School of Liberal Arts: Jewish Studies
2008-2009 Academic Year
404
JWST 101 Introduction to Jewish Civilization (3)
Profs Hollander, Horowitz. This course will introduce the student to the variety of
religious expression and understanding in the Jewish tradition. The focus of the
course is the biblical texts and their interpretations which are relevant to Jewish
understandings of issues such as creation, revelation, redemption and community.
We will also study the social, literary, historical and cultural influences that
helped shape the varieties of Jewish traditions throughout the ages.
JWST 125 Building Jewish Identity: Secular Judaism in Historical
Perspective (3)
Profs. Horowitz, Hollander. The starting point for our investigation of a
distinctively secular Jewish conception of the world will be the fact that roughly
on behalf of the American Jewish population possesses a secular non-religious
orientation (American Jewish Identity Survey, 2001). How did this non-religious
orientation arise amongst what many people consider to be a religious
community? We will explore how certain non-religious features, such as shared
culture, language, custom, dress, and education played an integral part in the
definition of Jews and Judaism from their inception, and the rol eplaed by these
features in the constitution of variant secular forms of Judaism and secular Jewish
orientations in the modern period.
JWST 210 Introduction to the Hebrew Bible Old Testament (3)
Staff. In this course we will attempt to understand the Hebrew Bible better by
examining samples of each of the major genres represented while at the same time
placing each within its historical context. We will also focus upon questions of
interpretation. By taking a general survey of the ways in which the Hebrew Bible
has been read and interpreted in the past we will begin to understand how these
ancient texts continue to live and speak to so many. Same as CLAS 210.
JWST 220 Modern Jewish History (3)
Prof. Horowitz. Analysis and interpretation of Judaism in modern times. The
meanings of religiosity and secularity are explored through analysis of several
Jewish responses to modernity: religious reform, Jewish socialism, political and
cultural Zionism, assimilationism. Integration of these diverse responses produces
a coherent picture of how a religion is transformed through interaction with
modern culture.
JWST 310 Select Topics in Jewish Studies (3)
Staff. This course will cover special offerings in Jewish history, religious thought
and literature. It will be taught by various permanent and visiting Jewish Studies
instructors.
JWST 312 Modern Hebrew Literature and the Bible
Prof. Hollander. This course will introduce students to the ongoing dialogue
between the Jewish People and the Hebrew Bible, their defining text. Through the
reading of the Biblical text alongside Rabbinic texts composed in the first
millennium of the Common Era and Hebrew Poetry of the twentieth century,