Courses

• CAS RN 319: Midrash: Classical Rabbinic Biblical Interpretation
  Explores rabbinic biblical interpretation in its literary, cultural, and historical context (second to seventh centuries CE). Examines how the rabbis read the Bible, and what these interpretations tell us about Jews and Judaism in the ancient world.
• CAS RN 320: Readings in Classical Hebrew
  Surveys, in original Hebrew, selections from ancient Jewish religious texts, from Hebrew Bible, Dead Sea Scrolls, and Rabbinic literature. Reviews grammar and syntax as needed. Attention to development of Hebrew language in historical context. Theme of readings for Spring 2010: Judaism and Justice, Human and Divine. Also offered as CAS LH 320.
• CAS RN 321: Wisdom Tradition in Ancient Israel and Judaism
  Wisdom as a major intellectual tradition in ancient Israel; the sage in Israelite and other Near Eastern cultures; formal criticism of literary types; relation to prophetic and apocalyptic traditions; canonical and apocryphal writings.
• CAS RN 322: History of Judaism
  Major trends in post-biblical Judaism; academy and synagogue; Mishna and Talmud; Babylonian diaspora; medieval poetry, philosophy, and mysticism; codes of law; organization of the Jewish community "in exile", the land of Israel; Jewish, Islamic, and Christian civilizations.
• CAS RN 323: Classical Jewish Thought
  Basic human and religious issues as they have been understood within the classical Jewish framework of God, the people of Israel, and Torah: good and evil, creation, the relationship of human beings to God and to one another.
• CAS RN 324: Introduction to Rabbinic Literature
  Chronological exploration of rabbinic Judaism's major documents, using a modern scholarly anthology. The Mishnah; legal and legendary selections from the midrashim and both the Jerusalem and Palestinian Talmuds. Themes: monotheism, sin and atonement, heaven and hell, conceptions of gender, the impact of rabbinic texts on medieval and modern Judaism.
• CAS RN 325: Jewish Mysticism
  Analysis of the development of Jewish mysticism from the biblical to the early medieval era. Emphasis on the forms of mysticism--and the texts in which they are embedded--from the rabbinic era. No knowledge of Hebrew is required.
• CAS RN 326: Jewish Mystical Movements and Modernization, 1492–2000
  Mysticism, spiritual, and social influences. Early modern, modern periods. Focus on “conservative” and “revolutionary” tendencies. 1492 and Iberian, German, Polish Jewry; leadership of “third generation” of survivors; Christian and Islamic influences; Kulturkampf precipitated by popularization of Kabbala, antinomianism, Hasidism, magic, science.
• CAS RN 329: Modern Jewish Thought
  Explores attempts of major modern Jewish philosophers to reconcile Judaism and the modern consciousness. Authors include Mendelssohn, Cohen, Rosenzweig, Buber, Kaplan, and Fackenheim. Responses of traditional Judaism to modern strategies of identity and self-preservation; Judaism and the crisis of modernity.
• CAS RN 330: American Jewish Experiences
  Examines history, culture, politics, and identities of American Jews and Judaism, 1654-2010. Communal documents, family histories, liturgy, sermons, music, films, literature, art, and artifacts are employed to study similarities and differences with other Jewish communities and other American minorities.
• CAS RN 331: Zionism and the State of Israel
  Introduction to the development of Jewish nationalism from its traditional and European origins through its culmination in the modern state of Israel. Readings from Zionist and Israeli literature on political, religious, and philosophical implications.
• CAS RN 333: Antisemitism
  Theological and social sources of antisemitism in the ancient, medieval, and modern worlds. Comparisons with other modes of persecution such as slavery and witchcraft. Jewish responses to otherness. Intellectual and social antisemitism in contemporary America.
• CAS RN 334: Dead Sea Scrolls
  Examination of the ancient Hebrew documents discovered in the Judean desert. Their authorship; the theological significance of the Scrolls; their relations to Ancient Judaism and early Christianity; the controversy over their release and publication.
• CAS RN 335: Judaism in the First Century
  Explores the diversity of Judaism in the first century CE and traces the emergence of Christianity as a religion distinct from Judaism. Sources include ancient Jewish literature, early Christian literature, and archaeological evidence.
• CAS RN 337: Gender and Judaism
  Jewish monotheism examined from the perspectives of gender theory, feminism, and homoeroticism. Themes include religion and gender, women and homosexuals as "other" in Jewish and Christian thought, difficult traditional texts and their reappropriation, issues in contemporary spirituality.
• CAS RN 339: The Modern Jew
  Explores modern Jewish experience of space, body, language, and the self as sites of the struggles over a secular identity. Part of a sequence on “The Other Within.” Counts toward concentrations in Judaic Studies and Religion.
• CAS RN 340: The Quran
  The emergence of the Quran as a major religious text, its structure and literary features, and its principal themes and places within the religious and intellectual life of the Muslim community.
• CAS RN 341: Islamic Mysticism: Sufism
  Rise and development of the mystical movement in early Islam; analysis of the thought of leading Sufi brotherhoods, their organization, liturgy, and religious life; the impact of Sufism on classical and postclassical Islam.
• CAS RN 344: Islam and the West
  Considers centuries of cooperation and conflict between Islam and the West, including the "Golden Age" of Islamic Spain, the Crusades, medieval European views of Islam, enslaved Muslims in the New World, colonialism and its legacies, and Western Muslim communities today.
• CAS RN 345: Islamic Law
  A survey of major trends in Islamic jurisprudence from the seventh century to the present; the structure of Islamic law, its regulative principles, its place in Islamic society, and the mechanisms by which it is elaborated and applied.

Note that this information may change at any time.

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