Jewish Studies Courses 2009-2010
Due to room availability and related issues, days/times may change. Please refer to both the UW Time Schedule and to Student Services (206 543 6001) for the most up-to-date information.

Winter 2010 

C LIT 240 - Students must talk to Linda Iltis in Student Advising, Thomson 111A so that she can adjust the record to allow this course.
Writing in Comparative Literature: Crisis and Identity in Modern Jewish Fiction
Rogovin Daily 10:30 - 11:20.
     Introduces writing critical essays in the discipline of Comparative Literature and aims to develop writing and critical skills through a variety of discussion, group-work, and writing assignments. Focuses on  crisis and identity in modern Jewish fiction with much attention to the narrative techniques applied in its communication. The writers are Jewish by birth but their writing - in different ways and degrees - deals with universal problems: ethnic or religious identity and commitment to it; the power of religious faith; immigration and immersion; familial problems and confrontation; personal development and demise; weak men and powerful women. Readings are English translations of stories and novellas by twentieth century Jewish writers from different cultures and continents: Berkowitz (Hebrew), Roth (English), Singer (Yiddish), Kafka (German), Appelfeld (Hebrew), and Bellow (English). The ultimate goal is to produce an interesting, precise, well-grounded, and well-articulated analysis of literary texts while making use of the approaches and techniques of Comparative Literature.

HEBR 412
Elementary Modern Hebrew
two sections daily 9:30 and 10:30.

HEBR 422
Intermediate Modern Hebrew
Sokoloff Daily 11:30.

HEBR 428
Inscriptions from Biblical Times
Martin MWF 10:30 - 11:50.

HIST 388
Antisemitism in America
Glenn M 1:30-3:20.
Historians frequently refer to the United States as the great "exception" to the general historical pattern of anti-Jewish persecution in Europe. The Jews of the United States were never the victims of state-sponsored inquisitions, expulsions, pogroms, or holocausts. Yet as we shall see in this course, even in the relatively free and more inclusive society of the United States, Jews faced considerable prejudice, discrimination, and, at times, outright violence. Many of the same ideas and attitudes that culminated in the extermination of Europe's Jews contributed in less catastrophic ways to Jew-hatred (antisemitism) in the United States. This course examines the history of anti-Jewish ideology and anti-Jewish activity in the United States from the end of the nineteenth century to the present, the relationship between antisemitism and racism, and the response of Jewish organizations and individuals to patterns of anti-Jewish prejudice and discrimination.This is a "W" course.

NEAR E 240
Introduction to the Hebrew Bible
Noegel TTh 1:30 - 3:20.
Examines the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) in translation and its relationship with literatures of ancient Near East. Comparisons drawn between the biblical text and the literary works of Canaan, Egypt, Greece, and Mesopotamia. Emphasis on the sophisticated literary techniques employed by the biblical writers.

RELIG 400
Jewish Mystical Tradition
Jaffee MW 11:30 – 12:50.
This course invites students to consider the range of theological outlooks and patterns of life that are commonly defined by the term “Kabbalah” and to interpret their cultural meaning. After preliminary discussion of the antecedents of Kabbalah in the pre-Islamic Middle East, we will focus on the cultural significance of the Zohar, the central text of Kabbalah, that first appeared in late 13th-century Spain. This unit of the course will also survey such crucial post-Zoharic Kabbalistic movements as Lurianic Kabbalah, Sabbatianism and Hasidism. The final unit of the course concludes with reflections on the meaning of the recent explosion of interest in Kabbalah among Jewish and non-Jewish “New Age” communities in secular, post-Christian culture. We devote special attention to the influential teachings of Rabbi Philip Berg, founder of the Kabbalah Center.

SIS 150/NEAR E 150
Israel Israel: Dynamic Society and Global Flashpoint
Pianko/Barzilai/Sokoloff/Burstein MWF 12:30 - 1:20 + two sections
Introduces the people, institutions, and culture of Israel in the context of larger global forces. Examines domestic, regional, and international elements, both historically and in the contemporary period, that have shaped Israel's culture, politics, and special role in world affairs. Topics include nationalism, ethnicity, politics, religion, film, literature, and culture.

SISJE 250/HIST 250
Introduction to Jewish Cultural History
Pianko TTh 1:30-3:20.
Jews are often viewed as a group associated with the Jewish religious tradition. However, Jews have also developed distinct Jewish cultures throughout their history with religious practices and beliefs constituting only one component. This class will explore various expressions of Jewish culture including biblical, Hellenistic, Judeo-Arabic, Sephardic, Ashkenazic, Eastern European, American and Israeli. As we analyze Jewish culture across time and space, we will discuss how Jews both adopted the cultural assumptions of their neighbors and adapted these traditions to preserve a distinct identity.

SISJE 269/HIST 269
The Holocaust: History and Memory
Poiger (details to come)
Explores the Holocaust as crucial event of the twentieth century. Examines the origins of the Holocaust, perpetrators and victims, and efforts to come to terms with this genocide in Europe, Israel, and the United States.

SISJE 295/GERMAN 295
German Jewish Writers: Enlightenment to Auschwitz
Block MWF 1:30 – 1:20.
What does it mean to seek equal status as a citizen when the primary marker of one’s identity, that of being Jewish, is indicative of a dream to return to Zion? How does one demand of the other, the Jew, that (s)he become German when the very notion of “Germanness” is vague, uncertain, and forever changing? These are the primary questions that will structure our discussions during the term. We will also be interested in the tragic trajectory that proposed solutions to these problems assumed. In other words, we will seek to understand why for Jews the eventual solution to their predicament in Germany was to abandon dreams of assimilation and argue for the birth of a Jewish state. Conversely, we will examine how religious anti-Semitism led to racial anti-Semitism and finally to genocidal anti-Semitism. That is, how for Germans the solution to the “Jewish problem” became a final one: the extermination of all Jews from the globe. The course will also pursue a second trajectory, namely, the messianic in Jewish thought. How does the coming of the messiah or the fact that he has not yet arrived affect the disposition Jews assume toward their own lives? How do they read history? How do they conceive of truth when truth is not yet revealed save through ritual law? And finally, what does revolution have to do with the Jewish notion of messianism?

SISJE 458/NEAR E 458 Babylonian Talmud
Jaffee TTh 10:30 – 12:20.
Our approach to the Talmud will be historical and literary in focus. Thus we will first situate the written version of the Talmud in its various historical, geographical, and cultural settings in the Roman and Sasanian Middle East of Late Antiquity and early Islamic times. On this basis the bulk of the course will introduce students to the complex discourse of the Talmud and some of its major interpretive puzzles. Special attention will be devoted to the many signs of the ancient oral transmissional processes that undergird the written versions that survive in modern times. All texts will be studied in English translation based upon standard modern editions as illumined by traditional and modern commentaries. Students competent in Hebrew and/or Aramaic can earn an extra two credits by participating for one hour per week in study of the Talmudic text in a modern edition in the original languages.

SISJE 490B/NEAR E 496B Click here for Flyer
Israel Before Statehood: The Yishuv and the Construction of Culture
Sokoloff TTh 1:30 - 3:20.
Zionism aimed to transform Jewish life in wide-ranging ways. This course examines how the Yishuv -- the Jewish community in the “Land of Israel” before the establishment of the State of Israel -- created a new “Hebrew” culture through a revival of the Hebrew language and through literature, art, architecture, folksong, and public ceremonies. Focusing on the years 1882-1948, we will consider how the Yishuv constructed a new definition of “Jews” as “Hebrews,” and how the effort to forge a synthesis of tradition and innovation expressed itself in clothing, labor practices, religious observances, collective rituals, and city planning

SISJE 490C/NEAR E 496C
Special Studies: The Torah/Pentateuch Martin MWF 1:30 – 2:50.
An introduction to the historical‐critical study of the Torah/Pentateuch. Beginning with a survey of the content and structure of the 5 booksthat comprise the Pentateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy), the course then examines a wide range of problems, theories and methods with which modern scholarship on the Pentateuch and its composition is engaged. No knowledge of the Bible or Hebrew is required

SISJE 490D
Special Topics: Love, Labor, Loss: The Lives of Ashkenazi Jewish Women in Yiddish Song
Vaisman TTh 3:30 - 5:20.
Twelve-stanza murder ballads about forbidden love, sweatshop workers’ laments at the sewing machine, and lullabies with graphic descriptions of the Holocaust are just a few examples of the wealth of Yiddish songs by, for, and about Jewish women. For centuries, women expressed their joy, suffering, interests, and concerns through songs, many of which have fortunately been passed down and collected, surviving to the present day. This course will use these songs (in translation) to examine the lives of Ashkenazi Jewish women in Eastern Europe and America over the past 150 years.

Spring 2010 (Details to be confirmed)

HEBR 413
Elementary Modern Hebrew
Daily 10:30.

HEBR 423
Intermediate Modern Hebrew
Sokoloff Daily 11:30.

NEAR E 441 (496 is space holder)
Literature and the Holocaust
Sokoloff TTh 2:30 - 4:30.

RELIG 210
Introduction to Judaism
Jaffee MTWTh 11:30-12:20.

SIS 490
Judaism in a Global Age
Pianko TTh 1:30 - 3:20.

SIS 498
Readings in International Studies: Zionism, Nationalism and Sovereignty
W 2:30-4:20

SISJE 377/SOC 377
American Jewish Community
Burstein

SISJE 452/NEAR E 452
Song of Songs
Martin MWF 1:30 - 2:20 PM

SISJE 490C
Holocaust in Popular Culture
Block

ARAMIC 421
Biblical Aramaic
Martin MWF 10:30 – 11:50 AM

ARCHIVES

Autumn 2009 

SISJE 490A
Post-Holocaust Identities in the Jewish Diaspora View Flyer
Friedman TTh 1:30 - 3:20.
This course seeks to draw upon and supplement the burgeoning literature on the multiple new ways of expressing Jewish identity in the Diaspora. The course will focus upon one question: what are the touchstones of Jewish identification or affiliation for young Jewish adults today? The course will be conducted as a workshop with background readings and limited lectures. Students will learn how to gather information on Jewish identity through fieldwork and research interviews, and will write a major research paper in several stages. Some knowledge of Jewish History and Judaism will be helpful. This course is not appropriate for auditors.

SISJE 490 B/ENGL 311
Modern Jewish Literature in Translation
Butwin MW 2:30 – 4:20.
This course requires the words “in translation” in order to accommodate the many languages adopted by Jewish writers after 1880 – Yiddish, Hebrew, Russian, German…. But as I look to the content and not simply the language of these stories, I am inclined to replace the word “translation” with “transition,” for new writing in each of these languages would emerge from the alteration, the migration, and the Revolution that would transform traditional Jewish life in the shtetl and the ghetto of Eastern Europe before its obliteration in the early 1940s. This course will reveal the vitality of this multi-lingual Jewish culture before the Second World War. Our readings are entirely comprised of short fiction from the Yiddish of Sholom Aleichem and I.L. Peretz, the Hebrew of Dvora Baron, the Russian of Isaac Babel and the German of Franz Kafka and Joseph Roth.

HEBR 411
Elementary Modern Hebrew
Two sections daily at 9:30 and 10:30.

HEBR 421
Intermediate Modern Hebrew
Sokoloff Daily 11:30

HEBR 457
Hebrew in Song View Flyer
Sokoloff TTh 2:30 – 3:50
Popular song has played a central and very lively role in the shaping of modern Hebrew culture and Israeli identity. In this class we will examine a range of diverse lyrics, including selections from folksongs, pop, rock, musika mizrahit, children’s songs and more. The course aims to help students build their Hebrew vocabulary and improve their dictionary and composition skills, while providing a brief historical overview of important trends in Israeli popular music. Topics will include the sing-along, the army ensembles, song festivals and competitions, the rise of minorities, major poets set to music, outstanding performers and songwriters, traditional and religious sources, international influences, and changes in the media.

NEAR E 220
Introduction to the Ancient Near East
Martin MWF 1:30 - 2:50 PM.

RELIG 415
Modern Jewish Thought View Flyer
Pianko MW 2:30 – 4:20.
What is Judaism? Why retain a Jewish identity in the modern world? What (if any) religious, cultural, social beliefs or activities characterize Jews? By the end of this course, students will have the ability to discuss the ways in which important Jewish intellectuals in Europe and America responded to these defining challenges of the modern Jewish experience. Through close reading of the works of thinkers such as Moses Mendelssohn, Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, Mordecai Kaplan and Abraham Joshua Heschel, we will attempt to gain a deeper understanding of the intellectual and social pressures that Jewish thinkers encountered in the wake of the Enlightenment and political emancipation. We will focus on the various strategies that were developed to justify the continuation of Jewish life in response to these challenges. This investigation will also raise more general questions regarding the nature of religious, social, and political identity in the modern world.
 

2008-2009 

Spring 2009

C LIT 323
Literature of Emerging Nations: Hebrew Literature and Jewish National Identity
Sokoloff TTh 2:30-4:20

HEBR 413
Elementary Modern Hebrew .
Horovitz
Two sections being offered
MTWThF 9:30 - 10:20 and
MTWThF 10:30 - 11:20.

HEBR 423
Intermediate Modern Hebrew
MTWThF 11:30 - 12:20.

HEBR 426
Biblical Hebrew Prose
Vermeulen MWF 10:30 – 11:50.

NEAR E 454
Israel First Six Centuries
Martin
MWF 2:30 – 3:20.

NEAR E 457
History of Biblical Interpretation
Martin
MWF 3:30 – 4:20.

SISJE 250/HIST 250
Introduction to Jewish Cultural History
Jaffee MTWTh 11:30 - 12:20.

SISJE 454/NEAR E 454
Israel the First Six Centuries
Martin MWF 1:30 – 2:20.

SISJE 490A - No auditors
Jewish Communities of the Middle East
Jackson TTh 2:30 - 3:50 PM
This class studies Jewish communities of the Middle East through focusing on
one of the region’s most significant historical Jewish communities –
Sephardic Jewry. We will follow the expulsion of Sephardic Jews from Spain and Portugal in the 15th century to their lives in the Ottoman empire, Turkey and beyond. How did Jews and their neighbors live together, shaping local arts, economies, relationships, cuisines? How were Jewish communities governed under Islamic administrations? What kinds of historical transformations took place in Sephardic communities across the centuries? In the modern period we will investigate issues of nationalism, citizenship and migration, as well as how Sephardic Jews are remembered today. To probe these questions, we will study primary and secondary sources, including historical scholarship, memoirs, fiction, film, and music. We will discuss how historians think about and evaluate sources, interrogate historical ‘objectivity,’ and develop tools for critically reading diverse historical narratives.Required Texts: Aron Rodrigue and Esther Benbassa, Sephardi Jewry: A History of the Judeo-Spanish Community, 14th-20th Centuries. University of California Press, 2000 [1993]. Leon Skiaky, Farewell to Salonica: City at the Crossroads. Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2003 [1946]. Course reading packet.

SISJE 490B/POL 420
Polish-Jewish Relations in Literature and Film
Chojnowski WF 12:30 - 2:20.

 Summer 2009

HEBR 402: Intensive Elementary Biblical Hebrew (15 cr.)
Martin A and B Terms: MTWThF 8:30 - 11:50.

Winter 2009

HEBR 412
Elementary Modern Hebrew
Two sections being offered
MTWThF 9:30 - 10:20 and
MTWThF 10:30 - 11:20.

HEBR 415
Elementary Biblical Hebrew
MWF 10:30 – 11:50.

HEBR 422
Intermediate Modern Hebrew
Rogovin
MTWThF 11:30 - 12:20.

SISJE 438/WOMEN 438
American Jewish Women's Identities
Friedman
MTWTh 12:30 - 1:20.
Examines how Jewish women's identities are socially constructed and transformed in contemporary America, using social histories, memoirs, and ethnographies to analyze scholars' approaches to Jewish women's lives. Topics include the role of social class, religion, migration, the Holocaust, and race relations in Jewish women's lives.

SISJE 453/NEAR E 453
Biblical Prophets
Martin
MWF 3:00 – 3:50.
Explores the biblical prophets (in translation) within their Near Eastern contexts. Studies them for their historicity, literary and rhetorical sophistication, and ideological agendas as dialectitions, social reformers, performers, and visionaries. This course seeks to uncover the meaning and distinctiveness of Israelite prophecy within the context of the larger Near East. No knowledge of the Bible is required. Offered: jointly with SISJE 453.

SISJE 458/NE 458
The Babylonian Talmud
Jaffee
TTh 10:30 – 12:20.
Introduction to the Babylonian Talmud, the classic collection of rabbinic literature. Literary and historic methodologies contextualize the Talmud in the setting of other ancient religious literatures and track the processes of its literary development.

SISJE490B/ENGL 311
Modern Jewish Literature in Translation
Butwin
TTh 9:30 - 11:20.
Although the course requires the words “in translation” in order to accommodate the many languages adopted by Jewish writers after 1880, I am expanding the reading list this quarter to include several works that do not require translation because they were written originally in America and in the English language. Yet even for these stories written in English I would retain the notion of “translation” which comes to us from the Latin past participle—translatum—of the verb transferre which describes a journey, a crossing of rivers, borders, and oceans, to transport oneself or to carry baggage from one domain to another. Language and literature is an important part of that baggage. In this course we will trace the migration of Jewish literature between 1880 and 1940 from the Yiddish language commonly spoken in the shtetl and the ghetto of Eastern Europe to its re-emergence in various languages from Tel Aviv to Odessa and New York. Our readings include the Yiddish of Sholom Aleichem, I. L. Peretz, and I. B. Singer, the Hebrew of Dvora Baron and S.Y. Agnon, the Russian of Isaac Babel, and the first phase of a Jewish-American literature written in English with a heavy inflection of Yiddish by Abraham Cahan, Anzia Yezierska and Henry Roth. I will also appeal to film, painting, and song throughout the period. Although the focus of the course is Jewish writers before the Holocaust, we will conclude with several stories (and films) from the post-War period that bear the imprint of the tradition that we will have just studied.

SISJE 490C/HIST 490
Jews and Blacks
Glenn
TTh 12:30 - 2:20.
This course considers some of the ways that Jews and Blacks in twentieth century America used the “other” to construct a sense of historic group identity. Looking at the period from the late 1920s to the 1960s, we will examine the frameworks through which Jews and Blacks have understood and imagined each other and the significance of mutual reflections for group relations.

NEAR E 496C
Use of the Hebrew Bible in the New Testament
Martin
MWF 1:30 – 2:50.
How do New Testament writers use texts from the Hebrew Bible to promote their theological positions? What exactly is the “text” that New Testament writers cite? Why do many New Testament “quotations” appear to differ in numerous details from their Old Testament counterparts? This course explores the relationship between received text and developing theology in early Christianity. The course begins with a brief survey of the manuscript traditions of the Hebrew Bible and its ancient versions, upon which New Testament writers depend. Contextual, historical, and theological considerations are the primary focus, which provide insight into the lens through which early Christians read and understood their Old Testament.

NEAR E 496D/C LIT 410
Literature and the Holocaust
Sokoloff
TTh 1:30 - 3:20.
By examining fiction, poetry, memoir, diaries, monuments and aspects of popular culture, this course will explore representations of the Holocaust. Among the topics to be covered: bearing witness and survivor testimony; the shaping of collective memory; the second generation; Holocaust education and children's literature; gender and the Holocaust; fantasy and humor in literary responses to catastrophe.

RELIG 210
Introduction to Judaism
Pianko
MW 2:30 – 4:20. Sections—see UW Time Schedule
This class explores the question: what is Judaism? However, the course will not provide a single definitive answer—such as a specific belief, set of ritual practices, or shared texts and myths. Instead, our investigation of Judaism will illustrate the limitations of any effort to identify a single, static conception of Judaism. Judaism, this course argues, can only be understood as a dynamic religious tradition that has developed many forms (most of which no longer exist today) during a more than 3000 year history that has spanned nearly the entire globe. Particular attention will be paid to innovations introduced during the last two hundred years in Europe and the United States.

RELIG 400
Jewish Mystical Tradition
Jaffee MW 11:30 – 12:50.
Jewish esoteric thought from antiquity to early modern times. Emergence of Spanish Kabbalah. The thought of Isaac Luria and its immense influence in Jewish history through other movements-specifically the mystical messiah. Sabbetai Sevi, and the rise of Hasidism. Recommended: RELIG 201 or RELIG 210.

SIS 150/NEAR E 150
Israel: Dynamic Society and Global Flashpoint
(Pianko/Barzilai/Sokoloff/Migdal)
Lectures: MWF 12:30 – 1:20. Sections TTh--See UW Time Schedule for times.
Introduces the people, institutions, and culture of Israel in the context of larger global forces. Examines domestic, regional, and international elements, both historically and in the contemporary period, that have shaped Israel's culture, politics, and special role in world affairs. Topics include nationalism, ethnicity, politics, religion, film, literature, and culture.

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