WINTER 2009 JUDAIC STUDIES & HEBREW COURSES

Eng 308 Messiahs in Modern Jewish Literature
TTh 10:00 - 11:50
Weingrad

How have the religious concepts of redemption, apocalypse, and messianism been transformed in modern Jewish literature? How are these concepts used to convey the experience of secular modernity, of Zionist state-building, of the Holocaust? We will read a range of novels and poems by major modern writers such as Isaac Bashevis Singer and Uri Zvi Greenberg, all in English translation, as well as theoretical and historical essays about Jewish messianic movements from antiquity to the present. Recommended: a course in modern Jewish literature or history.

Eng 410/510 Writing the Holy Land
MW 10:15-12:05
Weingrad

An examination of memoirs, poetry, essays, and fiction produced by American Jews who choose to become Israeli citizens. We will gain an understanding of this writing in its American contexts-including attention to 19th-century works by Mark Twain and Herman Melville, and the early American biblical imagination-and in its Jewish and Zionist contexts, both religious and secular. Consideration of how conditions of war and terrorism are represented in literature.

Eng 410/510 Sages and Mystics: Postbiblical Jewish Literature
W 5:30-9:10pm
Seidel

An introduction to the key genres of post biblical Jewish literature from the Second Century CE to the Tenth . We will study selections from the Mishnah, Halakhic and Aggadic Midrash, the Babylonian Talmud , historical chronicles, early midrashic fantasy and “novels” as well as mystical and magical treatises. Students will also be introduced to recent literary – critical studies including a variety of articles from a post-modern and cultural studies perspective.

Hst 344U Jews & Judaism in the U.S. Since 1945
TTh 10:00 - 11:50
Maizels

Topics include immigrant culture and memory; antisemitism; postwar affluence and migration; the counterculture; Jewish-black relations; liberalism, radicalism, and neoconservativism; feminism and the transformation of women's roles; the revival of orthodoxy.

Hst 399 The Holocaust
TTh 2:00 - 3:50
Meir

An introduction to the Nazi-planned and executed genocide of European Jewry that has come to be known as the Holocaust. Topics includes the German and European contexts for the rise of Nazism; the nature of antisemitism and its links to Nazi ideology and policy; the circumstances of European Jewry in the interwar period; the "Final Solution"; the nature and definition of resistance; the question of the "bystanders"; and varieties of responses to the Holocaust.

Hst 461/561 Eastern European Jewish Society & Culture
MW 2:00 - 3:50
Meir

Eastern Europe was one of the great centres of Jewish civilization in the early modern and modern periods. This course explores the society that Jews created, a world unto itself but also closely interlinked with the surrounding Slavic and Christian society. Topics include the structure of Jewish community, Jewish religious culture, socioeconomic patterns, and modern political and literary developments from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries.

Heb102 First-Year Hebrew
MWF 9:00-10:05
Yariv

Second in a three-course introductory sequence of grammar and syntax, reading, writing, and speaking. For non-native speakers of Hebrew. Prerequisite: Hebrew 101 or equivalent.

Heb 202 Second-Year Hebrew
MWF 11:30-12:35
Yariv

Second in a three-course intermediate sequence of grammar and syntax, reading, writing, and speaking. Prerequisite: Hebrew 201 or equivalent. For non-native speakers of Hebrew.

Heb 302 Third-Year Hebrew
MWF 2:00-3:05
Yariv

This course advances beyond second-year modern Hebrew, developing reading, writing, and speaking skills with an emphasis on literary readings and essays. Prerequisite: Hebrew 203 or equivalent. For non-native speakers of Hebrew.