Undergraduate Programs

The Jewish civilization developed across a variety of geographical and cultural areas of the world and over thousands of years, resulting in complex, many-faceted, and heterogeneous manifestations. Consistently, scholarly approaches to Jewish Studies are rich and variegated, and rather than constituting a discipline or a method, they consist of a multidisciplinary lens through which to look at a variety of general topics and questions, such as tradition, authority, and community. This course is meant as a gateway to the study of Judaism and Jewish topics. It will combine an overview of the various methods that scholars adopt when they look at Jews and Jewish civilization with an illustration of Jewish beliefs and practices grounded in the diversity of narratives and lived experiences. The course will provide students with a foundational intellectual experience while equipping them with the basic competencies and research tools necessary in progressing into more advanced courses in JWST as in any other field in the humanities and social sciences. No prerequisites. Students from all backgrounds are welcome to enroll in this class.

Location

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

Come and 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 for prayer and as a literary tool until it was revived as a national Jewish language starting 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. Students from all backgrounds are welcome!

Location

Morey Room 205 (MWF 11:50AM - 12:40PM)

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 (in particular, 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 complete covering the first volume of the textbook Hebrew from Scratch and start covering the second one. A continuation of HBRW 103 (HBRW 104 - Intermediate Hebrew II) will be offered in the spring.

Location

Frederick Douglass Room 304 (MW 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

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)

For thousands of years, Jerusalem has been a major center of Eastern and Western civilizations and three monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam,  with a long and colorful history. This course will examine the city's development from pre-Biblical times to the modern period with special emphasis on the physical and architectural features of the city. We will also analyze the cultural, historical, religious, and sacred dimensions of its various quarters (Jewish, Christian, and Muslim), archeological sites, and its natural landscape that have provided the backdrop to its multilayered and fascinating history.

Location

Rush Rhees Library Room 442 (T 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

In this course we will survey the historical development of Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism) from its medieval origins to its impact on Christianity and contemporary New Age. We will explore the unique symbolism of kabbalistic texts; the mystical understanding of Jewish rituals; and the extraordinary charisma of Jewish mystics. Throughout the course, we will pay special attention to the historical and cultural shifts that facilitated the transformation of Kabbalah from an elite inquiry in the Middle Ages to broader and more popular engagement with this lore in the contemporary, post‐modern age.

Location

Rush Rhees Library Room 442 (TR 11:05AM - 12:20PM)

R. Laurence Moore, in his work on religious outsiders in America, argues that the Jews were both an ordinary minority and an unusual minority in the U.S.; ordinary in that they arrived with relatively the same limitations and possibilities of other European immigrants, but unusual in that Jews had no plans to leave. This course is a historical survey of sorts, but the emphasis is on religion—that is, how Judaism and its American practitioners responded to historical events in the New World through an emphasis on immigration, politics, cultural creativity, religious change, and the establishment of a diasporic community with ties to Jews throughout the world. Attention will also be paid to Judaism in Rochester. This course should equip you to understand—historically and critically—the ever-changing self-perception of Jews in the United States.

Location

Rush Rhees Library Room 442 (TR 9:40AM - 10:55AM)

This is a proficiency-oriented course, in which you will continue to develop reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills using Hebrew newspapers, Israeli news broadcasts and movies, Hebrew literature - including a graphic novel! - and Israeli songs, with contextual review of relevant grammar structures. Upon completion of this course, you will have acquired the skills necessary to: 1) read and comprehend Hebrew newspapers, and texts in modern Hebrew prose and poetry; 2) listen to and comprehend Israeli news broadcasts and movies; 3) discuss issues pertaining to Israeli society and culture on the basis of the materials examined; 4) expand your vocabulary to include technical terminology, master complex semantic and syntactical constructions, and further develop your communication skills. We will spend most of the semester reading and discussing a selection of texts by contemporary Israeli writers and poets, including the graphic novel Ha-Nekhes by acclaimed author Rutu Modan, and a selection of articles taken from Israeli newspapers and on-line news sites. The course work will include watching Israeli movies and listening to Israeli songs. Homework will consist of preparing the pre-assigned materials to be able to actively read and discuss them in class, in Hebrew. Additional written assignments on the readings and movies will include answering comprehension questions in Hebrew, and complete relevant grammar and vocabulary exercises.

Location

Rush Rhees Library Room 428D (MW 4:50PM - 6:05PM)

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)

This course will explore "Anti-Semitism" as a historical phenomenon and a rhetorical one from the end of the 18th Century until today, particularily in Germany. We also aim to examine the specific discoursive history of anti-semitic tropes –– with a special focus on the figure of the "enemy of the state." The course will examine a variety of genres of texts – historical documents, legal texts, theoretical / historiographic texts, cultural objects, newspaper articles, fictional narratives, state propeganda, etc. to explore the construction and political explotation of anti-semitic tropes, and the forms of state violence they explicitly or implicitly underwrite. Course language will English but opportunities for German minors and majors to work with German language primary materials. 

Location

Lattimore Room 401 (TR 9:40AM - 10:55AM)

This seminar course investigates the relationship between Jewish, Christian, and Muslim societies in medieval Spain from the establishment of Muslim Spain (Al-Andalus) in 711 to the expulsion of Jews from the Iberian Peninsula in 1492 after the Christian ‘reconquest’. The course will analyze the concept of ‘peaceful coexistence’ among the Muslim, Jewish, and Christian communities, referred to as convivencia, and explore the evolving dynamics of power and interconfessional relations between them. By analyzing primary sources such as historical chronicles, legal documents, and literary texts, students will explore various themes including religious and ethnic identity, gender and sexuality, religious conversion and tolerance, law and political authority, the notion of a ‘Golden Age’ of convivencia, Islamic architecture, intellectual encounters between Muslims and Jews, and their influence on Christian Europe. The course will also examine scholarly debates on convivencia, reconquista, and conversos with an emphasis on how the memory of medieval Iberia is utilized in modern academic and public discourse.

Location

Todd Union Room 202 (T 3:25PM - 6:05PM)

This course will provide a non-partisan introduction to the conflict between these two national movements. Discussion will focus on an examination of historical documents, in addition to understanding of how it plays out in literature and film.

Location

Morey Room 504 (TR 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

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

Location

( 7:00PM - 7:00PM)