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Below you will find the following listed for each class meeting:
In addition, you will find links to study guides for each week.
Week One: Introduction M Jan 5: Course Introduction Expectations and requirements for this course; course syllabus; preliminary survey of what Judaism is. No Readings
W Jan 7: Does Judaism have Essentials? What ideas, concepts, or historical threads have students of Judaism used to construe its essential characteristics? What are some of the failures of ascribing essentials to a religious tradition? Or an ethnicity? Or a culture? Also: demographic basics of contemporary Jewish life. Readings: BRJ, ch. 1 Online reading: Select pages on Judaism from http://www.adherents.com
F Jan 9: NO CLASS (Professor out of town)
Week Two: Antiquity Screening of Prince of Egypt scheduled for this week
M Jan 12: Biblical Histories, Mythologies, Ideologies What role does the Hebrew Bible (Tanak) play in forming Jewish identity? Is it a history? A mythology? What religious, as well as political and cultural, patterns of identity are found in it? What role does a set of sacred scriptures play in forming identity? Readings: SHJP, ch. 1; BRJ, ch. 2ABDEFHI Online reading: Structure and history of the Tanak
W Jan 14: The March of Empires What impact did the political situation of ancient Jews--as colonized and scattered subjects of a variety of empires (Persians, Greeks, Romans)--play in the formation of a communal identity? What is assimilation? What is resistance? Readings: SHJP, ch. 2, BRJ. ch. 4ABCDEG Online reading: Josephus account of the fall of Masada, Timeline
F Jan 16: Post-Temple Judaism How did Jews express religious solidarity before and after the destruction of the Second Temple? What role does the interpretation of sacred scriptures play in the adaptation of religious identities? What alternative forms of community, identity, and authority emerged in centers of Jewish life? Readings: SHJP, ch. 3; BRJ, ch. 3
Week three: Middle Ages M Jan 19: NO CLASS (MLK, Jr. Day)
W Jan 21: Jews under Islam How did the rise of a new religio-political empire (Islam) affect Jewish life in the Mediterranean and Near East? Was this a more congenial type of religious and political submission? How did Islam help create a new form of Judaism? Readings: SHJP, ch. 4; BRJ, ch. 8 Online reading: Pact of Umar; On Samuel Ha-Nagid
F Jan 23: Jews under Christendom How did Christians incorporate Jews into their world-view in the Roman Empire and medieval Europe? What responses were available to Jews? Was this the origin of anti-Semitism? Readings: SHJP, ch. 5; BRJ, ch. 9A-F, J-K Response paper #1 due in class
Week Four: Modernity M Jan 26: Expulsion and Resettlement How and why did Christian Europeans begin to quarantine, and then expel, Jews from their countries? Where did these Western European Jews resettled, and what impact did this have on the early modern development of Jewish identities? Who are the Ashkenazim? The Sephardim? Readings: SHJP, ch. 6 Online reading: The Expulsion from France; The Merchant of Venice Act 1, Scene 3
W Jan 28: Enlightenment and Emancipation What intellectual developments in Europe led Christian nations to begin making Jews citizens? What complications arose in the emancipation of Jews? What intellectual and religious impact did this political shift have on European Jews? How did Jews seek to Westernize their identities? Readings: SHJP, ch. 7; BRJ, ch. 10H-J Online reading: Moses Mendelssohn, Jerusalem
F Jan 30: Judaism and Americanism How was the situation of Jews in the United States parallel to, and yet distinct from, the European experience? How did different waves of immigration, particularly from Eastern Europe, affect the status of American Jews? Readings: SHJP, ch. 8 Online reading: Letter from Moses Seixas to George Washington and George Washington's Reply; Encounter with a Peddler
Week Five: Postmodernity M Feb 2: Shoah What were the roots of the mass extermination of European Jews in the Shoah (Holocaust)? What effects did this event have on non-Jewish perception of Jews, and what effect did it have on Jewish understanding of their own religious, social, and racial identities? Readings: SHJP, ch. 9; BRJ, ch. 23; Night Response Paper #2 due in class
W Feb 4: Zionism What led European and American Jews to envision Jewish nationalism? How central were religion and the ideology of a promised land to the origins of Jewish nationalism and to its eventual success? How did European and Middle Eastern politics generate the conditions (and complications) for this nationalism? Readings: SHJP, ch. 10 and first half of ch. 11 (pp. 211-248) Online reading: The Balfour Declaration at MidEastWeb
F Feb 6: IN-CLASS MIDTERM
Week Six: Rabbinism M Feb 9: Foundations of Rabbinism How did a small group of elite men in ancient Palestine and Persia translate religious practice from the Temple to the synagogue, and from the Bible to the Talmud? What are halachah and aggadah, and what are mishnah and midrash? Readings: BRJ, chs. 5-6
W Feb 11: Rabbinic Community and Authority How did rabbinism emerge as the normative form of Jewish religion in the Middle Ages, and who opposed it? How did rabbinic authority continue to evolve and adapt to new cultural and political circumstances? How is rabbinic authority expressed and maintained across religious communities? What are codes and responsa? How do mystical forms of authority (Kabbalah) play into this? Readings: BRJ, ch. 12, 14, 15 Online reading: Sages and Scholars from Judaism101; an example of Medieval Jewish responsa
F Feb 13: Rabbinic Reformation How did emancipation lead to religious reformation among European and American Jews? What are the foundations of Reform Judaism, and how has it evolved since the eighteenth century? Readings: BRJ, ch. 16 Online reading: The Pittsburgh Platform (1885) and The Centenary Perspective (1976). Be sure to compare these earlier platforms with the most recent platform, found in BRJ ch. 16E
Week Seven: Denominationalism and Sectarianism M Feb 16: NO CLASS (Presidents Day)
W Feb 18: Jewish Denominationalism How did Jewish Reform lead to the splintering of present-day denominations? What are Conservative, Orthodox, and Reconstructionist Judaisms, and how do they relate to each other? How are differences of practice related to differences of belief? Reading: BRJ, chs. 17A-C, I; 18 Online reading: Reform responsum on kashrut (1979); Conservative statement on kashrut; An OU [Orthodox Union] Kosher Primer
F Feb 20: Jewish Sectarianism What is the difference between a denomination and a sect? Can some forms of modern Jews be categorized as sectarian instead of denominational? Who are the haredim and the hasidim? What makes Jewish sectarianism a particularly modern phenomenon? Reading: BRJ, 17F-H, J Online reading: Varieties of Orthodox Judaism. Click on as many of the information links as you can stand, but try to hit at least: Hasidism and Lithuanian Hasidism: Chabad Lubavitch
Week Eight: Practices and Beliefs M Feb 23: Liturgies and Doctrines What do Jews believe, and how do they express these beliefs in regularized religious practices? What are liturgy and doctrine, and how are they related in the variety of modern Judaisms? What are the traditional cycles of prayers, and how do they encode doctrine differently for different Jewish groups? Readings: BRJ, ch. 11; *comparison of Amidah prayers Online reading: Maimonides 13 Principles of Faith
W Feb 25: Festivals and Calendars How is Jewish time structured? What are the major and minor annual festivals of Judaism, and in what way (and with what frequency) are these festivals celebrated by North American Jews of various denominations? How has non-Jewish (particularly Christian) culture affected the celebration of Jewish festivalsand vice versa? Readings: *Selection from a Haggadah Online reading: On-line calendar of festivals
F Feb 27: Life Cycle Events What is a bar mitzvah or a bat mitzvah? What are the major life cycle events commemorated in Judaism, and how do they serve to integrate or separate Jews from their surrounding society? How have such personal or family rituals changed or evolved through the different periods of Jewish history, and how do they differ among various denominations? Online reading: The following entries from Judaism 101: Birth; Bar Mitzvah, Bat Mitzvah, and Confirmation; Marriage; Divorce; Life, Death and Mourning; Olam Ha-Ba: The Afterlife
Week Nine: Alternative Judaisms M Mar 1: The Material Lives of Jews: visitation to Beth El? In what ways is Jewish identity in North America expressed in physical ways (clothing, appearance, art, other cultural production)? How are ritual and domestic spaces (the synagogue and the home) constructed among the varieties of modern Judaism? Why is synagogue Judaism considered mainstream? Online reading: Guided tour of Jewish Culture(s); Online tour of Tuoro Synagogue (Rhode Island) (requires Macromedia Flash 6)
W Mar 3: Yiddishkeit and Secular Judaism What is the difference between Jewishness and Judaism? Can a person be Jewish, but not religious? Why would some people choose to emphasize the secular aspects of Jewish identity (culture, ethnicity, language), while others reject secular Jewishness and focus on religious identity? Readings: BRJ, ch. 24 Online reading: Yiddish Language History; Methodological Appendix to the 2001 National Jewish Population Survey
F Mar 5: JUBUs and Messianists Can a Jew be a Buddhist? Can a Jew be a Christian? Why have some people chosen to combine or blend religions to become Jewish Buddhists or Messianic Jews? Do such groups draw more from Jewish or non-Jewish groups? What is syncretism, and is it authentic religion? Readings: *Selection from Thats Funny, You Dont Look Buddhist! Online reading: Introduction to Messianic Judaism at religioustolerance.org
Week Ten: Issues in Contemporary Judaism M Mar 8: Jewish Ethics, Ethical Judaism Is there a particular Jewish ethics? Does it derive from the Bible (10 Commandments), medieval rabbinism (13 Principles), or something more deeply embedded in Jewish experience (the Shoah)? Do Jewish ethics differ from Christian ethics in kind, or in rationale? What are Judeo-Christian ethics? Readings: BRJ, ch. 20 Response Paper #3 due in class
W Mar 10: Judaism and Gender What particular issues do women face among the diverse stripes of modern Judaism? Have women always been considered full members of the Jewish covenant? How and when have women been incorporated in Jewish ritual? Clergy? How is sexuality incorporated into Jewish identities in North America? Readings: BRJ, ch. 21
F Mar 12: The Many Faces of Judaism Is there a modern essence of Judaism? What are its common elements: history, ethics, beliefs, practices? Genetics, appearance, culture, ethnicity? How is Jewish identity viewed from the inside, and from the outside? No reading
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