The course listing represents a sampling of courses taught by the faculty in this department in the 2009-10 academic year. To select courses for Fall 2009, see the catalog listing; similarly, for Spring 2010 refer to the relevant catalog.
JWST-101 - Modern Hebrew I
Offered: First SemesterCredit Hours: 3 hours
This is a course in modern, conversational Hebrew, geared to beginners. It emphasizes basic vocabulary, grammar, and idiomatic expression in interactive classroom activities and through assigned exercises to develop students' aural and reading comprehension and basic spoken expression.
Note: Registration open but admission and placement determined by the instructor.
JWST-150 - Introduction to Judaism
Offered: First SemesterCredit Hours: 3 hours
A theoretical introduction to Judaism as a religious system. Special attention will be paid to the historical development of the religion through interpretation of traditional texts and ritual practices.
JWST-235 - East European Jewry, 1772-1939
Offered: First SemesterCredit Hours: 3 hours
This course explores the transformation of East European Jewry from the partitions of Poland through the rise of the Soviet Union and the facsist regimes of interwar Poland. Studies include: the Musar and Jewish enlightenment movements; government Jewry policies and Jewish responses; economic and demographic change; Jewish nationalism, Jewish socialism; Jewish political parties and strategies; the birth of modern Hebrew and Yiddish literature; massive emigration; and Jewish strategies under overtly anti-Jewish regimes in the interwar period.
JWST-253 - God and Holocaust in Jewish Theology
Offered: First SemesterCredit Hours: 3 Hours
This course critically examines several influential paradigms regarding God, faith and Judaism after the Shoah (Holocaust) through the works of theologians, survivors, novelists and artists (e.g., Rubinstein, Bak, Fackenheim, Dawidowicz, Wiesel and Primo Levi). Special attention will be paid to the way in which theological concepts are at play in discourse about the Holocaust even when they are not explicit.
JWST-306 - Germans and Jews
Offered: First SemesterCredit Hours: 3-4 hours
Focuses on cultural hybridity: how Jews in Germany emerged from mental and cultural as well as physical ghettos, and constructed an identity that was both Jewish and German; on the creativity, tensions, hopes of that stance and its resonance in larger German society. Studies German policies and attitudes to Jews; trends in German Jewish society, family and culture; attitudes to east European Jews; German Jew-hatred and Jewish responses; how the Jewish case sheds light on modern German history.
JWST-355 - Mystical Experience in Judaism
Offered: Second SemesterCredit Hours: 3 hours
This seminar will explore medieval and early modern theories of religious experience and the nature and existence of God in the Kabbala, the Jewish mystical tradition. Texts and thinkers include those of the early 12-13th Century Spanish Kabbalists, the Zohar,Cordovero, Luria and some early Hasidic thinkers.
