Winter 2020 Undergraduate Course Descriptions

Description: This course introduces some of the major changes, both gradual and violent, in Jewish life from the French Revolution to the Holocaust, as reflected mainly in literature in Germany and Russia. Emancipation of the European Jews in the late 18th and 19th centuries led to unprecedented Jewish assimilation in non-Jewish culture and to a transformation in the definition of Jewish identity. The course contrasts the German Jews, who were in the vanguard of modernity, with the Russian Jews, who came under Tsarist rule with the late-18th century partitions of Poland, and largely retained their traditional, almost-medieval religious character until the early 20th century. The rise of anti-Semitism brought about a remarkable alliance of German and Russian Jews, in the Zionist movement and the growth of a distinctive largely secular modern Jewish culture.

Texts:
S.J. Agnon, stories
Isaac Babel, from Red Cavalry
Bialik, poems;
Herzl, The Jewish State
Solomon Maimon, Autobiography;
Heine, poems
Amos Elon, The Pity of It All;
Paul Johnson, History of the Jews
Marx, Communist Manifesto;
Kafka, stories
Mendele Mocher Sefarim, The Mare, The Travels of Benjamin the Third
Sholom Aleichem, stories;
Tchernichowsky, poems
Stefan Zweig, stories;
Joseph Roth, Job
Franz Werfel, The Forty Days of Musa Dagh

Evaluation: four in-class exams, each consisting of an essay and commentaries on course texts and one long essay. Essay questions are normally given out in advance of exams.

Format: Lecture

Description: This is a survey course that highlights the encounters between Jews and the states and cultures of Europe from the medieval period to the present. The focus is on the effects of the encounters between Jews and their neighbours. The course pays particular attention to communal organization, patterns of migration, and cultural developments.

Texts:

1. John Efron, Steven Weitzman, Matthias Lehmann, Joshua Holo, The Jews: A History, Pearson-Prentice-Hall,2^nd ed. 2014.
2. Coursepack and assigned online readings.

Evaluation:
1. Attendance and participation in all class meetings.
2. Completion of required reading assignments on time.
3. Short Paper 10%
4. Class Tests 50%
5. Term Paper 40%

Format: Lecture

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 + CD

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

Format: Lecture

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:
Deborah Dwork and Robert Jan van Pelt, Holocaust
Emanuel Ringelblum, Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto
Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz
Course Reader

Evaluation:
Attendance and participation 15%
Primary Source Analysis (3-4 pg.) 25%
Research Essay 30%
Final Exam 30%

Format: Lecture

Description: Until the early modern period, most of the world’s Jews spoke Arabic and called the Islamic world home. This course explores the Jewish experience among Muslims from the seventh century until the present. Through close readings of primary sources and historical scholarship, students will learn how Jews under Islam shaped modern Judaism, how engagement with Arabic in Islamic Spain led to the revival of Hebrew, and how the Jewish-Muslim relationship fared in the twentieth century. The course also probes themes of history and memory in light of the departure of Jews from the Islamic world in the 1950s and 1960s.

Texts: TBA

Evaluation:
10%: Attendance and Class Participation
10%: Unannounced Quizzes
25%: Midterm Exam
25%: Paper
30%: Final Exam

Format: Lecture

Description: The Book of Job, a literary and religious high point of the Hebrew Bible, has, from the Second Temple era down to the present day, both inspired and challenged rabbinic scholars, theologians, mystics, artists, and writers. It raises in sublime poetry both the human and existential issue of why the righteous suffer and how can they cope with their suffering and the theological issue of God’s justice. This course will examine a wide variety of literary sources and artistic representations treating, critiquing, and even rewriting the book, from rabbinic observations to Maimonides’ profound philosophical explorations, to the Zohar’s daring and troubling interpretations, to William Blake’s famous Illustrations of the book, to modern Hebrew poets reimagining and retelling of the narrative, and much more.

Texts: TBA

Evaluation: TBA

Format: Seminar

Description: This course provides an overview of major trends in Jewish spirituality from the early twentieth century to the present day. Includes topical units on the Jewish nationalist mysticism of Abraham Isaac Kook; the holocaust hasidism of the Warsaw Ghetto Rebbe Kalonymous Kalman Shapira; Neo-Hasidism and its take on Social Justice, New Age, and Psychedelics; Jewish-Sufism (The Derekh Avraham Order); feminist hermeneutics; fertility in Jewish law; and Queer midrash.

Texts:
Heschel, Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1996). Selections.
Irshai, Fertility and Jewish Law: Feminist Perspectives on Orthodox Responsa Literature, trans. Joel Linsider (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press). Selections.
Kook, The Lights of Penitence, the Moral Principles, Lights of Holiness, Essays, Letters, and Poems, trans. Ben Zion Bokser (New York, Ramsey and Toronto: Paulist Press, 1978). Selections.
Ladin, The Soul of the Stranger: Reading God and Torah from a Transgender Perspective (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2018).
Polen, The Holy Fire: The Teachings of Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, the Rebbe of the Warsaw Ghetto (Northvale, NJ, 1994).
Ramer, Fragments of the Brooklyn Talmud (Eugene, OR: Resource, 2019).
Ravitsky, Messianism, Zionism, and Jewish Religious Radicalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).
Schachter-Shalomi, My Life in Jewish Renewal: A Memoir (New York: Rowan and Littlefield Publishers, 2012). Selections.
Umansky and Ashton, eds., Four Centuries of Jewish Women's Spirituality: A Sourcebook (Boston: Beacon, 1992). Selections.

Evaluation: Attendance and participation (20%); Reading Journal (25%); Midterm Exam (20%); Paper Proposal (10%); Term Paper (25%)

Format: Lecture

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 (40%)
In-Class Quizzes (20%)
Final Project (20%)
Final Exam (20%)

Format: Lecture

Description: This book is written in Yiddish for women and for the men who are like women,” explains the author of Brantshpigl (The Burning Mirror), a Yiddish ethical book first published in Poland in 1596. There is nothing unusual about this statement in the context of traditional Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi culture. Although spoken by both men and women, the Yiddish language has for much of its history been identified with women––and the same can be said of the literature produced in it. In the Yiddish epitaph he wrote for himself, the great Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem referred to himself as “an ordinary Jew who wrote in Yiddish for women.” Following the author’s death in New York in 1916, these words were engraved on his tombstone and can still be seen today. What prompted Sholem Aleichem to present himself as a “women’s writer,” when we know for a fact that his popularity was in no way limited by gender? In this course, we will examine a variety of Yiddish stories, novels, films, oral history interviews, and other types of sources, that shed light on the nature and implications of this gendered view of Yiddish. What are its effects on readers, writers, and literary works? What role does the dichotomy between “female” Yiddish and “male” Hebrew play in all of this? What is behind such common tropes of Yiddish literature as “effeminate men” and “the Jewish mother”? We will discuss Yiddish literature’s treatment of such subjects as education, romantic love and sexuality, wedding rituals and celebrations, family life, pregnancy and childbirth, religion and mysticism, patriarchy (and challenges to it), “feminine modesty,” marital unfaithfulness, domestic violence, and prostitution. All discussions and readings will be in English (with Yiddish originals available for anyone interested).

Texts: Sholem Aleichem, The Letters of Menakhem-Mendl and Sheyne-Sheyndl; Bella Chagall, Burning Stars; L. Peretz, “Venus and Shulamith”; Esther Singer Kreitman, The Dance of the Demons (selections); Isaac Bashevis Singer, “Yentl the Yeshiva Boy”; Miriam Ulinover, My Grandmother’s Treasure.

Selected Films: Yiddle with Her Fiddle (1936), The Jester (1937), Menashe (2017)

Evaluation:
Attendance, Preparation & Participation (25%)
Short Reading Responses (25%)
Midterm Paper (20%)
Final Paper (30%)

Format: Seminar

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

Format: Seminar

Description: The biblical story of the Exodus is retold during the Passover Seder from the Haggadah, an anthology of texts from the Bible, rabbinic literature and Jewish liturgy. In this course, we will examine the centrality of the Exodus to the biblical narrative and explore the texts of the Haggadah to understand and appreciate the development of this ritual book, its purpose in the commemoration of the Exodus and its role in the fulfilment of Passover laws and customs. For this course, you will require a copy of the Jewish Bible in English as well as a Passover Haggadah in English. Additional primary texts and secondary readings will be provided. Proficiency in Hebrew is not required.

Texts: TBA

Evaluation: TBA

Format: Lecture

Description: We tend to think of Jews and Muslims in the Middle East and North Africa as enemies, not neighbours. This course examines the modern history of Jewish-Muslim relations beyond just conflict. Students will explore the interconnected and entangled worlds of Jews and Muslims –– from Morocco to Iraq –– as the two communities navigated colonialism, nationalism, war, and decolonization. Through close readings of a wide variety of primary sources (including letters, memoirs, fiction, music, film, and photography) and historical scholarship, we will approach Jewish-Muslim relations from a number of vantage points –– including politics and culture. In doing so, we will seek to challenge our assumptions about the ways in which Jews and Muslims lived together in the not too distant past.

Texts: TBA

Evaluation:
10%: Class Participation
10%: Unannounced quizzes
20%: Midterm Exam
30%: Research Paper
30%: Final Exam

Format: Lecture

Description: Course introduces students to the variety of medieval Jewish conceptions of love, ranging from divine self-love and inter-personal sexuality. Topics will include religious and secular constructions of love in Iberian Hebrew poetry; marriage (and its discontents) in medieval Jewish practice; parental love in Ashkenaz; courtly love in Jewish romance literature; philosophical forms love in Saadia Gaon and Maimonides; asceticism and martyrdom as self-sacrificial modes of loving God in Jewish pietism; contemplative sex in Iggeret ha-Qodesh; and divine self-love in the kabbalah.

Texts:
Baskin, Judith, “Jewish Private Life: Gender, Marriage, and the Lives of Women’
Baumgarten, Elisheva, Mothers and Children: Jewish Family Life in Medieval Europe
Biale, David, Eros and the Jews: From Biblical Israel to Contemporary America
R. Ezra of Gerona, Commentary on the Song of Songs
Cohen, Seymour, The Holy Letter: A Study in Jewish Sexual Morality
Fishbane, Michael, The Kiss of God: Spiritual and Mystical Death in Judaism
Leviant, Curt, King Artus: A Hebrew Arthurian Romance of 1279
Roth, Norman, “‘Deal gently with the young man’: Love of Boys in Medieval Hebrew Poetry of Spain”
Scheindlin, Raymond, Wine, Women, and Death

Evaluation: Participation (15%); Reading Journal (25%); Midterm Exam (20%); Paper Proposal (10%); Term Paper (30%)

Format: Seminar

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

Format: Seminar

Description: In this introduction to Rabbinic Literature, we will not study “about it,” but will study “it.” That is, after some brief historical and literary background, we will read in English translation (or Hebrew, depending on the linguistic skills of the students) some representative selected texts from a variety of selected sources. This course will be divided into two parts. In the first part we will study aggadic, that is, non-legal, rabbinic texts. In the second part we will study halakhic, that is, legal, rabbinic texts. Class time will be devoted a careful reading and analysis of these rich, compact, and often elusive texts. While there is not much primary material to read quantitatively, the material assigned will both demand and amply repay a slow and painstaking reading on the student’s part.

Texts: TBA

Evaluation: TBA

Format: Seminar

Description: In A Bridge if Longing: The Lost Art of Yiddish Storytelling D Roskies a renowned scholar of Yiddish texts establishes the compelling argument that for two centuries Yiddish storytelling became the way Yiddish artists embodied their most fervent hopes and greatest fears as a way to rescue and retell the story of the culture through successive generations. In this course we will examine a wide range of stories beginning with Hassidic tales and ending with the stories by writers who survived the Holocaust. We will engage in a close reading and analysis of the stories and examine the ways in which they draw on the conceits, tropes or conventions that preceded them to in some way engage us offering us the “usable past” story telling is intended to provide.

Texts: Course pack

Evaluation: TBA

Format: Seminar

Description: We will be spending the semester engaged in a careful literary analysis of a wide range of writings by Jewish women We will be looking at poems, stories and novellas written by Jewish women both in English and Yiddish in English translation Our readings and discussions in class will be shaped by the following perhaps insoluble questions: 1)Does it make sense to speak of Jewish women’s fiction as if the terms refer to a coherent tradition? 2) What characterizes this writing and 3) Are there particular themes in women’s fiction and 4) can we discern a particular strategy women writes share in their writings over and above the choice of genre?

What can we conclude about this writing from a critical perspective- what does it add to our understanding of the culture the writers address.

Texts:
Glickl of Hamelin
Course pack

Evaluation: TBA

Format: Seminar

Description: An introduction to major texts and concerns in the fiction of the Hebrew Nobel laureate, S.Y. Agnon (1888-1970), in their literary and historical contexts as well as some important influences, particularly the classical Hebrew texts, Mendele, Flaubert, Kafka, and Stefan Zweig. The course follows Agnon’s career from the early 1900s until the post-1948 years, with particular focus on the period from the early 1920s until the early 1950s, Agnon’s most artistically productive period, and includes An introduction to major texts and concerns in the fiction of the Hebrew Nobel laureate, S.Y. Agnon (1888-1970), in their literary and historical contexts as well as some important influences, particularly the classical Hebrew texts, Mendele, Flaubert, Kafka, and Stefan Zweig. The course follows Agnon’s career from the early 1900s until the post-1948 years, with particular focus on the period from the early 1920s until the early 1950s, Agnon’s most artistically productive period.

Texts: TBA

Evaluation: four in-class exams, each consisting of an essay and commentaries on course texts and one long essay. Essay questions are normally given out in advance of exams.

Format: Seminar

Description: The aim of this course is to expose students to the various aspects of contemporary Israeli society and culture through films, music and other media, as well as academic, journalistic, literary, art historical and dramatic texts (all texts are in Hebrew).

Texts: Hebrew Dictionary

Evaluation:
40% - Essay (1500 words min.)
30% - 2 In-Class Essays
15% - 2 quizzes
10% - Text Preparation Assignments (to be marked at random)
5% - Class Participation and presentation

Format: Seminar

Description: This course will examine key Jewish thinkers of the last 100 years whose social justice work is rooted in their faith. In addition, we will explore how diverse voices in the Jewish community have responded to important recent and contemporary social and political challenges including economic policy, the Civil Rights movement, Black Lives Matter, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and the justice system. Our study includes a look at writers who consider the North American Jewish interest and approach to social justice misguided.

Texts:
Achad Ha’am, “Priest and Prophet.” (1893)
Emma Goldman, “The Joys of Touring.” (1908)
Abraham Joshua Heschel, “Interview with Carl Stern.” (1972)
Jonathan Sacks, To Heal a Fractured World: The Ethics of Responsibility. (2005)
Jim Torczyner, “Empowering the Poor Through Human Rights Advocacy: Reflections on the Project Genesis Experience in Montreal.” (1992)
Sanford Goldner, Ph.D. The Jewish People and the Fight for Negro Rights. (1953)
Ally Little and Michelle Weiser, “Don’t Like Black Lives Matter? Get Ready to Lose Young Jews Like Us.” (2016)
Ellen Bernstein, “The challenges of Communicating the environmental message.”
Rabbi Jill Jacobs, There Shall be no Needy. (2009)

Evaluation:
Paper on social justice organization 30%
Book review 40%
Reading responses 15%
Class moderating 10%
Participation 5%

Format: Seminar

Description: This course continues helping students improve their knowledge of the Yiddish language and to further explore the culture behind it. Further development of speaking, reading, writing, and listening skills, with a particular emphasis on expanding vocabulary and mastering grammar. Drawing inspiration from Yiddish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer, who in his Nobel Lecture described Yiddish as "the wise and humble language of us all, the idiom of frightened and hopeful humanity [which possesses] treasures that have not been revealed to the eyes of the world,” this course introduces students to selections from Yiddish literature, songs, and films of Jewish life past and present. An important component of this 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 384 Intermediate 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 (40%)
In-Class Quizzes (20%)
Final Project (20%)
Final Exam (20%)

Format: Seminar

Description: A survey of the history of Hasidism and the social developments connected with it from its beginnings in the eighteenth century to the present. Although the focus generally will be on social history, we will also look at doctrinal developments and changes. Where possible, we will examine primary materials (in translation).

Texts: TBA

Evaluation:

1. Attendance and participation at all lectures.
2. Completion of all required readings (See over and Syllabus)
3. Three five-seven page book reviews 20% each = 60%
4. Three in-class tests (15 + 15 + 10) =40%

Format: Seminar