Fall Term 2021 Courses

JST 317U / HST 317U | Jewish History I: From Antiquity to the Middle Ages
INSTRUCTOR: Professor Loren Spielman
TIME/DAY(S): Monday/Wednesday, 2:00 p.m. - 3:50 p.m.
LOCATION: REMOTE SCHEDULED MEETING | CRN: 11676 / 11505

When does the history of the Jews begin? How reliable is the Bible as a source for Jewish origins? What was life like for Jews living under Greek and Roman rule, during the time of Jesus, or under the first Christian and Muslim empires? This course will answer all these questions, covering the Jewish historical experience from its Biblical origins (circa 1000 BCE) through the end of the first millennium (1000 CE). We will examine diverse forms of Jewish life during antiquity and examine the boundaries of pre-modern Jewish cultural and religious identity. Special attention will also be paid to ancient Jewish literature, including texts from the Hebrew Bible, the Jewish Apocrypha, the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Talmud.

This class is the first in a two semester introduction to the study of Jewish history, religion and culture (no prerequisites are required).

JST 317U is an elective course for the Medieval Studies Minor degree.

University Studies cluster: Interpreting the Past

NOTE: This class has been cancelled for Fall Term 2021.
JST 319U / HST 319U | Rabbinic Culture in the Roman World
INSTRUCTOR: Professor Loren Spielman
TIME/DAY(S): Tuesday/Thursday, 2:00 p.m. - 3:50 p.m.
LOCATION: PSC 126 (Peter Stott Center) | CRN:  11677 / 11506

After the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE, Jewish society experienced a radical transformation. From the ashes of the now defunct cult in Jerusalem, a new form of Judaism emerged, rooted in the study and interpretation of sacred texts and centered around the life of the Rabbinic sage. A flourishing of literary activity during the first seven centuries of the Common Era produced the foundational texts of Rabbinic Judaism, the Mishnah, Midrash and Talmud, which continue to give shape to modern Jewish practice and belief. Through a survey of this rich and textured literature, this course will examine the roots of the Rabbinic movement. Asking critical questions about who these rabbis were and what they promoted as their core practices and beliefs, we will devote special attention to the ways these early rabbis related to other segments of ancient Jewish society, reacted to the emergence and spread of Christianity, and negotiated living in the predominantly pagan environment of the Greco-Roman city.

JST 319U is an elective course for the Classical Studies minor degree.

JST 319U is an elective course for the Medieval Studies Minor degree.

University Studies cluster: Interpreting the Past.

ENG 330U | Jewish and Israeli Literature ​
INSTRUCTOR: Professor Michael Weingrad
LOCATION: Online instruction | CRN: 11137

This course looks at the Jewish encounter with modernity through literature.  The focus will be on literature produced by East European Jews in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a period of great upheaval reflected in the emerging modern Hebrew and Yiddish literatures of the time.  We will read works by such classic modern Jewish authors as Sholem Aleichem, S.Y. Agnon, and H. N. Bialik.  In the second half of the course, we will sample literature produced after the 1930s, including Israeli literature and literature produced outside of Eastern Europe.

University studies clusters:  Global Perspectives and Popular Culture

NOTE: This class has been cancelled for Fall Term 2021.
JST 379U/ HST 379U | History of Zionism
INSTRUCTOR: Professor Nina Spiegel
TIME/DAY(S): Tuesday/Thursday, 12:00 p.m. - 1:50 p.m.
LOCATION: Remote synchronous | CRN:  14850 / 14378

Nationalism is very much in the news. But what is a nation? And what is the Jewish nation? This course will explore the ideas and visions that shaped the modern Israeli state. We will examine the sources and contexts of the emergence of Zionism, its theorists and philosophers, its actualization in the State of Israel, and its various achievements, contradictions, challenges, and lessons for us today. Our sources will include photography, film, novels and memoirs such as Puah Rakovsky’s My Life as a Radical Jewish Woman: Memoirs of a Zionist Feminist in Poland.

University Studies cluster: Global Perspectives

JST 380U/ HST 380U | The Holocaust
INSTRUCTOR: Professor Nichola Farron
TIME/DAY(S): Online instruction
Online instruction | CRN: 11679 / 11523

This course will introduce students to the Nazi-planned and executed genocide of European Jewry that has come to be known as the Holocaust. Although we will of course study the so-called "Final Solution" and the process of mass murder, the course aims to provide a broad and contextualized understanding of many aspects of the Holocaust. These include the German and European contexts for the rise of Nazism; the nature of antisemitism and its links to Nazi ideology and policy; the nature and definition of resistance; the question of the "bystanders"; and types of collaboration. The goal is to gain an understanding of the Holocaust as an aspect of many different kinds of history: Jewish history, German history, European history, the history of antisemitism, and perhaps also the history of human civilization (or absence thereof). As time permits, we will also touch upon how the Holocaust is understood and "used" in contemporary society.

University Studies cluster: Global Perspectives.

JST 381U/ HST 381U | Kabbalah
INSTRUCTOR: Professor Natan Meir
TIME/DAY(S): Tuesday and Thursday, 4:40 p.m. - 6:30 p.m.
LOCATION: ASRC 240 (Academic and Student Recreation Center) | CRN: 14393 / 14379

Kabbalah, the mystical tradition in Judaism, seeks to understand the inner nature of the divine and the reciprocal relationship between God and humanity. Kabbalistic thought is imaginative, innovative, sometimes weird, and often mind-bending, offering a vision of the divine highly inflected by gender and sexuality. In this course, we will study central works and expressions of Kabbalah, including the mystical-erotic “Book of Splendor” (The Zohar) of medieval Spain; a 17th-century mystical messianic movement; the Hasidic revival movement; and Jewish magical practices.

JST 381U is an elective course for the Medieval Studies Minor degree.

No prerequisites. University Studies cluster: Interpreting the Past

FILM 384U | Topics in American Cinema and Culture: American Jewish Experience Through Film
INSTRUCTOR: Professor Michael Weingrad
DAY(S)/TIME(S): Friday, 10:00 a.m. - 1:35 p.m.
ROOM: LH331 (LINCOLN HALL) | CRN: 11259

The Jewish experience in the United States has been reflected, celebrated, and challenged in American cinema since the beginning of the sound era—which began with the release of The Jazz Singer, a blockbuster film about a cantor’s son torn between American success and Jewish tradition. In this course we will examine and critique cinematic representations of the American Jewish story, looking at immigration, Americanization, suburbia, antisemitism, politics, race, faith, and nostalgia. Films include Hester Street, Avalon, The Way We Were, State and Main, Fiddler on the Roof, Bye Bye Braverman, the documentaries Town Bloody Hall and Arguing the World, and Yiddish classics Uncle Moses and Tevye the Dairyman.

University Studies clusters: American Identities and Examining Popular Culture

This course fulfills the BA Fine and Performing Arts requirement
 

FILM course fees:  Students and auditors taking any film course will be charged a $45.00 fee.  This is a fee that the Film department applies to all of their courses. 

HST 494 / 594 | Public History Seminar: Museums & Memory in the U.S. & Israel
INSTRUCTOR: Professor Nina Spiegel
TIME/DAY(S): Wednesday, 10:00 a.m. - 12:50 p.m.  NOTE: new time as of 9/29/2021
LOCATION: REMOTE SYNCHRONOUS (ZOOM) | CRN:  11532 / 11545

How is national memory formed? What is the role of memory in shaping a nation's sense of identity? Incorporating field trips to local museums, this seminar examines the relationship between national history, memory, and museums in Israel and the United States.  We will investigate cultural debates that take place over the presentation of national history at public sites. Our comparative approach will facilitate our exploration of the ethos of national memory and the politics of cultural memory.

No prerequisites are required.