Come to learn the language of the Hebrew Bible and of sleepless Tel Aviv nights! One of the oldest languages in the world, for several centuries Hebrew was used only as a literary tool until it was revived as a national Jewish language in the late nineteenth century. Today, Hebrew is the official language of Israel and is studied and spoken by Jews and non-Jews all around the world. Used in everyday life, songs, films, and on the Internet, Hebrew has never been so young! 

This course is meant as an introduction to Modern Hebrew and its unique features. Emphasis will be placed on developing the skills necessary for reading, writing, and speaking. You will initially learn the alphabet, how to write and read in both the print and the cursive styles, the phonetics and correct pronunciation, and then basic vocabulary and grammar constructions. By the completion of your first semester of Hebrew, you will be able to perform a variety of communication tasks (such as, introducing yourself and others and providing personal information about provenance, place of residence, work, studies; ordering food, asking for directions, inquiring about the price, and more). The course will cover the textbook Hebrew from Scratch vol. 1 through Lesson 3, and will be supplemented by additional written, audio, and video materials in Hebrew. 

NB: This course is intended for students with no previous instruction in the language and for those who have had some unsystematic exposure to it. Students from all backgrounds are welcome!  If you have had some previous exposure to Hebrew, you may be eligible to take the continuing beginner level, HEB 102, that will be offered in the spring. Please contact the instructor for being administered a placement test; this will ensure that you are placed at the right level. 

Location

Morey Room 502 (MW 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

Welcome to your second year of modern Hebrew! By completion of this first semester of Hebrew at the intermediate level, you will expand speech interaction in free and authentic informal Hebrew in a variety of everyday situations. Your understanding and use of grammar constructions (particularly of the verb system) will be enhanced and your vocabulary dramatically increased. You will also develop reading skills enabling you to approach texts written in a higher and more formal style than the one used in speaking and be able to effectively use a Hebrew-English-Hebrew dictionary. The course will finish covering the first volume of the textbook Hebrew from Scratch and start covering the second one. A continuation of HEB 103 (HEB 104 - Intermediate Hebrew II) will be offered in the spring. 

NB: This course continues the introduction to modern Hebrew begun in Elementary Modern Hebrew I and II (HEB 101-102). Students with some previous knowledge of Hebrew who wish to begin their Hebrew instruction at this level are required to take a placement test. The test is to be taken prior to registration or at the latest on the first day of classes.

Location

Rush Rhees Library Room 428D (TR 6:15PM - 7:30PM)

Examination of the texts of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament for Christians) in their religious, historical, and literary contexts. In this course, students will learn the history of the Ancient Israelite people from their origins down through the post-Exilic period. Study of the texts of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) enable us to explore what we can know about Ancient Israelite society and culture, the rise and fall of Israel as a nation-state, religious and theological debates about the role of God in shaping history and the problem of suffering, as well as the writing of the biblical texts and the development of the canon.

Location

Dewey Room 2110E (MWF 10:25AM - 11:15AM)

This course is an introduction to Jewish religion and culture from ancient to modern times. Designed for students with little or no prior knowledge of Judaism, it will examine the formation, ruptures, and changes of Jewish tradition, identity, and culture beginning with the Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible), continuing through Rabbinic interpretations of law and lore, medieval Jewish thought, early modern Jewish mysticism, the Enlightenment and modern Jewish philosophy, up to contemporary American Jewish feminism. Because this course explores a large swath of the history of Judaism, its peoples, and ideas in various geographical contexts, we will continually question the claim that there exists a single, static, essential entity called “Judaism.” Paying close attention to changes in Jewish religious and cultural self-understanding and traditions across primary and secondary texts, we will instead investigate the possibility that there were and are multiple “Judaisms” just as there were and are multiple “Jews” living in different cultural, religious, and geographic settings throughout time.

Location

Rush Rhees Library Room 442 (MW 3:25PM - 4:40PM)

NEW COURSE! The Hebrew language can boast three-thousand years of uninterrupted textual production. From Paleo-Hebrew inscriptions found in the ancient Land of Canaan, to the texts comprising the Hebrew Bible, from medieval commentaries to Kabbalah works composed in Ottoman Palestine and Europe, from the revival of modern Hebrew in Eastern Europe to the creation of Israeli literature, to Hebrew graffiti on nowadays Tel Aviv streets, Hebrew has traversed Jewish history and played a vital role in the retaining and development of Jewish identity in different countries and historical periods. In this course, through the guided analysis of selected texts, students will come to appreciate the evolution of this remarkable language, its extraordinary durability, and its impact on the shaping and articulation of Jewish culture.

Location

Dewey Room 4162 (MW 11:50AM - 1:05PM)

The category of “guilt” floats between theology, psychology, and criminology. Sometimes as a feeling, sometimes as a purported objective condition, guilt stars in big stories moderns tell about what it is to be a member of a society, what it is to be a religious person, and how it feels to be a creature with sexual appetites. Meanwhile, for legal and mental health professions, proof of guilt is used to sort the good from the bad, the normal from the deviant, and the socially respectable from the socially disposable. Not all is so dour, however. Guilt lives in confession, denunciation, and in criminal sentencing, but it is also the stuff of jokes, of ethnic pride, and of eroticism. Toward an anatomy of guilt, in this course we will draw on the works of Freud, Nietzsche, Arendt, Foucault, Janet Malcolm and Sarah Schulman, and we will wrestle with the films—and complicated legacies—of Alfred Hitchcock and Woody Allen, two filmmakers who are preoccupied with (and implicated by) guilt, as feeling and as fact.

Location

Morey Room 504 (MW 11:50AM - 1:05PM)

Many people associate Judaism with the monotheistic belief in God and refer to Jews as the “People of the Book.” But cognitive exercises such as belief and study are not the only markers of Jewish identity. Alongside and sometimes against these images of Jews and Judaism, the modern period produces an intense interest in Jewish bodies and embodiment—physical, symbolic, and imagined—that contributes to what Judaism is and has been. In this course, we will explore how Jewish bodies, including the bodies of
individuals, the body of God, and the body of the Nation, are imagined, constructed, and managed within and without Judaism in modern Europe, Israel-Palestine, and the United States. We will also explore how our understandings of Judaism might change when we investigate representations of Jewish bodies with attention to race, gender, and sexuality.

Location

(TR 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

Registration for Independent Study courses needs to be completed thru the instructions for online independent study registration.