Jewish Studies

JUD 101 Elementary Modern Hebrew I (5 Credits)

The first half of a two-semester sequence introducing modern Hebrew language and culture, with a focus on equal development of the four language skills: reading, writing, speaking and listening. Learning is amplified by use of online resources (YouTube, Facebook, newspapers) and examples from Hebrew song, television and film. No previous knowledge of modern Hebrew is necessary. This course is available to Mount Holyoke College students through a simultaneous video-conferencing option. Enrollment limited to 18.

Fall

JUD 102 Elementary Modern Hebrew II (5 Credits)

The second half of a two-semester sequence introducing modern Hebrew language and culture, with a focus on equal development of the four language skills: reading, writing, speaking and listening. By the end of the year, students are able to comprehend short and adapted literary and journalistic texts, describe themselves and their environment, and express their thoughts and opinions. Learning is amplified by use of online resources (YouTube, Facebook, newspapers) and examples from Hebrew song and television/film. Prerequisite: JUD 101 or equivalent. This course is available to Mount Holyoke College students through a simultaneous video-conferencing option. Enrollment limited to 18. {F}

Spring

JUD 115 Topics in What Matters (1 Credit)

Topics course. Explores pressing questions at the heart of Jewish Studies from multiple theoretical, historical, political, cultural and artistic perspectives. S/U only. JUD 115 may be repeated with a different topic.

Fall, Spring, Variable

JUD 115as Topics in What Matters-Antisemitism (1 Credit)

Members of the Program in Jewish Studies and invited guests talk with students about forms of Jew-hatred. Analysis and criticism of related concepts, including peoplehood, religion, nationality, ethnicity, race, anti-Judaism, Aryan racism, Judaeophobia, White Supremacy and anti-Zionism. S/U only. JUD 115 may be repeated with a different topic. {H}{L}

Fall, Spring, Variable

JUD 115tt Topics in What Matters- Thinking Through Jewish Studies (1 Credit)

Members of the Program in Jewish Studies talk with students about how their research and teaching animates not only their interpretation of Jewish histories and cultures but also their understanding of contemporary events and their role as global citizens. S/U only. {H}{L}

Fall, Spring, Variable

JUD 125/ REL 125 The Jewish Tradition (4 Credits)

Offered as REL 125 and JUD 125. Who are the Jews? What is Judaism? How have Jews understood core ideas and texts, and put their values into practice, from biblical times until today? An interdisciplinary introduction to the dramatic story of Jewish civilization and its conversation with different cultures from religious, historical, political, philosophical, literary and cultural perspectives, organized around different themes. {H}{L}

Fall, Spring, Annually

JUD 131 Jews of New York (2 Credits)

When and how did New York become a major center for Jewish life? This course explores the history, cultural expression, and social dynamics of one of the world’s most influential Jewish communities. The course examines Jewish immigration waves, life in tenement housing, neighborhoods including the Lower East Side, Boro Park, and Brighton Beach, as well as Jewish contributions to the city’s artistic life. This course culminates in a field trip to Jewish sites in New York including the Museum at Eldridge St., Tenement Museum, The Jewish Museum, and YIVO, as well as walking tours of Boro Park and Brighton Beach. Course materials—historical primary sources, literary texts, historical scholarship, and art by Jewish artists—are designed to deepen understanding of these sites before students visit them. S/U only. (E) {H}{L}

Fall, Spring, Variable

JUD 214/ REL 214 Women in the Bible (4 Credits)

Offered as JUD 214 and REL 214. This course focuses on the characterization and lives of women in ancient Israel through close readings of the text. The course looks at depictions of various named and unnamed female biblical characters to illuminate the range of roles women occupied and the variety of ways the Bible viewed women. The course also explores women in biblical law, sex/gender in prophetic and wisdom literature, goddess worship in the ancient Near East and the female body as a source of metaphor. {H}

Fall, Spring, Alternate Years

JUD 217/ REL 217 Motherhood in Early Judaism (4 Credits)

Offered as JUD 217 and REL 217. How did early Jewish communities imagine mothers, and what does this reveal about communal ideas of gender, family and identity in early Judaism? This course considers various manifestations of mothers in early Judaism through exploration of such literary sources as the Bible, rabbinic literature and the pseudepigrapha, as well as artifacts from material culture such as Aramaic incantation bowls, synagogue wall paintings and other archeological evidence. No prior knowledge of Judaism is expected. {A}{L}

Fall, Spring, Variable

JUD 223 The Modern Jewish Experience (4 Credits)

A thematic survey of Jewish history and thought from the 18th century to the present, examining Jews as a minority in the global diaspora. The course analyzes changing dynamics of integration and exclusion of Jews in various societies as well as diverse forms of Jewish religion, culture, and identity among Sephardic, Ashkenazic, and Mizrahi Jews. Readings include major philosophic, mystical, and political works in addition to primary sources on the lives of Jewish women and men, families and communities, and messianic and popular movements. The course also explores tensions between assimilation and cohesion, tradition and renewal, and history and memory. {H}

Fall, Spring, Alternate Years

JUD 227 Women and Gender in Jewish History (4 Credits)

Previously REL 227. An exploration of Jewish women’s changing social roles, religious stances and cultural expressions in a variety of historical settings from ancient to modern times. How did Jewish women negotiate religious tradition, gender and cultural norms to fashion lives for themselves as individuals and as family and community members in diverse societies? Readings from a wide range of historical, religious, theoretical and literary works in order to address examples drawn from Biblical and rabbinic Judaism, medieval Islamic and Christian lands, modern Europe, America and the Middle East. Students' final projects involve archival work in the Sophia Smith Collection of Women's History. {H}{S}

Fall, Spring, Variable

JUD 228/ HST 228 The Jew in the Medieval World (4 Credits)

Offered as JUD 228 and HST 228. How does the medieval period influence or complicate contemporary understandings of race, religious cooperation and rivalry, and constructions of otherness?  Explores intellectual and cultural cross-pollination in the Islamic Middle East and North Africa, the Iberian Peninsula, and Europe, including crises reflected in disputations, crusades, exile and murder. Open to students at all levels. {H}{L}

Fall, Spring, Variable

JUD 230/ ENG 230 American Jewish Literature (4 Credits)

Offered as JUD 230 and ENG 230. Explores the significant contributions and challenges of Jewish writers and critics to American literature, broadly defined. Discussions include the American dream and its discontents; immigrant fiction; Yiddish in America; ethnic satire and humor; crises of the left involving 60s radicalism and Black-Jewish relations; after-effects of the Holocaust; and the novel as alternate history. Must Jewish writing remain on the margins, too ethnic for the mainstream yet insufficient for contemporary gatekeepers of diversity? No prerequisites. {H}{L}

Fall, Spring, Variable

JUD 231 "Arab Jews": Reorienting Jewish History (4 Credits)

In 1939 there were approximately a million Jews living across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), from Morocco to Iran. Today, most countries in the MENA region have Jewish populations ranging from the single digits to a couple thousand. This course explores why this dissolution of MENA Jewish communities happened and proposes that the history of Middle Eastern and North African Jews in the modern period can be a point of departure for students interested in investigating other major areas of study: Jewish studies, Middle East studies, and Israel/Palestine studies. {H}

Fall, Variable

JUD 232 Magic (4 Credits)

Magic is often considered incompatible with normative religious practice. However, a close examination of Jewish experience reveals a lively magical tradition which understands the world to be teeming with supernatural and semi-divine forces that could be controlled through magical objects, rituals, and incantations. This course explores a wide variety of sources, from canonical religious texts to spells, recipes, magic manuals, folk beliefs, material artifacts, and faith healers and mystics. Careful attention is paid to the role of gender in the practice of and attitudes towards magic. Students learn about the diversity of magic practiced by Jews in different cultural contexts, the contested relationship between magical and mainstream Jewish practice, and magic as a point of interaction between Jewish and non-Jewish cultures. (E) {H}{L}

Fall, Alternate Years

JUD 235/ MES 235 Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (4 Credits)

Offered as JUD 235 and MES 235. What is in dispute between Israelis and Palestinians? What has prevented a resolution to the conflict, and why does it continue to arouse such regional and global passions? Considers key issues such as dueling national narratives and territorial claims, the status of Jerusalem, refugees, religious extremism and terrorism, security, international law, and the shifting role of regional and international players and activists. No prerequisites. Open to students at all levels interested in moving beyond the headlines. {H}{S}

Fall, Spring, Alternate Years

JUD 252 Love and Sex in Global Jewish Culture (4 Credits)

From matchmaking to interfaith entanglements, from revolutionaries’ refashioning of desire to queer romances—Jewish writers and directors have long explored love and sex to understand shifting social values, family dynamics, and the evolving role of Jewish tradition. This course examines how these intimate themes illuminate the complexities of identity, immigration, and global Jewish life. Through novels, film, and television from North and South America, the Middle East and North Africa, and Europe, the course examines how Jewish stories of love speak across borders and generations. (E)

Spring, Variable

JUD 253 Colloquium: Queer Jewish Lives and Culture (4 Credits)

What does it mean to be Jewish and queer? What does Jewish tradition have to say about gender and sexuality? How do those ideas continue to impact queer Jewish lives today? How have artists--particularly literary writers and film directors--represented the intersections between Jewishness and queerness? These are just a few of the questions this course explores through Biblical texts and their commentaries, memoirs, biographies, documentaries, films, literature, and theoretically engaged scholarly works. Students also attend a Pride Tour at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, MA. These sources introduce multidisciplinary approaches to the intersections between queerness and Jewishness, queer Jews’ lived experiences, and cultural representations of queer Jews. (E) {H}{L}

Fall, Spring, Variable

JUD 260 Colloquium: Yiddish Literature and Culture (4 Credits)

Why did Yiddish, the everyday language of Jews in east Europe and beyond, so often find itself at the bloody crossroads of art and politics? From dybbuks and shlemiels to radicals and revolutionaries, the course explores Yiddish stories, drama, and film as sites for social activism, ethnic and gender performance, and artistic experimentation in Europe, the Soviet Union, and the Americas. How did post-Holocaust engagements with Yiddish memorialize a lost civilization and forge an imagined homeland defined by language and culture rather than borders? All texts in translation. No prerequisites. Enrollment limited to 18. {L}

Fall, Spring, Alternate Years

JUD 263 Colloquium: The Jewish Graphic Novel (4 Credits)

Traces the history of major antecedents to the graphic novel and related works, including illustrated books, journalistic cartoons, and comics and sequential art. Topics include Jewish secularism; Yiddish theatre and literature; comic strips; comic books; editorial and magazine cartoons; book, magazine, and other forms of illustration; and a range of Jewish graphic novels, primarily from the United States, Canada, and Israel, with some consideration of creators and publications from Europe and the Middle East. {A}{L}

Spring

JUD 284 Colloquium: The Lost World of East European Jewry, 1750-1945 (4 Credits)

The modern history of the largest Jewish community in the world, from life under the Russian tsars until its extermination in World War II. Topics include Jewish political autonomy under the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth; the shifting effects on Jews in Russian, Soviet and Polish society of Partition, tsarist legislation, Revolution, Sovietization and the emergence of the modern nation-state; the folkways and domestic culture of Ashkenaz; competition between new forms of ecstatic religious expression and Jewish Enlightenment thought; the rise of mass politics (Zionism, Socialism, Diaspora Nationalism, Yiddishism) and the role of language (Yiddish, Hebrew, Russian, Polish) in the creation of secular Jewish identity; and the tension between memory and nostalgia in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Concludes with an analysis of the recently opened Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. Enrollment limited to 18. {H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

JUD 287/ HST 287 The Holocaust (4 Credits)

Offered as JUD 287 and HST 287. The history of the Final Solution, from the role of European antisemitism and the origins of Nazi ideology to the implementation of a systematic program to annihilate European Jewry. How did Hitler establish a genocidal regime? How did Jews physically, culturally and theologically respond to this persecution? {H}

Fall, Spring, Alternate Years

JUD 288 History of Israel (4 Credits)

Focusing on the developments of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this course provides foundational knowledge of the region, as well as some of the major debates among historians about topics like the emergence and trajectories of Jewish and Palestinian nationalism, Zionist settlement and Arab resistance, the British mandate and colonialism, and the politics of memory. Concluding with some of the present challenges facing the state of Israel and the Palestinian territories, this course prepares students to analyze contemporary reports and journalism using historical context. {H}

Fall, Spring, Variable

JUD 362jf Seminar: Topics in Jewish Studies-Judaism and Feminism (4 Credits)

How did the feminist movement impact Judaism and Jewish self-identity, and how and why did Jews play a formative role at key moments in feminist history? Discussions include feminist midrash, ritual innovation and contested issues such as divorce, women's religious leadership and LGBTQ Jews in religious law and practice. Experiential learning is emphasized through lectures from guest speakers, work in the Smith archives which houses the papers of several groundbreaking American (Jewish) feminists and visits to local sites. A prior course in Jewish Studies is helpful, but not required. Restrictions: Juniors and seniors only; JUD 362 may be repeated once with a different topic. Enrollment limited to 12. Instructor permission required. {H}{S}

Fall, Spring, Variable

JUD 362yl Seminar: Topics in Jewish Studies-Yiddishland (4 Credits)

Explores the relationship between East European Jewish history and post-Holocaust and post-Communist memory through the prism of Yiddishland, the dream of a transnational homeland defined by language and culture rather than borders. The seminar includes a course field trip to Poland over March break. Restrictions: Juniors and seniors only; JUD 362 may be repeated once with a different topic. Enrollment limited to 12. Instructor permission required. {H}{L}

Spring, Variable

JUD 400 Special Studies (1-4 Credits)

Advanced research or language study, conducted by a faculty member in Jewish studies. Instructor permission required.

Fall, Spring

JUD 430D Honors Project (4 Credits)

Full-year course offered each year. Credits: 8 for year-long course. Department permission required.

Fall, Spring