Sample Course Descriptions  ||  Core Courses  ||  Adult Education  ||  Israeli Fellowships

The Posen Foundation, with the assistance of our Academic Advisory Committee, plans to spend the current academic year developing new guidelines for the Posen Project grant program and a new program for middle school and high school education. We will not have a call for grant proposals for higher education this Fall.

Below are course descriptions of selected programs either underway or in development in the U.S. and Israel. The primary course focuses specifically on the study of Jewish secularism or secularization.

The following list includes many suggested topics and peripheral subjects designed to enhance the understanding of the primary course on Jewish secular studies. The Posen Foundation supports the following courses in the context of a full program of study on secular Judaism:

Samples of Core Courses:

The following courses in the Posen Project represent several examples of core courses from the disciplines of Jewish Thought, History, Sociology, and Cultural Studies:

Posen Project core courses

Approved University Courses in the U.S.:

Approved University Courses

Additional University Course in the U.S.

The University of Pennsylvania is offering two courses, Secular Judaism and Secular Jews: Lives and Choices and the corresponding continuing adult education version. These courses are not part of the Posen Project but the material is consistent with the project.

Sample syllabus developed by Professor Menahem Brinker:

The following sample syllabus was developed by Professor Menahem Brinker, professor of philosophy and literature at the Hebrew University and the University of Chicago, the author of six books on esthetics, philosophy, and literature, and the preeminent ideological founder of the Israeli peace movement. This syllabus is a work in progress and the section on Secularist Jewish Thought Today is yet to be completed.

Programs in Israel:

Tel Aviv University is offering undergraduate students in the Faculty of Humanities a program devoted to Judaism as Culture.

This is an ambitious program, funded by the Posen Foundation, that prepares teachers in secular Israeli high schools for the study of Judaism as culture. The program selects elite students to study in two major Jewish Studies Departments.

Oranim is offering four courses, The Emergence of Jewish Secular Thought in Modernity, Jewish Culture as a Secular Paradigm of Jewish Existence in Modernity, Dialogues between Jewish Culture and Neighboring Societies — A Secular Perspective, and Judaism beyond the Covenant: Universal Humanistic Elements in Jewish Culture — Past and Present.

The IDC in Herzliya is offering five courses in the Posen Project. They are Judaism and Jews in the Cradle of Modernism, What is Judaism, and Who are the Jews - From Spinoza and Mendelsohn to Kaplan and Levinas: History and Thought, The Formation of a Secular Culture: Festivals and Carnivals in Eretz Israel and in Israel, The Hebrew Folk-Legend: From Traditional Values to Subversive Tendencies, and Jews and Other Minoriites: Nationalism, Migration and Ethnic Identity in Modern Times.

The Kerem Institute is offering two courses, To Be a Jew in the Modern World and Jewish Thought in the Era of Secularism and Modernization.

Course outlines to follow when available.

The program will include the following courses: Introduction to Secular Jewish Culture and Thought, The Modernization and Secularization of the Jewish Society, Between Zionism and Anti-Semitism, Secularization of Jewish Minorities in the Age of Nationalism in Eastern and Central Europe, From Tsene Urene to the Core of Secular Judaism: Selected Issues in the History of Yiddish Culture during the 19-20 Centuries, and Introduction to Ladino Culture.

Possible Peripheral Topics for inclusion in University Courses in Cultural Judaism
By Professor Yaakov Malkin, Meitar College of Judaism as Culture, Jerusalem:

For a full bibliography on the study of Secular Judaism, click here.

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