Undergraduate Program

Come 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 starting in the late 19th 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 the direct continuation of HBRW 101 that is taught in the Fall. Emphasis is on further developing reading, writing, comprehension, and speaking skills, with a focus on cultural orientation and the practical use of Hebrew in meaningful everyday situations. During the semester, students will expand the basic language skills acquired in HBRW 101, enhance their understanding of Hebrew grammar constructions (in particular, verbs in the present and past tense, use of direct object and prepositional verbs, common syntactical constructions), and increase their vocabulary. The course will cover the textbook Hebrew from Scratch vol. 1 from Lesson 3 through Lesson 17, and will be supplemented by additional written, audio, and video materials in Hebrew.

Location

(MWF 11:50AM - 12:40PM)

Welcome to your second year of modern Hebrew! By completion of this second semester of Hebrew at the intermediate level, you will further 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 continue covering the second volume of the textbook Hebrew from Scratch and will be supplemented by additional written, audio, and video materials in Hebrew.

Location

(M 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

An introduction to the religious and cultural development of Judaism. Will emphasize Judaism as a living tradition, one which has been subject to both continuity and change among its practitioners throughout its history.

Location

(TR 11:05AM - 12:20PM)

This course revolves around the most essential question in modern German history: was Hitler's regime particular to Germany, German culture, and German society, or was merely the manifestation of an immanent quality in all modern nation states? What does it mean to compare any political figure to Hitler? Was his kind of "evil" suis generis or dangerously banal? This course places the rise and fall of the Nazi Party and Hitler in the longer duree of German history, from the Second Empire and WWI, to Weimar, the Nazi State, and the Two Germanys of the Cold War.

Location

(TR 11:05AM - 12:20PM)

Although often only discernible to those in the know, Jewish superheroes and Jewish characters have long inhabited the pages of comic books of all sorts. From Superman to X-Men, from Art Spiegelman's Maus to Rutu Modan's The Property, this class explore the history, impact, and diverse facets of Jewish graphic storytelling while interrogating what makes these comic books complex Jewish narratives.

Location

(TR 3:25PM - 4:40PM)

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

(MW 12:45PM - 2:00PM)

What is Jewish-Israeli identity? This course explores Israeli cinema as a powerful cultural arena in which the meanings of Jewishness, Israeliness, and the “New Jew” are continually represented, imagined, performed, and contested. From early films after the Holocaust that sought to forge a unified national identity to contemporary works that question narratives of power, trauma, ethnicity, and occupation, we will approach cinema as both an artistic expression and a site where ideology, memory, and belonging intersect. Through the critical examination of film form, narrative, and ideology, we will examine cinema as technology, industry, and a cultural medium, paying attention to how questions of trauma, nationalism, militarism, Ashkenazi and Mizrahi representations, and Jewish-Arab relations are articulated on screen. Ultimately, the course considers Israeli cinema not just as a reflection of society but as an active force in shaping the imagination of nationhood and identity itself.

Location

(T 4:50PM - 7:30PM)

How does one represent the unrepresentable? This is the key question we will explore as we look at films and literature about the Holocaust. We will examine how fictional films, novels, documentaries and memoirs challenge our conceptualizations of representation and documentation, often leading to experiments in both form and content. Of particular interest will be the relationship between affect, aesthetics and ethics in these negotiations of loss, horror and redemption.

Location

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

Boasting two thousand years of uninterrupted presence on the land, Italian Jewry is the oldest Jewish community of the European Diaspora. Located at the center of the Mediterranean basin, over the centuries it was enriched by the contribution of a variety of Jewish internal traditions (autochthonous, Ashkenazi, and Sephardic, among the main ones), while at the same time developing a very complex relation with the surrounding non-Jewish environment. Such dynamics paradoxically reached their apex with the institution, starting in the sixteenth century, of ghettos, i.e., Jewish segregated quarters. Established in 1516 and in existence until 1797, the ghetto of Venice was the first of such settlements and was to give its name to all subsequent ethnic enclosures in modern history. Surrounded by water and walls, physically separated from the Christian population of the city―although, as a matter of fact, not isolated from it―Venetian Jews developed their own communal institutions, an elaborate system of religious and social practices, and articulated a rich cultural and intellectual life.

The course will examine the most relevant aspects of the Italian Jewish experience in its Venetian declination during the existence of the ghetto. Through the examination of a variety of documentary, literary, and artistic sources, both Jewish and non-Jewish, we will explore the conditions that concurred in making sixteenth-eighteenth century Venetian Jewry exemplary among Italian communities, and unique in the context of the European Diaspora.

Location

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