human history. If it is the end of the world as we know it, how should we act, and what-if anything-comes next? For centuries, the Bible has been a source for people thinking about end of time. In this course, we examine how the Bible and other ancient texts portray human catastrophe and the possibility of new beginnings. From national upheavals and the dawn of a final political order, down to the fate of the individual and the destiny of the cosmos at large, this course exposes students to the multiplicity of ways that the End is envisioned throughout the Bible and later interpretation. How do biblical authors interpret the meaning of existence in light of the End? What stands out about ancient literature when we understand it as anticipating the End, and how can these texts help us understand contemporary fears about the End? No background knowledge about the Bible or the ancient world is required for the course.

Instructor(s): Jonathan Wegner     Terms Offered: Autumn. Not offered 2025–26
Equivalent Course(s): RLST 28449

JWSC 29700. Reading and Research Course. 100 Units.

TBD

Terms Offered: Autumn Spring Winter
Prerequisite(s): Consent of instructor and Undergraduate Program Adviser
Note(s): Students are required to submit the College Reading and Research Course Form.

JWSC 29900. BA Preparation Course. 100 Units.

Preparation of BA thesis under direction of advisor.

Terms Offered: Autumn Spring Winter
Prerequisite(s): Consent of instructor and Undergraduate Program Adviser
Note(s): Students are required to submit the College Reading and Research Course Form. Required of honors candidates.