Fall 2025 Undergraduate Course Descriptions

Description: This course will serve as a general introduction to the nature and history of Jewish Law. Among the topics to be addressed are: Narrative and Law, Religion, and Morality; Redemption of Hostages; Medical Ethics (End of life Issues and Issues of Consent); and AID (Artificial Insemination from Donor). Other issues will be discussed depending on time and will be chosen in consultation with the students. While secondary material will be assigned for background, the focus will be on the close reading of selected Jewish legal texts from the Mishnah and Talmud as well as such post-Talmudic texts as Maimonides’ great code of Jewish Law, the Mishneh Torah, and a variety of both medieval and modern responsa (judicial opinions). A key goal will be to acquire a “feel” for characteristic modes of halakhic (Jewish legal) thinking and reasoning, precisely through immersing oneself in the primary sources. A special feature of this course will be its havruta style: that is, for part of some classes, students will study and prepare the primary texts in havrutot (small groups).

Description: : In this course we will listen to, read about, and discuss the multifaceted, virtuosic, esoteric Yiddish music of the Pale of Settlement during its 1000 year rise from the Black Sea to the Baltic Sea. Specifically, we will look at: the evolution of synagogue composition, chazzanut and cantors; Hassidic niggunim; song (folk song, art song, popular song, Yiddish musical theatre); “Klezmer” i.e., Eastern European Jewish instrumental dance music; Post-Holocaust assimilating satire and fusions in America; the Yiddish “revitalization” or “revival”; and the living Yiddish music of today. A portrait will emerge of an incredibly rich, multi-layered, musical-cultural practice worthy of study and celebration.

Description: The Jewish literary tradition entails a conversation pursued across times, places, languages, and genres. In this course we will overhear the conversation by reading works alongside those to which they respond. For instance, we will read parts of the Hebrew Bible along with Michal Lemberger’s After Abel, a collection of short stories about biblical women. For another instance, we will read stories by Der Nister (“The Hidden One” in Yiddish, the pseudonym of Pinkhes Kahanovitsch) from the early twentieth-century along with Dara Horn’s 2006 The World to Come, which adapts those stories. Familiarity with the source text enriches our appreciation of the responding text, and our recognition of conversation as a means of making a literary tradition. All texts will be in English. Format: lecture and discussion .

Evaluation:
Two written assignments, several short (ca. 500-word) responses, class preparation and participation.

Description: This course is an introduction to the history and literature of the biblical period, the earliest era of Jewish Studies. Its primary goal is to familiarize the student with the text of the Hebrew Bible, the historical context in which it came it be and the academic disciplines that contribute to its analysis, such as linguistics, archaeology, comparative literature and comparative religions.All texts will be examined in translation, and no prior knowledge of the Bible or its languages is required.

Texts:
Hebrew Bible in English translation. Other primary texts and secondary readings will be available on MyCourses or on reserve in the library.

Evaluation: Grades will be based on three short written assignments, a series of short “thinking questions” that emerge from the lectures as well as regular readings for each class from the Bible itself, attendance and participation.

Description: The objective is to master basic communication in Modern Hebrew language. Students will develop the four language skills of understanding, speaking, reading and writing through the acquisition of basic structures of the language, i.e., grammar, syntax, vocabulary, as well as idiomatic expressions, in order to be able to communicate in Modern Hebrew orally and in writing. Communicative activities, oral practice, written exercises and compositions will be assigned regularly, in order to help integrate skills and reinforce learning. In addition, because the acquisition of a modern language also entails awareness of the culture of its linguistic community, the students will become aware of cultural elements associated with the language. 

Texts: Shlomit Chayat et al. Hebrew from Scratch, Part I

Evaluation:
60% four class tests
15% essays
20% oral presentation
5% class participation

Description: A panoramic analysis of Israeli society through poetry, fiction, essays, interviews and testimonial narratives reflecting the country's historical, ideological and ethnic complexity. In English translation, we will read Oz, Amichai, Habibi, Har-Even and Yehoshua, as well as new authors from divergent ethnic, religious and ideological positions.

Description: The Nazi assault, organized robbery of rights and possessions, and eventual genocide of European Jewry is one of the most consequential events in both Jewish and world history. This course will provide an overview of the context, crimes of the perpetrators, and nightmarish experiences of the millions that fell victim to this Khurbn (Yiddish, “catastrophe”). Starting with the early 1930s, we will analyze how it was possible for the Nazis to come to power, what the first policies of persecuting Jews in Germany were, and how those policies escalated to expulsion, ghettoization, and mass murder across Europe. Towards the end of the semester, drawing on examples from Europe, Israel, Canada, and the United States, we will discuss contemporary cultural representations and the often-intricate politics of Holocaust memory.

Texts:

• Doris Bergen, War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust, Third Edition

• Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz
• Course Reader

Course Evaluation:
Attendance and participation: 15%
Primary Source Analysis: 25%
Midterm: 30%
Final Take-Home Exam: 30%

Description: From the seventh century until the early modern period, most Jews spoke Arabic and called the Islamic world home. This course explores the Jewish experience among Muslims from the rise of Islam through the eve of colonialism. By engaging close readings of primary sources and historical scholarship, students will learn how Jews under Islam indelibly shaped Judaism and Jewish practice, how engagement with Arabic in Islamic Spain led to the revival of Hebrew, and how the Jewish-Muslim relationship fared along the way. Through film and music, this course also probes themes of history and memory. Students with a particular interest in the modern era, especially the 20th and 21st centuries, are advised to continue on to JWST 334 (Jews and Muslims: A Modern History) in Fall 2025.

Texts:
Adina Hoffman and Peter Cole, Sacred Trash: the Lost and Found World of the Cairo Geniza (Schocken Books, 2011); Norman A. Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands: A History and Source Book (The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1979).

Description: This course offers an intellectual journey through centuries of Jewish thought, where philosophy and faith meet in a fascinating dialogue.

Are you curious about the nature of God? Should we believe in the God of the philosophers—a pure mind without a body or emotions—or in the God of the Bible, who sometimes gets so angry that his nose spits fire? Where should we turn for guidance—philosophers like Aristotle or prophets like Moses? Which laws should we follow—those revealed by God or those established by wise rulers?

These are just a few of the profound questions Jewish philosophers have wrestled with as they sought to reconcile their philosophical beliefs with their religious tradition. In this course, we will explore the answers Jewish philosophers proposed from Antiquity to the 17th century. We'll start with a sample of Greek philosophical texts and excerpts from the Bible and rabbinic literature to understand this dual legacy. Then, we'll delve into the works of key medieval philosophers, including Saadia Gaon, Maimonides, and Shem Tov Falaquera. Given that classical Jewish philosophy emerged within Islamic culture, we will also examine a text by the Muslim thinker al-Ghazali to appreciate this intellectual setting.

We'll tackle core issues such as God's existence, the creation of the world, divine providence, prophecy, the Law of Moses, the good life, and human perfection. In addition, we'll explore how Jewish philosophers justified the study of pagan and Muslim thinkers like Plato, Aristotle, and al-Farabi. After all, if you have God's true word in hand, what is the use of reading Aristotle?

The course will end with selections from Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise, which challenges the foundational assumption of classical Jewish philosophy: the harmony of true philosophy and the Jewish tradition.

Evaluation:
Attendance and participation: 10%
In Class Mid-Term: 20%
Take home Final: 35%
Research paper: 35%

Description: : The second part of the introduction to the millennium-old language of Ashkenazic Jews. This course will continue covering the fundamentals of Yiddish grammar and vocabulary and will include further practice in speaking, reading, and writing. The course materials draw on Yiddish literature, songs, and films, allowing students to combine the acquisition of practical language skills with an exploration of Yiddish culture—from its beginnings in medieval Germany through its past and present in Central and Eastern Europe, the Americas, Israel, and all over the world. An important component of the course is the opportunity students will have to pursue Yiddish-related artistic or research projects (individually or in small groups), combining exploration of Yiddish with creative writing, translation, acting, filmmaking, religion, anthropology, history, painting, and journalism, to name just some of the options. While this course is the direct continuation of JWST 281 Introductory Yiddish 1, it may also be taken independently by students with adequate prior knowledge. With any questions, please email the instructor.

Texts: Course Pack; online resources.

Evaluation: Attendance and homework; in-class quizzes; final project; final exam

Description: This course will explore the world of Jewish-themed documentary films. We will see how filmmakers in Canada, the US, Europe and Israel have used the lived reality of Jewish experience as a canvas for their documentary explorations. We will examine how Jewish identity is depicted across a wide spectrum of perspectives – related to variations in religious and national affiliations, cultural experience, the attachment to Israel, the connection to the Holocaust and the politics of gender and sexual orientation. We will try to understand how documentary films as “the creative treatment of actuality” function as an interface between reality “out there” and the original, personal perspectives of filmmakers. Students are encouraged to developed individual responses to the films as triggers for personal explorations of identity, Jewish or otherwise.

Texts: Course readings

Films may include: Bonjour! Shalom! / Jews and Money / Hollywoodism: Jews, Movies and the American Dream / Dark Lullabies / Baghdad Twist / Trembling before G-d / Promises / The “Socalled” Movie

Evaluation:
6 film reflections 500-750 words each: 60%
Final Paper 2500 - 3000 words: 25%
Class participation / Presentation: 15%

Description: Looking beyond the borders of empires and nation states, this course aims to study the experience of Jews in Europe, vis-à-vis those residing in the Middle East, North and South America, as well as Australia. While studying the key developments of the twentieth century, arguably the most transformative period in Jewish history, this course will pay particular attention to patterns of social and cultural exchange(s) between European Jews and their coreligionists elsewhere, along with the themes of migration, diasporas, memory, and material culture.

Texts:

• John Efron, et. al., The Jews: A History 3^rd edition
• Ava F. Kahn and Adam Mendelsohn ed., Transnational Traditions: New Perspectives on American Jewish History, 2014 (selections)
• Course Reader

Evaluation:
Attendance and participation: 15%
In Class Presentation: 25%
Test: 30%
Final Exam: 30%

Description: A brief introduction to the nature and history of Jewish law. Topics include: redemption of hostages; abortion; death and dying.

Description: The objective is to master communication in Modern Hebrew language.

Students will develop the four language skills of understanding, speaking, reading and writing through the acquisition of basic structures of the language, i.e., grammar, syntax, vocabulary, as well as idiomatic expressions, in order to be able to communicate in Modern Hebrew orally and in writing. Communicative activities, oral practice, written exercises and article analysis will be assigned in order to help integrate skills and reinforce learning. In addition, because the acquisition of a modern language also entails awareness of the culture of its linguistic community, the students will become aware of cultural elements associated with the language and the diversity of the Israeli society.

Texts: Shlomit Chayat et al. Hebrew from Scratch, Part I + CD

Evaluation: 
48% - 4 Class Tests (6%, 10%, 14%, 18%)
12% - Quizzes
12% - 2 In-Class Essays
10% - Compositions
10% - Oral Presentation
​8% - Class Participation

Description: Focuses on either a period, a current of thought or the work of a thinker in the history of Jewish thought from the Middle Ages to Modern Times, paying particular attention to the relationship of Jewish thinkers to intellectual trends in their respective cultural contexts. themes and concerns of Jewish theology and on Jewish responses to contemporary trends in European thought.

Description: The objective is to communicate on familiar topics in Modern Hebrew language. Students will develop the four language skills of understanding, speaking, reading and writing through the acquisition of the advanced structures of the language, i.e., grammar, syntax, vocabulary, as well as idiomatic expressions, in order to be able to communicate in Modern Hebrew orally and in writing. Communicative activities, oral practice, written exercises and compositions will be assigned regularly, in order to help integrate skills and reinforce learning. In addition, because the acquisition of a modern language also entails awareness of the culture of its linguistic community, the students will become aware of cultural elements associated with the language.

Texts: Edna Amir Coffin. Lessons in Modern Hebrew: Level II (2) Publisher: University of Michigan Press 

Recommended Text: Hebrew Dictionary (Oxford, Eng-Heb, Heb-Eng Dictionary, Kernerman – Lonnie Kahn)

Evaluation: 
48% - 4 Class Tests (6%, 10%, 14%, 18%)
12% - Quizzes
12% - 2 In-Class Essays
14% - Compositions 
10% - Oral Presentation
4% - Class Participation 

Description: This course offers an opportunity to watch films from different periods of Israeli cinema spanning 1948 to the present. Conducted primarily in Hebrew with some assignments in English, students in this course will be invited to engage with the social, political, psychological and aesthetic dimensions of Israeli films. (This is primarily a language class and advanced Hebrew is required to enrol in this course; if you are unsure about your level of Hebrew please consult with the instructor.)

Description: The Holocaust was the systematic persecution and genocide of 6 million Jews by the Nazi State and its collaborators, between 1933 and 1945. The Nazis also persecuted and murdered the Roma and Sinti, sexual minorities, people with disabilities, political opponents, Slavs, and Jehovah’s Witnesses.

With what language can one articulate personal experience of and surrounding the Holocaust, experience that exceeds language? And not only how, but why, when, to whom, and as whom? In this course we will ask such questions as we study several diaries and memoirs about or surrounding the Holocaust, as well as reviews and academic studies of these texts. Aesthetics and ethics will guide our discussions, as we think about the effects of genre, stylistic choices, the gap between our knowledge and the writer’s, authorial intent, the difference between historical experience and what the experience felt like, the importance of gender on experience and its communication, and how a story differs across tellings. Further, we will study how the editing, publishing, translating, adapting, and re-discovery of a text has informed how a text has been read. We will also consider oral testimony. This course emphasizes original research.

Texts:

• Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl (originally published in Dutch 1947)
• Elie Wiesel, Night (1956)
• Elie Wiesel, All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoirs (1994)
• Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault on Humanity (1947)
• Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved (1986)
• Ruth Kluger, Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered (1992)
• Aharon Appelfeld, The Story of a Life (1999)
• Abraham Sutzkever, From the Vilna Ghetto to Nuremberg: Memoir and Testimony, edited and translated by Justin D. Cammy (1946; 2021)

Evaluation:

Attendance, preparation, participation: 15%
Two 500-word responses on readings: 20%
Paper on reception of one of our books: 25%
Research paper: 40%

Format: Lecture and discussion.

Description: Intermediate study of standard Yiddish with emphasis on reading, composition and conversation. Knowledge of Yiddish culture will also be expanded.