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Judaic Studies
Hebrew
Yiddish/Modern
All JUST undergraduate courses that are 3000 and higher (except JUST 3065, JUST 5532 W, and JUST 5582) and 4000-level HEBR courses are considered capstone courses. Choose any one to satisfy the capstone course requirement for yeshiva/seminary transfer credits from an Israeli institution. Cross-listed courses taught by faculty outside the department do not count as a capstone.
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 11 a.m.–12:15 p.m. Professor Hanni Garti-Bar In person (LOTE)
Come learn Hebrew in an open and supportive environment! This is an elementary-level Hebrew-language class open to beginners. We will learn the Hebrew alphabet and all the speaking, reading, and writing basics. Class will include small-group work, listening to songs, and watching Israeli TV and films. This course is eligible for LOTE credit. Students are encouraged to email the instructor with any questions. This course is not open to students who have taken the Regents Exam.
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 2:15–3:30 p.m. Professor Hanni Garti-Bar In person (LOTE)
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 3:40–4:55 p.m. Professor Hanni Garti-Bar In person (LOTE)
Continue learning Hebrew in an open and supportive environment! This is the next level of elementary-level Hebrew-language, open to beginners who have taken HEBR 1001 or equivalent background. We will continue speaking, reading, and writing basics. Class will include small-group work, listening to songs, and watching Israeli TV and films. This course is eligible for LOTE credit. Students are encouraged to email the instructor with any questions. This course is not open to students who have taken the Regents Exam.
Mondays and Wednesdays, 6:30–7:45 p.m. Professor: Robert Shapiro Online (Pathways: World Cultures & Global Issues)
This course examines the nature of the persistent and varied forms of anti-Jewish prejudice from antiquity through the middle ages and into the modern era. Some peoples claimed that Jews hated every other nation or religion, while others spread rumors and outrageous myths about Jews being bloodthirsty predators. In more recent centuries, Jews were characterized by Shakespeare and others as greedy merchants peddling substandard goods. With the rise of secular movements of socialism and revolution, Jews were labeled “Reds” who could not be loyal. The dilemma for Jews was how to survive and overcome hatred that reached its peak during the Nazi Holocaust and continues to be powerful among those dissatisfied with democratic norms and those opposed to the existence of Israel as a Jewish state. Our readings and discussions will delve into all these matters at a time when anti-Jewish language and violence is now flaring up ever more violently. Synchronous ONLINE (Starting Spring 2025: this course fulfills Pathways World Cultures Global Issues. No ENGL pre-requisite required. Contact department for permission if you have not already taken ENGL 1012)
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 2:15–3:30 p.m. Professor Sharon Flatto In person (Pathways: World Cultures & Global Issues)
Have you ever wished you had more familiarity with the classical Jewish canon? A deeper knowledge of its key works, their historical context, and their role in traditional Judaism? This course will address these issues by exploring the masterpieces of Jewish literature that have profoundly influenced world religions, culture, and philosophy. It will begin by analyzing a range of genres of early Jewish sources, from the Bible to Maimonides. Subsequently, students will disentangle the layers and intertextuality of modern Jewish texts and films, which often riff on earlier classics, including thought-provoking works from Shalom Aleichem to the Coen brothers.
Mondays and Wednesdays, 12:50– 2:05 p.m. Professor TBD In person (Pathways: US Experience in Its Diversity)
This course surveys American Jewish history from the 17th century to the 20th century. It asks how and why the United States became the primary destination for Jewish immigrants around the world. At the same time, we will explore how a relatively young Jewish center matured by the 20th century into a role of worldwide Jewish leadership. With an eye to the mobility that Jews benefited from in America, we will ask how the relative freedoms they found shaped multiple ways of “being Jewish” in America. Comparisons around the country and to other American minorities will highlight what that story can tell us about American society, particularly its hierarchies based in religion and race. We will examine the lives of individual women and men as well as the national and global institutions they founded representing religious denominations, charities, cultural networks, and political defense. What questions can we ask of America when we focus on Jewish experiences there? At the same time, what can American Jewish history tell us about modern Jewish history beyond it?
Mondays and Wednesdays, 11 a.m.–12:15 p.m. Professor David Brodsky In person (Capstone)
This course will look at the impact that Greek philosophy had far beyond the limits of the schools of philosophy themselves. We will begin in the ancient period with the theologies of Homer and the Hebrew Bible, to set the scene before Greek philosophy existed. Then we will trace the notion of perfection that developed in Greek philosophy, beginning with Parmenides and working through Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus. In this system of thought, for an entity (such as God) to be perfect, it cannot change. Yet, at the same time, even learning or movement constitute change for these philosophers. The impact this rigid notion of change had on the concepts of God espoused by theologians and in sources far from the schools of philosophy will be the focus of the second half of the course. From Aramaic translations of the Hebrew Bible to early Christian debates about the nature of Christ to medieval Jewish mysticism, we will see the problem of the perfection of God reverberating around the Mediterranean, across Mesopotamia, and down through the centuries. The central questions “Who wants a perfect God” and “What must we give up if we want our God to be perfect” will resound throughout the semester. Same as CLAS 3022, PHIL 3729, and RELG 3022.
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 3:40– 4:55 p.m. Professor Sharon Flatto In person (Capstone)
Eighteenth-century Jewish pietistic and revivalist movement that became the prevailing mode of life for much of 19th-century Eastern European Jewry. Explores the historical development of this movement and focuses on its central mystical doctrines and literature. Considers various historiographical approaches to Hasidism, the vehement opposition to it, and the often controversial role of messianism. This course is the same as History 3104.
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 11 a.m.– 12:15 p.m. Professor Robert Shapiro Online (Capstone)
History and analysis of Nazi Germany’s attempt to annihilate European Jewry, 1933-45. Ghettos and killing centers. Deportations and killings. Jewish physical and spiritual resistance, liberation, and postwar displaced persons camps. This course is the same as History 3243.
Mondays and Wednesdays, 2:15– 3:30 p.m. Professor Robert Shapiro Online (Capstone)
This course focuses on the first books by the most widely read survivor of the Holocaust, whose concise memoir Night has been read by millions as an iconic chronicle of the Holocaust. This course is unusual in that it starts with Wiesel’s much less known first book, published in 1956 in his native Yiddish as And the World Was Silent. We will read the first full English translation of this rare book that is the basis of Night and other of Wiesel’s earliest bestselling books. Any student who can read Yiddish will receive a free PDF of the original Un Di Velt Hot Geshvign.
