Courses

Intended for beginners. Provides a thorough grounding in reading, writing, grammar, oral comprehension, and speaking. Students who complete the course are able to function in basic situations in a Hebrew-speaking environment.

Full details for JWST 1101 - Elementary Modern Hebrew I

Sequel to HEBRW 1101-HEBRW 1102. Continued development of reading, writing, grammar, oral comprehension, and speaking skills.

Full details for JWST 1103 - Elementary Modern Hebrew III

Provides an introduction to reading, writing, aural comprehension, speaking and grammar, as well as to some of the basic elements of Ashkenazi Jewish culture.

Full details for JWST 1776 - Elementary Yiddish I

Why were Jews virtually invisible in films produced during the Hollywood's "golden age"? Is this a surprise, given the leading role played by American Jews in founding the studio system? Writing about the films studied in this course will help students situate and interpret the presence (and absence) of characters identifiable as Jews in Hollywood films released from the silent era through the present. We will view approximately six films in their entirety and study excerpts from others. Films to be studied in whole or part may include: The Immigrant, The Jazz Singer, The Great Dictator, Casablanca, The Apartment, Funny Girl, Annie Hall, Barton Fink, and A Serious Man. Students will write film analyses, review essays, reflective responses, and explorations of contextual material. Readings from film studies and popular journalism will situate these films within the historical, cultural, and industrial contexts in which they were produced.

Full details for JWST 1987 - FWS: Jews on Film: Visible and Invisible

Explore the ways of 19th to 21st century Russian Jewry through survey of literature and film. Learn about life in Russia from the perspective of Jewish and Russian-Jewish writers as well as through portrayal of Russian Jews in works of prominent Russian authors in the context of period. Selected works of Pushkin and Chekhov, Gogol and Sholom Aleichem, Pasternak and Yevtushenko will help create a multidimensional picture of the political and socio-cultural environment in which processes of integration and assimilation, both imposed and impeded by the state, shaped the identity of the modern-day Russian Jews in their deep, inherent connection to the Russian culture and often complicated relationship with their roots, which characteristically distinguishes them from their American contemporaries.

Full details for JWST 2001 - Russian Jews and Jewish Russians in Literature and Film

Full details for JWST 2276 - Intermediate Yiddish

This course explores the history of the Holocaust during which the Nazis murdered six million Jews. Topics covered in this class include the history of antisemitism in Europe and twentieth-century Germany, the origins and rule of the Nazis, the politics of World War II, the Final Solution and extermination camps, Jewish literary responses to the Holocaust, among other topics.

Full details for JWST 2467 - History of the Holocaust

This course is an introductory survey to various aspects of Israeli culture, society, and history. Through a close examination of various media (film, music, literature) as well as key events and social and political facts, students explore a range of phenomena related to Israeli social practices and its political system, alongside a chronological overview of changes in Israeli culture and society over time. Topics covered may include geography, immigration, demographics, inequality, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Hebrew language, gender, literature, film, among others.

Full details for JWST 2488 - Contemporary Israeli Culture, Society, and History

This course examines the production and exchange of wine, beer, coffee and tea, and the social and ideological dynamics involved in their consumption. We start in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, and end with tea and coffee in the Arab and Ottoman worlds. Archaeological and textual evidence will be used throughout to show the centrality of drinking in daily, ritual and political life.

Full details for JWST 2522 - Drinking through the Ages: Intoxicating Beverages in Near Eastern and World History

How is the memory of the Holocaust kept alive by means of the literary and visual imagination? Within the historical context of the Holocaust and how and why it occurred, we shall examine major and widely read Holocaust narratives that have shaped the way we understand and respond to the Holocaust. We also study ethical and psychological issues about how and why people behave in dire circumstances. We shall begin with first-person reminiscences—Wiesel's Night, Levi's Survival at Auschwitz, and The Diary of Anne Frank—before turning to realistic fictions such as Kineally's Schindler's List (and Spielberg's film), Kertesz's Fateless, Kosinski's The Painted Bird, and Ozick's "The Shawl." We shall also read the mythopoeic vision of Schwarz-Bart's The Last of the Just, the illuminating distortions of Epstein's King of the Jews, the Kafkaesque parable of Appelfeld's Badenheim 1939, and the fantastic cartoons of Spiegelman's Maus books.

Full details for JWST 2580 - Imagining the Holocaust

This course explores the history of medicine and other sciences in the ancient Near East, broadly defined. In addition to medicine, the other scientific disciplines covered in this course include mathematics, astrology, astronomy, alchemy, zoology, among others. Geographically, the course traces the transmission of scientific knowledge in ancient Babylonia, Iran, Egypt, Israel, Turkey, and beyond. As such, the course offers students a tour of different ancient civilizations and corpora. Students read selections from cuneiform Akkadian tablets, Egyptian Christian Coptic spellbooks, rabbinic sources such as the Talmud, among many other works. At the same time, students will be required to critically engage recent scholarship in the history of science and medicine as a way to help frame their analyses of the ancient materials. The course interrogates how ancient civilizations transmitted and received scientific knowledge, as well as the relationship between what we today tend to call science, medicine, magic, and religion. This course is intended not only for students in the Humanities and Social Sciences, but also for those majoring in science or medicine.

Full details for JWST 2599 - Medicine, Magic and Science in the Ancient Near East

Full details for JWST 2697 - History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

The Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) is a repository of ancient Israelite religious, political, social, historical, and literary traditions. For the modern reader these ancient traditions are often obscured by a focus on the text as revelation. The purpose of this course is to introduce students to the biblical world by reading the Hebrew Bible in translation, on its own terms, as a body of literature that evolved in an ancient Near Eastern context. The Bible itself will be the primary text for the course, but students will also be exposed to the rich and diverse textual traditions of the ancient Near East, including Mesopotamia, Egypt, Moab, and Ugarit. In addition, this course will explore the impact of early biblical interpretation on shaping the monotheistic traditions inherited in the West. As participants in a secular course on the Bible, students will be challenged to question certain cultural assumptions about the composition and authorship of the Bible, and will be expected to differentiate between a text's content and its presumed meaning.

Full details for JWST 2724 - The Jewish Bible-Old Testament in Context

This course examines Near East's rich and diverse literary heritage. We will read a selection of influential and wondrous texts from ancient to modern times, spanning geographically from the Iberian peninsula to Iran. We will explore a range of ancient myths of creation and destruction. We will also trace encounters with otherness in travel narratives. Together we will read and discuss such ancient works as the "The Story of Sinuhe" and "The Epic of Gilgamesh," as well as selections from the Hebrew Bible, New Testament and Qur'an. We will explore medieval works such as the "Travels" of Ibn Battuta, the "Shahnameh" of Ferdowsi, and "The Arabian Nights." We will also read Orhan Pamuk's My Name is Red, and Sonia Nimr's Wondrous Journeys in Strange Lands, as well as excerpts from Yochi Brandes's The Orchard. Students will also have the opportunity to research and analyze primary source materials in the collections of Cornell Rare Books and Manuscript Collection, and the Johnson Art Museum. All material is in English translation.

Full details for JWST 2754 - Wondrous Literatures of the Near East

Most people think of Christianity as the "daughter religion" of Judaism. In this course, we will see that what we now know as Judaism and Christianity both claimed ownership of the same textual tradition and emerged together from the same set of historical circumstances, shaped by political crisis, a radical transformation of the social order and the challenge of Graeco-Roman culture. Through close reading of the principal sources of Christian literature, such as Paul's letters to the first communities of gentile "believers" and the accounts of the life and death of the messiah, known collectively as the gospels, we will explore how and why the followers of Jesus first came to think of themselves as the "New Israel" and how a polemical engagement with their controversial interpretation of Hebrew prophecy shaped the development of the rabbinic movement in Roman Palestine.

Full details for JWST 2852 - Judaism and the Origins of Christianity

This constitutes the first course in our third year of the Modern Hebrew language sequence.  Development of speech proficiency will be emphasized. Over the course of the semester, students will develop reading comprehension through reading a variety of fiction and nonfiction texts, listening comprehension through screening of filmic works and episodes drawn from popular television series, writing through communication about what is read and screened, as well as more personal topics, and speech through in class discussion and oral presentations.  Readings will include authentic and partially adapted contemporary short stories, poems and newspaper articles.  

Full details for JWST 3101 - Advanced Modern Hebrew I

Full details for JWST 3103 - Advanced Hebrew Through Media

Full details for JWST 3411 - Jewish Family and Marriage Law

Full details for JWST 3539 - Islamic Spain: Culture and Society

Jews have been on TV since the beginning of the medium – over 70 years – and have made decisions about how they are represented. What kind of Jews do we put on screen, and do they actually represent Jews in America? What about the representation of other ethnic and cultural groups? What can we learn from the history of Jewish television that might apply to Black, Latinx, Muslim, LGBTQ, Asian and other communities as they present themselves to the American public? "Sitcom Jews" uses media analysis, theoretical discussion, and student writing to examine a huge range of TV, starting with classic sitcoms ("The Goldbergs" (1948), "All in the Family, and "Bridget Loves Bernie"), continuing through current Jewish TV shows ("Broad City", "Transparent", "Curb Your Enthusiasm"), and adding a range of ethnic television ("The Jeffersons", "Black-ish", "Insecure", "Ramy", "Will & Grace", "Never Have I Ever").

Full details for JWST 3711 - Sitcom Jews: Ethnic Representation on Television, 1948-Present

This course focuses on how Biblical texts represent women in ancient Israel, and how the Bible's representations constitute both a fabrication and a manifestation of social life on the ground.  We will use biblical, archaeological, and ancient Near Eastern textual evidence to consider the complicated relationship between ancient society and the textual and material records from which we reconstruct it. In addition, this course will examine how women's roles in the Hebrew Bible have been understood and integrated in later Jewish and Christian thought, and how these discourses shape contemporary American attitudes towards women, sexuality, and gender.

Full details for JWST 3720 - Women and Gender in Biblical Israel

Antisemitism, a deep-seated prejudice against Jews, is seeing a global revival. The most brutal U.S. instance was the 2018 Tree of Life Synagogue massacre, where Robert G. Bowers, an active anti-Semitic online poster, took 11 lives. Tried in 2023, he was condemned to death for his crimes. As emphasized by Assistant U.S. Attorney Soo C. Song, Bowers was driven by his belief that Jews are "a cancer upon the planet." Bowers' trial was only the most recent in a series of trials and judicial proceedings, both in the U.S. and internationally, that had antisemitism at their core in a myriad of ways. This course examines various manifestations of antisemitism in law and jurisprudence, from 19th century Europe to early 20th century America to Nazi Germany and the Stalinist U.S.S.R. to the present. Among the topics covered are blood libel trials, the Dreyfus affair in France, the Leo Frank trial in Georgia, the defamation case against Henry Ford, the Nazi Nuremberg laws, the annihilation of European Jews as the core of the crimes against humanity charge at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, and contemporary proceedings charging a hostile anti-Semitic environment at certain U.S. colleges and universities under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Full details for JWST 4013 - Antisemitism in the Courts and in Jurisprudence

How has the remembrance of the past shaped the evolution of Jewish religion, identity, and culture from Biblical times to the present? How have the creation, dissemination, and preservation of Jewish memory changed over time? How is Jewish history used in political discourse in contemporary society in the U.S. and around the Globe? How can the historical tools be utilized to generate a sophisticated and discerning public engagement with the complexities of the Jewish past? In this course, students will explore these questions through seminar discussions, attending, evaluating, and critiquing exhibits and cultural events and watching films that put Jewish history on display, and by deploying their own research, writing, and creative skills to produce public facing final projects or a traditional research paper.

Full details for JWST 4196 - From the Bible to the Museum: Jewish Memory and Public History

American Jews have frequently been touted as a "model minority." This course will take a more critical look at the historical interactions between Jewish immigration, United States industrialization, and processes of social and geographical mobility—all through the prism of New York's Lower East Side, first home for over 750,000 Jewish immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe, the Ottoman Empire and elsewhere between the mid-19th century and the 1920s.  We will compare the Jewish experience to that of other immigrants/migrants by considering social institutions as well as material and other cultural practices. We will examine interactions with the built environment —most especially the tenement—in Lower East Side culture. Special attention will be paid to immigrant labor movement politics including strikes, splits, and gender in the garment trade. From the perspective of the present, the course will examine how commemoration, heritage tourism and the selling of [immigrant] history intersect with gentrifying real estate in an "iconic" New York City neighborhood. Projects using the ILR's archives on the Triangle Fire and other topics are explicitly encouraged. This course counts as an out of college elective for B. Arch and M. Arch students.

Full details for JWST 4533 - The Lower East Side: Jews and the Immigrant City

This course takes Vienna's history as a starting point for studying how the modern mind fought to liberate itself from a past deemed overly burdensome, while embracing radical innovation and change. Students will develop a sense of the city's role as a laboratory of twentieth-century ideologies and ideas: liberalism and conservatism, Zionism and anti-Semitism, modernism and traditionalism. Most of the course's key themes will converge on what contemporaries referred to as 'the Jewish question,' a problem which most characters we will examine engaged with to some extent. Assigned readings will include texts by Arthur Schnitzler, Sigmund Freud, Theodor Herzl, Joseph Roth, Robert Musil, and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Full details for JWST 4673 - Vienna and the Birth of the Modern

This course offers Jewish Studies majors a chance to write a significant research essay that allows for depth of study of a topic of interest to each individual student. Because it is a required course for the major, it is also intended to create a sense of community among majors and provide collective support for the students' research and writing. In this course, student research will be guided through individual meetings with the instructor as well as in-class writing exercises and peer review. Students will develop research and writing skills, including library research, bibliographies, drafts, art of argument, and rewriting. The course will be designed in a way that allows students to conduct research that is of interest to them, regardless of what that field of interest is.

Full details for JWST 4769 - Research in Jewish Studies

The first half of a two-semester sequence for Jewish Studies majors who wish to conduct research for an honors thesis. In this class, student research will be guided through individual meetings with the instructor as well as in-class writing exercises and peer review, and students will develop research and writing skills, including library research, bibliographies, drafts, art of argument, and rewriting. The course will be designed in a way that allows students to conduct research that is of interest to them, regardless of what that field of interest is. In the first semester of this sequence, weekly readings of the course are designed to expose students to a variety of scholarly approaches in the field of Jewish Studies. In the second semester, students will create a detailed bibliography that is aimed at more specific expertise in the subject matter at hand. The second semester will conclude with a lengthier research paper.

Full details for JWST 4998 - Honors Research I

Full details for JWST 6411 - Jewish Family and Marriage Law

Full details for JWST 6539 - Islamic Spain: Culture and Society

This course takes Vienna's history as a starting point for studying how the modern mind fought to liberate itself from a past deemed overly burdensome, while embracing radical innovation and change. Students will develop a sense of the city's role as a laboratory of twentieth-century ideologies and ideas: liberalism and conservatism, Zionism and anti-Semitism, modernism and traditionalism. Most of the course's key themes will converge on what contemporaries referred to as 'the Jewish question,' a problem which most characters we will examine engaged with to some extent. Assigned readings will include texts by Arthur Schnitzler, Sigmund Freud, Theodor Herzl, Joseph Roth, Robert Musil, and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Full details for JWST 6673 - Vienna and the Birth of the Modern

This course focuses on how Biblical texts represent women in ancient Israel, and how the Bible's representations constitute both a fabrication and a manifestation of social life on the ground. We will use biblical, archaeological, and ancient Near Eastern textual evidence to consider the complicated relationship between ancient society and the textual and material records from which we reconstruct it. In addition, this course will examine how women's roles in the Hebrew Bible have been understood and integrated in later Jewish and Christian thought, and how these discourses shape contemporary American attitudes towards women, sexuality, and gender. 

Full details for JWST 6720 - Women and Gender in Biblical Israel

American Jews have frequently been touted as a "model minority." This course will take a more critical look at the historical interactions between Jewish immigration, United States industrialization, and processes of social and geographical mobility—all through the prism of New York's Lower East Side, first home for over 750,000 Jewish immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe, the Ottoman Empire and elsewhere between the mid-19th century and the 1920s.  We will compare the Jewish experience to that of other immigrants/migrants by considering social institutions as well as material and other cultural practices. We will examine interactions with the built environment —most especially the tenement—in Lower East Side culture. Special attention will be paid to immigrant labor movement politics including strikes, splits, and gender in the garment trade. From the perspective of the present, the course will examine how commemoration, heritage tourism and the selling of [immigrant] history intersect with gentrifying real estate in an "iconic" New York City neighborhood. Projects using the ILR's archives on the Triangle Fire and other topics are explicitly encouraged. This course counts as an out of college elective for B. Arch and M. Arch students.

Full details for JWST 7533 - The Lower East Side: Jews and the Immigrant City