Hebrew and Judaic Studies (HBRJD-GA)

The early Christian theologian, Tertullian, rhetorically asked, “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What agreement is there between the [Platonic] Academy and the Church?” By the medieval period, many Jewish thinkers were grappling with similar questions, often presuming a harmonious relationship between Athens and Jerusalem, but just as often objecting to the integration of the two. This 3-point seminar explores the development of a robust and diverse tradition of medieval Jewish philosophy from the ninth through the fifteenth centuries. Along the way, we will study some of the notable critiques of Jewish philosophy during this period and the heated controversies that they frequently generated. This course aims to familiarize students with the major periods, trends, and motivations of medieval Jewish philosophy, its relationship to philosophical traditions in medieval Islam and Christendom, the dynamic between philosophy and mysticism, the emergence of philosophical dogmatism, the problem of elitism and esotericism, and the robust debate over the place of philosophy in the Jewish tradition. We will devote a majority of class time reading and analyzing the primary sources. Texts written in Judeo-Arabic will be read in English translation, while Hebrew sources will be studied in the original. It is therefore critical that students have the requisite ability to read Hebrew texts (with a dictionary). Knowledge of Hebrew in any period (e.g. biblical, rabbinic, medieval, or modern) is a necessary starting point. Prior background in medieval Hebrew per se is not a prerequisite.

This course will give students a foundation in the development of modern Jewish studies from the 19th century to the present in Europe, North America, and Israel. Students will also learn about the current state of the field by examining recent developments in the sub-fields of history, religious studies, Jewish thought, and Jewish literature.

Introduces incoming graduate students to the field of Hebrew and Judaic studies, in its disciplinary, chronological, and geographic diversity. Contemporary issues and innovative approaches in the various areas of Judaic studies are explored.

Summer-specific description: Students in the summer intensive Introductory Biblical Hebrew sequence learn the fundamentals of Hebrew as this language is employed in the Hebrew Bible. Students will master a broad vocabulary that touches on all areas of life, from agriculture and animal husbandry to theology and politics. By means of these approaches, we will equip ourselves with the essential tools for exploring the fascinating and complex literature of the Hebrew Bible and other ancient Hebrew writings. This class will also include several excursions to view Hebrew manuscripts and monumental Hebrew throughout New York City.

Advanced study of Biblical Hebrew syntax, morphology, phonology, and other linguistic phenomena.

Introduction to cuneiform script and to the Akkadian language, with emphasis on grammatical structure.

Introduction to cuneiform script and to the Akkadian language, with emphasis on grammatical structure.

Reading of Akkadian literature.

Reading of Akkadian literature.

This first semester of language training begins with the language type and writing system before moving through an overview of grammar and work through a series of beginning texts, with increasing levels of difficulty.

The second semester of Sumerian turns to reading texts of larger interest, especially from the large corpus of poetic literature.

Introduction to the Ugaritic language and texts, providing important background for further study in the Semitic languages.

Introduction to the Ugaritic language and texts, providing important background for further study in the Semitic languages.

Introduction to the various phases of Aramaic. Readings are selected from early and imperial documents, including Elephantine and inscriptions.

Introduction to Aramaic documents found at Qumran and contemporary sites. This represents the intermediate phase of Aramaic and Bar Kokhba texts.

Introduction to Galilean and Babylonian Jewish Aramaic and related texts.

Examination of the origin and development of Yiddishism as an international cultural movement and an ingredient of Jewish subcurrents in socialism, anarchism, folkism, and communism.

This course is intended to train students with a strong foundation in Biblical Hebrew to access academic articles in Modern Hebrew. The course will focus on reading material in the students' areas of scholarly interest.The linguistic structure of Biblical and Modern Hebrew will be addressed.

Treats the biblical, archaeological, and comparative ancient Near Eastern evidence for Israelite religion in its origins, change, and conflict. Emphasis is on questions of definition and focus.

Intensive study of the language of Yiddish academic discourse. Students study primary source material in their area of specialization and secondary critical material.

Intensive study of the language of Yiddish academic discourse. Students study primary source material in their area of specialization and secondary critical material.

A close reading of select philosophical texts.

Intensive study of the language of Hebrew academic discourse. Students study primary source material in their area of specialization and secondary critical material.

Examination of the origin and development of Yiddishism as an international cultural movement and an ingredient of Jewish subcurrents in socialism, anarchism, folkism, and communism.

The course focuses on main Jewish-related events in Israeli, American, and Soviet life and discusses their interconnection. The topics that will be covered include the impact of the Bolshevik revolution on Jews in the United States and Palestine, the participation of American Jewish organizations in Soviet Jewish projects in the 1920s and 1930s, the international links of the Soviet Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, and the movement for Soviet Jewish emigration. Special attention will be paid to the Cold War period, particularly to the activities of the “triangle”: Jewish activists in the Soviet Union, Israel, and the United States.

This course reads selections of the major Zionist thinkers of the 19th and early 20th century.

This course provides an academic discussion of the history of Jewish Philanthropy in the 19th and 20th centuries and traces the influence of historical events on the policies of the Jewish organizational world of today.

The course reviews the various attempts to address issues in the Arab-Israeli conflict by negotiations with Israel's Arab neighbors, either directly or through intermediaries. Starting with a review of the history of these negotiations, the course focuses on the main issues negotiated: borders, refugees, water rights, security in the period up to 1967; and the future of the territories occupied in 1967 - Sinai, Gaza, the West Bank and the Golan Heights. We will pay particular attention to the Oslo Accords, negotiated in 1993 and 1994, Camp David II and the Taba Talks (2000).

From Zionist Sabra to Cosmopolitan Israel This seminar addresses some major social, cultural, and political divisions in Israeli society, their historical dynamic and present structure, and their mutual inter-sectionality, as well as their contexts and implications. This course is of sociological orientation, and hence it will focus on structural processes and on analytical conceptualizations.

Philosophical themes in the writings of Mendelssohn, Cohen, Rosenzweig, Buber, Soloveitchik, Fackenheim, and Levinas.

This doctoral course offers an intensive study of nineteenth century American Judaism. It will involve both exposure to secondary sources and careful reading of primary materials. It is geared to preparing students to conduct doctoral level research.

Anti-Semitism has been called the ‘longest hatred’ in the history of the west. Although it can be traced back to Greco-Roman antiquity, anti-Jewish animosity struck fertile soil in Christian theology and practice and has morphed many times over throughout the history of medieval Christendom and modern Europe. In modern times, anti-Semitism has taken on new sinister imagery and political expression, both in Christian and Muslim societies, on the far-right and the far-left of the political spectrum. This course takes a deep dive into the history of anti-Semitism in the West and covers much terrain, from antiquity through the present day. It begins with the current controversies over the definition of anti-Semitism and the crisis of the present moment. We then pay special attention to anti-Jewish rhetoric and imagery in Western Christendom, the new racial turn of anti-Semitism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the familiar and novel forms it has taken in the United States, up to and including the present day

The course presents a macro-sociological, historical, comparative and critical approach to selected areas of life in Israeli society. It aims to problematize the stock answers to and stimulate discussion on the questions whether Israel is small, unique, deeply divided, multicultural, militaristic, colonial, secular, democratic, and Western.

Drawing on new evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls as well as recent research in Classics on the Hellenistic Near East, this seminar will explore what we know of Jewish literature and cultural history in the period between the conquests of Alexander the Great and the Maccabean Revolt.

During the early first millennium BCE, we find increasing quantities of written finds in the greater Levant, in varieties of ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, and Phoenician, the "Northwest Semitic" languages. This seminar addresses basic skills for recognizing script types and development and for reconstructing the shape of each language in this period, when the texts are only partly vocalized, at best. The semester concludes with selected readings that have larger historical and cultural interest.

The main focus of this course will be on the history of diplomatic relations between the United States and Israel and the emergence of the “special relationship” and “strategic alliance.” This course will also examine Israel-American relations at other levels, including the role of Israel in the American Jewish Community and American Jewish philanthropy’s relationship with Israeli politics.

This is a research seminar, not an overview. Each meeting addresses some item or set of primary evidence, which together represent a cross-section of important content and questions for the study of ancient Israel in its land. Evidence may be written or otherwise material-cultural, as often as possible from excavation, and the Bible only makes an appearance at moments when it either frames a historical question of requires consideration on its own terms. Specific focus will vary with different versions of the course, concentrated mainly on the Bronze and Iron Ages.

This course is intended to provide a general introduction to classic rabbinic literature, the documents compiled by the rabbis between 200-600CE, including the Mishna, Tosefta, Halakhic (Tannaitic) Midrashim, Amoraic Midrashim, and the two Talmuds. It covers both the primary sources themselves and the main scholarly questions and debates concerning these compilations. Class time will be divided between the reading and analysis of the primary texts and the discussion of the secondary readings and the status questionis. This class in intended for M.A. and Ph.D. students. All primary texts will be provided in both the original Hebrew/Aramaic and in translation. Ph.D. students will be expected to prepare the originals; M.A. students the translations.

Study of the interrelationships of the Mishnah, Tosefta, and Talmuds with one another and the midrashic corpus. Emphasizes the issues that arise from Rabbinic intertexuality from both literary and historical points of view.

Selected Hebrew and Aramaic texts from the Apocrypha. Emphasis is on the biblical background and the place of this literature in the early history of Judaism.

One of the most common phrases articulated about the Dead Sea Scrolls is that theyhave revolutionized our understanding of the development of the text and canon of the HebrewBible. The goal of this course is to explore these contributions through close readings of selectedDead Sea Scrolls manuscripts and modern scholarship.

Selected texts are read and analyzed in order to reconstruct the Judaism of the Qumran sect and other groups of Second Temple period Jews. Students are trained in the use of Qumran manuscript sources and paleography.

Reading of documents from the Judean Desert, including letters of Bar-Kokhba and his officials and legal documents from the Judean desert caves. The texts will be analyzed from both philological and historical points of view.

This course examines the major issues relating to the critical study of the Babylonian Talmud and surveys different critical methodologies. Topics include the stability of the text, the transmission process of amoraic material, technical terminology, and the editing of the Talmud. The different methodologies include form criticism, source criticism, redaction criticism and literary criticism.

Study of a selected chapter of the Babylonian Talmud, paying attention to textual, linguistic, and historical matters. Emphasis is on the reconstruction of the history of the traditions preserved in the Talmud.

This course is devoted to the study of narratives of the Babylonian Talmud combining literary approaches with methods of critical Talmud study including source-criticism and form-criticism. Other topics include the relationship to earlier versions in Palestinian rabbinic compilations, the legal and redactional context of stories, and the contribution of the Talmudic redactors.

Focuses on the midrashim Genesis Rabbah, the classic exegetical midrash, and Leviticus Rabbah, the classical midrash homiletical. Close textual study is combined with theoretical issues such as defining midrash, intertextuality, form-criticism, hermeneutics, the documentary approach, and the social context of midrash.

This course provides an in-depth introduction to the major themes and genres of medieval Hebrew poetry. It covers both the sacred compositions of the liturgy and the secular realm of belletristic and entertainment literature. The readings begin with the earliest development of Hebrew liturgical verse in Late Antiquity (known as piyyut), trace the continuation of that tradition in medieval Germany (Ashkenaz), examine the new aesthetic culture and secular spirit of Hebrew poetry during the Andalusian period, and culminate with the rise of novel literary genres beginning in the thirteenth century, from poetic prose to humorous satire to moral fables.

Intensive study of the sources of Maimonides? thought in both the Jewish and non-Jewish worlds. Analysis of part I of The Guide from this perspective.

This course examines Moses Maimonides’ monumental code of Jewish law, known as the Mishneh Torah, the only complete synthesis of Jewish tradition to date and a masterpiece of medieval Hebrew literature. We will investigate questions of composition and classification, law and philosophy, language and scope, vision and reception. The course will additionally expose students to the history of Mishneh Torah commentary and criticism and to a range of divergent approaches adopted by modern scholarship on the Maimonidean code. Ability to read the text in the original Hebrew is required.

This seminar focuses on critical theory of multilingualism, translation, and world literature, engaging in a diverse range of scholarship, literary theory, and a selection of literary texts, juxtaposing early twentieth-century debates on Jewish languages and diaspora with political discussions on language, translation, and the nation-state in Israel/Palestine today.

This course introduces students to the ways that scholars of ancient Judaism employ critical theory. Students engage with the work of notable theorists and thereby gain knowledge in postmodern approaches and their application in Biblical and Jewish Studies. Particular attention is paid to literary studies, gender studies, and postcolonialism. The course examines how these theoretical approaches compare in their methods and results with historical-philological approaches to ancient texts and material culture.

How does the maternal figure in language? Is “mother” a contained otherness that operates within the symbolic order? Is it a biological fiction that perpetuates nationalist exclusions? Does it bear a generative capacity? Mother tongue, a metaphorical notion of the national imagination, is a deeply charged ethnocentric concept. At the same time, the range of affects and attachments that the mother tongue entails cannot be denied. This interdisciplinary seminar navigates between changing conceptualizations of mother tongue from a range of theoretical and cultural perspectives. Considering the maternal in language through the lens of psychoanalytic, feminist, and queer thinking, it asks whether mother tongue can be at once the product of ethnocentric ideologies and a form of resistance to cultural hegemonies. The course examines a diverse selection of critical theory alongside works of literature, cinema and art. Class discussions will trace the rise of the mother as a mark of a biological link between nation and language; explore the sexual politics of language; and focus on a set of accounts of diasporic and postcolonial linguistic experiences, in which the mother tongue appears to be fleeting and its “possession” is repeatedly questioned.

Study of the history of Jewish thought, literature, law, and ritual in the formative years in which the classical tradition was coming to fruition in Talmudic literature. Emphasizes the development of the major ideas and institutions of Judaism in the Second Temple and Rabbinic periods and the factors, both internal and external, that contributed to it.

This course explores the Jewish world of Ashkenaz, from its beginnings in the Rhineland in the middle ages through its eventual expansion throughout Western Europe, Central Europe, and Northern Italy, and eventually into Eastern Europe by the early modern period. Ashkenaz is among the most important centers of Jewish life in this period. It was the locus for important rabbinic scholarship, unique pietistic practices, and a vibrant popular culture that took place amidst complex relationships with the non-Jewish environment, ranging from friendly interactions and influence to intense violence and persecution. We will read primary texts from Ashkenazic Jewry and important historical research on this world to analyze its social, cultural, intellectual, political, religious, and material history. Doing so, special attention will be paid to the intersections between these fields and the different methods used by historians to extract various types of historical information from their sources.

The Bible as an object, whether in the form of scrolls or later in the codex, has served as a central object in Judaism, both from a religious and cultural point of view. This course aims to trace the history of the Hebrew Scriptures concentrating both on the development of the Hebrew text and the physical form.

Does the historic Jewish tradition, founded in part on its opposition to idolatry, have a place for the visual arts? Marc Chagall, icon of modern Jewish art, once declared that “Judaism struggled with ancient idolatry…, so that it remained with no share in the treasures of graphic art.” This course takes a close look at the approaches to the visual arts in the Jewish tradition, from antiquity through modernity, reflecting a spectrum of positions and perspectives far more nuanced than Chagall’s statement would warrant. It also explores the rich and creative treasures of what historians identify as uniquely Jewish art. Our survey in this course encompasses synagogue and ceremonial art, manuscript illumination, micrography, and new developments by Jewish artists from the nineteenth century to the present

Readings of memoirs and diaries written by European Jewish women and men from the 18th century through the Holocaust. Students read memoirs with several issues in mind: (1) the history we can learn from them and how to use them critically, (2) the relationship between personal viewpoints and collective experiences, (3) the ways in which Jewish and European societies cultivated memory, (4) the question of why individuals wrote and how they framed and fashioned their lives for their readers, (5) how gender, class, and European context influenced memoirists, (6) how audience (or lack of an intended audience) influenced writers.

This course will examine Nazi policies towards the Jewish people and how the “racial state” dealt with others it also deemed “racially unfit” to belong to the German Volk, an invented category. It will look at the heritage of racial thought that came before 1933, especially from the United States, and the ways in which the Nazis sought to create a nation based on “blood and race.”

This course examines the image of Islam and Christianity, and of Muslims and Christians, in medieval Jewish literature and culture. We will cover a range of literary genres, including poetry and prose narrative, biblical and talmudic commentary, responsa and codes, philosophy and polemic, and historical documents. Our emphasis will be a close examination and discussion of the original sources and the history of their interpretation.

This class explores the experiences of Jewish women over the course of three centuries of Jewish communal existence in America. It will examine how Jewish women have had a history that makes their experiences unique when compared to Jewish women elsewhere, to other American women, and Jewish men. The course as such asserts –and questions the premise—that Jewish women in America had a distinctive history, worthy of analysis in its own terms. That history includes the role of Jewish women in building Jewish communal institutions in America, their participation in the immigration process, their impact upon their families, and the ways in which they engaged with the larger American public. It will examine a few individual lives through scholarly biographies. The course, which will fit under the rubric of social history, will balance the lived experiences of Jewish women in America with the expectations which limited or enabled them to take advantage of American opportunities. It makes no claim to studying the full sweep of that history but rather uses selected moments in it and examines the formative works of scholarship which have shaped the field. As such it will not proceed in a chronological but rather a topical arc.

This class explores the experiences of Jewish women over the course of three centuries of Jewish communal existence in America. It will examine how Jewish women have had a history that makes their experiences unique when compared to Jewish women elsewhere, to other American women, and Jewish men. The course as such asserts –and questions the premise—that Jewish women in America had a distinctive history, worthy of analysis in its own terms. That history includes the role of Jewish women in building Jewish communal institutions in America, their participation in the immigration process, their impact upon their families, and the ways in which they engaged with the larger American public. It will examine a few individual lives through scholarly biographies. The course, which will fit under the rubric of social history, will balance the lived experiences of Jewish women in America with the expectations which limited or enabled them to take advantage of American opportunities. It makes no claim to studying the full sweep of that history but rather uses selected moments in it and examines the formative works of scholarship which have shaped the field. As such it will not proceed in a chronological but rather a topical arc.

After the Ceasefire Agreements which followed the war of 1948, Israel faced the challenge of creating the political, administrative and legal institutions necessary for statehood. While many of these institutions evolved from the pre-State Yishuv, new challenges were now confronted. The population doubled within three years following mass immigration and the society became more heterogeneous. Issues of state and religion; the Right of Return; the rights of Arab citizens; foreign policy orientation and the attempt to adopt a written constitution were all on the agenda. Security issues, the boarder war culminated in the Sinai Campaign fo 1956 determined Israel?s relations with the neighboring states.

Directed research for the Masters Thesis

Since the end of the fifteenth century, Jews have been involved in an ongoing process of shifting their places of residence. They have moved from rural to urban and at times from urban to rural areas, from east to west, and from west to east. Jews have migrated extensively within the borders single nation states and crossed many national and continental boundaries. They have relocated themselves in the modern period from Europe and the Moslem lands to places themselves throughout the Atlantic and Mediterranean worlds, occasionally moving in alongside older Jewish communities, more often planting Jewish outposts where none had existed before. Carrying out these migrations required weighting and negotiation a variety of factors involving the countries of departure and destination, the mechanisms by which migration could be accomplished, state policies of emigration and immigration, and the demands of the Jews’ own particular cultural repertoire.

Discussion of the fundamental institutions of Jewish community and social organization as expressed in Jewish thought and as evidenced in Jewish history in all periods, up to the present. Emphasis is on primary sources regarding varying conceptions of group solidarity and mechanisms for attaining it, including the role of the individual, the family, the community, the state, and the Jewish people as a whole.

Independent study of a topic in Hebrew Literature

Study of a selected biblical book, with careful attention to literary and historical problems.

Study of a selected biblical book, with careful attention to literary and historical problems.

This course is intended to train students in the skills necessary for decipherment and analysis of Dead Sea Scrolls manuscripts. This involves gaining expertise in paleography, materiality, philology, scribal practices, and material reconstruction. Particular emphasis will be placed on utilizing the most current digital tools developed by scholars and identifying additional digital resources that can aid in manuscript analysis.

Exploration of the diverse roles played by the Hebrew Bible in constructions of Jewish identity and in cultural productions by Jews through the centuries.

The Jewish tradition is marked by a high degree of internal diversity, while Jewish history is replete with cases of intra-communal division and sectarianism. This course offers a sustained inquiry into the tolerance or intolerance of dissent both in the pages of Jewish tradition and on the stage of Jewish history.

The medieval encounter between Judaism and Islam had a profound impact on the identity and development of both traditions. This course explores the religious dimensions of this encounter, rather than the broad cultural connections between Muslims and Jews in Islamicate society. On the one hand, the historical encounter with Arabian Jewry left a clear imprint in the Qur’an and early Islamic tradition. Out of this encounter, Judaism came to occupy an important place in Islamic legal and theological discourse. On the other hand, the rise of Islam both as political power and religious rival inaugurated a rich period of engagement that ranged from messianic anticipation and theological accommodation to legal dispute over the status of Islam and polemical discourse on the prophet and scripture of Islam.

This course is designed to introduce students to Judeo-Arabic, a religiolect that has been written and spoken in various forms by Jews throughout the Arabic-speaking world, which was the vast majority of the world’s Jews during the Middle Ages. Judeo-Arabic can be examined through different disciplines such as philology, linguistics, history, philosophy, law, literature and more.

Analysis of major texts and issues in Jewish philosophy. Topic changes annually.

Students taking this course work under the supervision of a faculty member to pursue independent research on a topic in the field of Ancient Near Eastern and Egyptian Studies. The research would normally result in periodic oral or written critical reports on the resources found on the topic as well as a written term paper on the results of the research. The course may be taken for between 1 and 4 points.

Study of a topic in American Jewish History, culture or society

Students will explore the interlocking histories of Jews and non-Jewish Western Europeans after the Holocaust using Germany, Italy, and France as case studies. They will analyze how Jewish and non-Jewish populations coped with "difference" and with political uncertainty in their post-Holocaust landscapes and how these fraught relationships have evolved over the past 60 years.

In-depth study of a specific problem related to the history of the Jews under Nazi impact, with emphasis on training in research methods. Topics may include examination of the history of a specific Jewish community under Nazi rule, the evolution of Nazi Jewish policy, the Jewish councils, armed resistance, relations between Jews and non-Jews undIn-depth study of a specific problem related to the history of the Jews under Nazi impact, with emphasis on training in research methods. Topics may include examination of the history of a specific Jewish community under Nazi rule, the evolution of Nazi Jewish policy, the Jewish councils, armed resistance, relations between Jews and non-Jews under Nazi occupation, the Allied governments and the Holocaust, and free-world Jewry and the Holocaust.

Exploration of a selected problem in the history of the Jews in Eastern Europe, emphasizing primarily, but not necessarily limited to, Russia and Poland.

Independent Study with a professor in the department

Independent Study of a topic of Jewish History

Independent study of Hebrew manuscripts, paleography, and codicology with a professor in the department

Independent study of a topic of Jewish philosophy and thought

Dissertation research with a faculty member

Dissertation research with a faculty member

Intensive study of the language of Yiddish academic discourse. Students study primary source material in their area of specialization and secondary critical material.

Independent study with a faculty member