OSJS Summer Courses

Below is a list of the OSJS Summer Courses from previous years.

• 2005 OSJS summer courses
• 2004 OSJS summer courses
• 2003 OSJS summer courses
• 2002 OSJS summer courses

2003 OSJS Summer Courses

Environmental Ethics and Judaism
Shamu Fenyvesi
June 24-July 17 Tuesday/Thursday7-9:20pm
221 Cramer Hall, Portland State University
Sociology 099/410/510
CRN 82194/82195/82196
2 credits
Syllabus

Environmental issues raise fundamental moral and religious questions about human purpose and responsibility in the world. Using the Bible, Jewish religious texts, and contemporary writings, we explore Jewish perspectives on environmental ethics in the context of consumption and waste, food, global climate change and extinction, sense of place/bioregionalism, and bioengineering. Readings and discussions offer diverse perspectives on the role of humans in relation to God and nature, responsibility toward other species, and balancing human needs with ecological health.

Shamu Fenyvesi taught environmental studies in Massachusetts and Oregon and directed the Teva Learning Center in Connecticut before beginning doctoral studies in education at PSU. He has published on Jewish environmental ethics in Orion, Tikkun, and Ecology and the Jewish Spirit and has led Jewish wilderness trips for adults and children.

Jewish Music of the Shul, Stage, and Street
Norm Cohen
June 23-July 2 Monday/Wednesday7-9:20pm
403 Cramer Hall, Portland State University
Sociology 099/410/510
CRN 82197/82198/82199
1 credit
Syllabus

A nostalgic overview of Jewish music in the late 19th and 20th centuries, especially as captured in recordings. Topics include folk music, synagogue music, music from the Yiddish theater, instrumental music (klezmer), and music of Sephardic and Eastern European Jewish communities. The course is for anyone with an interest in Jewish music.No musical knowledge required. Profusely illustrated with recorded (and some film)examples.

Norm Cohen (PhD, UC Berkeley) taught the history of American folk music, including bluegrass, country, and Anglo-American folksong, at UCLA, Lewis & Clark College, and Portland Community College. His book, Long Steel Rail: The Railroad in American Folksong, won the American Folklore Society Botkin Prize and the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award. He produced Minstrels and Tunesmiths, Grammy nominee for best historical album.

Demystifying the Dead Sea Scrolls
Robert Kugler
July 7-July 16 Monday/Wednesday 7-9:20pm
228 Cramer Hall, Portland State University
History 099/410/510
CRN 82035/82036/82037
1 credit
Syllabus

The popular media portrays the Dead Sea Scrolls as texts shrouded in mystery. As a consequence their true importance is little understood by the wider public, especially their intimate connection to the Hebrew Bible as we know it today. After providing a basic introduction to the Scrolls, the course examines how they grew from the Hebrew Bible and interpreted in surprisingly familiar and strange ways its stories, laws, poetry, sermons, and wisdom.

Rob Kugler is the Paul S. Wright Professor of Christian Studies at Lewis & Clark College. He has published several books and numerous articles relating to the Dead Sea Scrolls and is presently authoring a volume on the use of the Book of Leviticus in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Reading/Writing American Jewish Poetry (CANCELLED)
Raphael Dagold
English 099/410/510
CRN 82200/82201/82202
2 credits
Syllabus

We read the work of contemporary American Jewish poets and essays on their poetry to explore the variety of the genre and what it means to place a particular poet or poem in the genre. Discussions address how to determine essential qualities of American Jewish poetry. We also write our own poems as a means of exploring these issues.

Raphael Dagold (MFA, University of Oregon) is a poet and teacher at Lewis & Clark College, Mt. Hood Community College, University of Oregon, Temple Beth Israel, and Writers-in-the-Schools. His work has appeared in Indiana Review, Washington Square, Shirim, Bridges, and other journals. His awards include honorable mention in the Anna Davidson Rosenberg Award for poems on the Jewish experience.

Jews and Conversos in Spanish History
Matthew Warshawsky
June 24-July 17Tuesday/Thursday 2:15-4:35pm
242 Shattuck Hall, Portland State University
History 099/410/510
CRN 82032/82033/82034
2 credits
Syllabus

The so-called Golden Age of Spanish Jewry ended with the Inquisition, conversion, and expulsion in 1492. Covering medieval Sephardim, new Christians or conversos, and the role of Jews in exile, the course examines Spain's rich Jewish history, including Spain's little-known role facilitating the flight of Jews from the Nazis.

Matthew Warshawsky (PhD, Ohio State University) teaches Spanish language and culture at the University of Portland. His research is on the literature of 17th-century Spanish new Christians and the Sephardic diaspora beyond the Iberian Peninsula.

Israeli/Palestinian Women's Voices: Short Stories
Bahar Jaberi
July 7-Tuesday/Thursday11:45am-2:05pm
221 Cramer Hall, Portland State University
English 099/410/510
CRN 821991/82192/82193
1 credit

The oral tradition of storytelling and the writing of short stories give voice to the lives of Palestinian and Israeli women, lives often absent from standard histories and media accounts. Through selected stories, the course examines the themes of family and community, homeland and identity.

From immigrant roots, Bahar Jaberi (MA English) works on the literature of diaspora and exile by American immigrant writers and on the British postcolonial writers of India. At PSU, she has offered the courses Arab-American Immigrant Literature and The Literature of Salman Rushdie and co-taught first- and second-year Farsi.

2002 OSJS Summer Courses

History 099, 410, 510 Origins and Decline of the Jewish-Black Alliance
Don Avery, Harford Community College, Maryland
Murray Friedman writes: " Blacks and Jews cannot achieve agreement about their future until they have achieved a common understanding of their past." Covering four periods: Origins (1900-1950);Zenith (1950-1965); Collapse (1965-1995); and Jews and Blacks Today and Tomorrow, the course uses readings from Paul Berman, Clayborne Carson, Harold Cruse, Hasia Diner, and David Levering Lewis.

Don Avery taught African-American and Jewish-American history at Johns Hopkins University, Towson University, and the University of Oregon where he received his PhD. Chair of Social Sciences at Harford, he published a history of the NAACP before 1954.

English 099, 410, 510 Bridging The Old World And The New: Short Fiction Of Isaac Bashevis Singer
Evelyn Avery, Towson University
"As long as there are two Yiddish speakers, the language is not dead," declared I.B. Singer who dedicated himself to keeping Yiddish alive in novels, short stories, and memoirs of the Jewish experience in East Europe and immigrant America. The course examines selected short stories and a novella by Singer, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Evelyn Avery is Professor of English and Coordinator of Jewish Studies at Towson University where she teaches a seminar on Singer. A specialist in American Jewish literature, she published The Magic Worlds Of Bernard Malamud in 2001.

Sociology 099, 410, 510 Jewish Foodways
Steve Siporin, Utah State University
The course examines food as a language - what food means in religious and secular Jewish contexts. Through readings by anthropologists and folklorists, it covers dietary regulations (kashrut) and contemporary customs like shalach mones andeating out in Chinese restaurants. Not a "how to" class in keeping kosher or preparing certain dishes, it deals with the centrality of food in Jewish culture.

Steve Siporin has his Ph.D. from Indiana University and is professor of folklore at Utah State University. He has written on the Jews of Venice and Italian Jewish foodways and is currently completing a translation of Augusto Segre's memoir, Memories of Jewish Life.

English 099, 410, 510 Forbidden Tales of the Bible: Reclaiming Moral
Complexity in Jewish Tradition
Rebecca Jennings, Morasha Jewish Day School
The Bibleis full of stories of sex, scandal, and violence, but these have become marginalized and obscured in Jewish tradition. This course recovers the powerful lessons on character and values that they teach us. Biblical stories studied include Lot and his daughters, the rape of Dinah, and the seduction of Judah by Tamar. For experienced readers or those new to text, this seminar-style study offers a deeper understanding of the Bible's lessons on moral life.

Rebecca Jennings is Judaic Studies Coordinator at the Morasha Jewish Day School in California where she teaches Torah and offers enrichment programs for educators. She is a member of Morasha's Leadership team for Jewish Day Schools for the Twenty-first Century, a national multi-year project that helps Jewish schools identify and express their central guiding Jewish values.

Sociology 099, 410, 510 Klezmer Music: From Underground to Outer Edge
Lev Liberman, Ethnomusicologist and performer
Klezmer - Eastern European Yiddish instrumental music - emigrated to America circa 1910, went underground in the Great Depression, and re-emerged in the 1970s. We'll explore its timeless appeal through rare recordings and live musical demonstrations - tracking the genre's evolution from Ukrainian village bands to the postmodern avant-garde. Topics include: mad genius clarinetist Naftule Brandwein; influences of Roma (Gypsies); the dark ages of Catskills kitsch; dynamics of the klezmer revival; today's trailblazing stylists in neo-klezmer fusion; and Euro-roots retro.

Lev Liberman co-founded The Klezmorim - the world's first klezmer-revival band - in 1975, performing worldwide with the Grammy-nominated group until 1988 when he returned to his native Portland. He taught Yiddish and Jewish music at Lehrhaus Judaica in Berkeley, CA and was director of the archives of music and performing arts at the Judah Magnes Museum.

English 308U Jewish Women's Lives
Jacqueline Arante, Portland State University
Biography and memoir are windows into the lives of modern Jewish women. In preparation for doing short biographies, we read selected works that explore the legacies of immigration and diaspora, ideas of family and home, identity and the self.

History 487U, 587 Palestine and Israel
Jon Mandaville, Portland State University
The course reviews the 19th and 20th century history of the people of Palestine and Israel with attention to major cultural, socio-economic and political transformations. Surveys a range of interpretations by contemporary scholars.

English 410, 510 New Immigrant Literature
Susan Danielson, Portland State University
Changes in the representation of the immigrant experience over the past century. The course explores literature and film as avenues through which immigrant communities explore and debate the inevitable dislocation and loss caused by this journey. Includes readings by Jewish writers such as Anzya Yezierska, Isaac Beshevis Singer, and Eva Hoffman and films such as My Yiddishe Mama.

History 099, 410, 510 Communications and Media in the History of East European Jewry
Shaul Stampfer, Hebrew University
Oral communication such as gossip, rumor, and talking during synagogue services knit traditional East European Jewish communities together. Its place was altered by printing and the spread of cheap novels, penny newspapers, and "high" literature. Through a comparative approach, the course examines how communications maintained and transformed the character of Jewish communities in East Europe and the New World.

Shaul Stampfer is Senior Lecturer in East European Jewish History at the Hebrew University. An English translation of his book on Lithuanian Yeshivot will appear soon. He spent 1989-1992 working in Jewish education in Russia and remains active in teacher training in the Former Soviet Union.
Section 2B - July 9-18, Tuesday/Thursday evenings 7:00-9:20 pm

History 099, 410, 510 War and Peace in Israeli Cinema
Alon Raab, University of Oregon
The history of modern Israel is one of strife and war but also of constant movement towards peace with its Palestinian and Arab neighbors and citizens. The course examines portrayals of the wars and the peace process in Israeli cinema. Attention is given to the myths a society creates about itself. Readings and discussions address two narrative films and two documentaries viewed in the course.

Alon Raab earned his master's in Jewish History at Hebrew University and teaches at the University of Oregon, where he is currently researching utopias and dystopias in Israeli literature. Film editor of the Portland Alliance, he writes on film and politics.