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To help with your proposal, we have assembled course descriptions of selected programs either underway or in development in the U.S. and Israel. To be eligible for the Posen Foundation Grants, the primary course must focus specifically on Jewish secular studies, including the origin, history, development, texts, philosophy, writings and/or practices of secular Judaism.

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.

Jewish Thought - University of Massachusetts (Amherst)

Hotly contested issues such as the "right" to wear the veil in French public schools and the "right" to exhibit a massive sculpture of the Ten Commandments in an American Court of Law are just two examples of the eruption of "fundamentalist" religious claims upon the state in the West. Although the relations of Religion and State have been negotiated differently across national boundaries, this course will focus on the distinctive role of Jews and Judaism in shaping some of the basic terms of these negotiations.

History - University of California, Davis

There is no one Jewish culture. As Jews have lived all over the world in many and varied environments their cultures have differed. Jewish cultures have developed both by adapting to and resisting the cultures around them. In these many Jewish cultures, religious teaching was just one important component. This course will examine the wide variety of Jewish cultures in the modern world, and then survey the history of Jewish cultures from Late Antiquity to the modern period.

Sociology - Brown University

In Eastern Europe, Zionism emerged in both secular and religious forms and so did Jewish socialist movements. Both were intended to offer alternative Jewish identities and meanings for European Jews who had been largely tradition-bound for centuries. The class begins by exploring the European visions of secular Jewish identities and continues, through immigration, into the 20th century U.S.

Cultural Studies - Rutgers University

This course will examine the many different ways Jews have engaged the challenges of modernity through a wide array of new secular cultural activities--including autobiography, theater, music, art, film, journalism, language use, architecture, modern scholarship, political action, philanthropy, foodways, and tourism.

Approved University Courses in the U.S.:

Bard College is offering a core course Jewishness Beyond Religion: Defining Secular Jewish Culture, as well as two peripheral courses, Current Issues in Israeli Society, Politics and Culture, and Diaspora and Homeland.

Binghamton will be introducing a core course, Secular Jewish Ideologies and Identities, presenting an overview of secular Jewish ideologies and identities in modern times and two courses devoted to more narrowly focused study of secular dimensions of modern Jewish culture.

Brown University is offering two new courses, Secular Jewish Identities as its current core course and Film and American Jewish Life: A Study in Secular Values. In 2008, three courses will be introduced; two in Jewish thought and one in sociology. Towards the Future: Secular Messianism and Utopian Hope in 20th Century Jewish Thought will be the core course with Heidegger and 20th Century Jewish Thought the supplementary course.

Dickinson is offering Secular Jews from Spinoza to Seinfeld as its core course with several new courses being developed for Fall 2007. These include American Jewish Literature, Representations of the Holocaust in American and German Culture, Israeli Politics and Society, Jewish Women Writers of Latin America, and History of Eastern Europe.

Goucher College's core course, to be offered every fall semester, is Judaism, Secularism, Modernity.

The Graduate Theological Union is offering three classes in the Posen Project: an interdisciplinary M.A. level core course in Secular Jewish Thought, a doctoral level course on Haskalah Literature: Secularization and Sexuality and an M.A. level course on Introduction to Jewish Folklore.

Hampshire College is offering three courses for the academic year 2007-08. These are the core course The Rise of Secular Jewish Culture, New Jewish Identities in Post-World War II American Culture, and Yiddish Literature and Culture.

Harvard will be offering a multi-year set of three courses, on the interrelated themes of secularism, secularization, secular languages and identities. The proposed core course will be Contesting the Bible: from Sacred to Secular and Back Again with two secondary courses, Jewish Languages and Literatures in the Secular World and Theories of Secularization.

Hunter College is offering the following two courses in the Posen Project: Topics in History: Secular Judaism as the core course and Crises and Responses in Modern Jewish History as the peripheral course.

For the academic year 2008-09, Lehigh University will be offering one core course, East European Jewish Civilization in the Modern Era, 1750s-1939, and the revision of three existing courses.

Miami University is offering the following Posen Project courses: Secular Jewish Culture from the Enlightenment to Zionism as the core course, with Jewish-American Fiction: 1945 to the Present, Tradition and Identity: Jews and Judaism in the Persian and Greco-Roman Periods 539 BCE-200 CE, and Contemporary Israeli Society: Psychological and Social Challenges as the three peripheral courses.

Muhlenberg College is offering three courses. The core course is Jewish Experience in a Secular Age: A History of Modern Jewish Identity, with two other peripheral courses, American Jewish Life and Culture, and Jewish Nationalism: Conceptions of Jewish Identity in the Age of the Nation-State.

Rice University is offering a core course, Secularizing Jewry/Judaizing Secularity and two peripheral courses, German-Jewish Literature and Culture and Spinoza and Levinas: Seminar in Secular Jewish Thought.

Rutgers will be offering as its core course, Making Jews Modern: Varieties of Secular Judaism. The other courses are: The Secular Turn: Jewish Thought from Medieval to Modern, Community and Crisis: The Jewish Encounter with the Secular, Modern Jewish Culture: New Practices in a Secular Age, Germans and Jews: An Intercultural History, and Special Topics: The Bible through Literary Eyes.

Temple University in Philadelphia is introducing a new two-semester core course on Jewish Civilization: Secular Judaisms from Spinoza to Salami along with two peripheral courses: Secular Approaches to Ancient Jewish History and Jews and Sports.

Tulane will be offering two courses in the Posen Project in the spring of 2008. These are the core course, Building Jewish Identity: Secular Judaism in Historical Perspective and Social Sources of Jewish Identity in the Modern World.

The Posen Project courses are the core course, Secular Jewish Identity and Culture, and Jews and the Secular Descendants of Jews in Latin America, Shifting Identities in Modern Jewish Fiction and Hollywood and the Jews: A Secular Analysis of Ethnic Stereotyping in the American Cinema.

The three core courses are Introduction to Religious and Secular Jewish Cultures, Secular Jewish Thinkers and The Making of Secular Jewish Culture with peripheral courses studying Jewish Identity and Visual Culture and Modern Yiddish Literature.

UCLA is offering five courses in the Posen Project for the academic year 2007-08. The core course is The Spirit of Secularism: Jewish Cultures in a Secular Age with the other courses: The Jews of Latin America, 1500-2000, Role of Jews in Film and Television, Modern Jewish Religious Thought, and Jewish Civilization: Encounter with Great World Cultures.

The University of Cincinnati is introducing two new courses: the core course, The Emergence of Secular Jewish Identity and Culture and Modernity and the Jewish Intellectual Tradition with two additional courses planned for 2007-08, The Mind of the Secular Jew and a course on the phenomenon of Jewish women and the salons of central and western Europe in the 19th century.

The core course for Winter 2007 is Jews on the Move: Culture, People and Ideas with Foundations of Jewish Communal Service offered as a graduate course.

The University of Kansas is offering a core course and several supporting courses. The core course is Jewish Culture in a Secular Age: The Modern Jewish Revolution with the following supporting courses, Jewish American Literature and Culture, Jewish American Popular Culture, Jewish Cultural History, Contemporary Jewish Identities, Messiah and Modernity, Jewish Cities, and Classical and Contemporary Jewish Thought.

The distinctive role of Jews and Judaism in shaping some of the basic terms of negotiations over relations of Religion and State will be examined in the primary course, Negotiating Religion and State: Jewish Secularism and the Emergence of European Modernity, with peripheral courses tackling World Jewish Cultures and Jews in Muslim Lands.

The process of secularization and justifying Judaism in the modern world are studied here along with a history of secular Jewish nationalism. Three new courses are being offered: Secular Jewish Identity in the Modern World, Judaism and Modernity: Pluralities of Jewish Culture since the Enlightenment and The 'Vanishing' American Jew? The Emergence of Secular Judaism in America.

With the purpose of providing students with knowledge of the cultural and intellectual history of non-religious Judaism and its currents, achievements, and challenges, Michigan, the first college involved in this program, is introducing four new courses in a revised program. The courses are Secular Jewish Thought, Jewish Identities, Israeli Society, and Jews in American Culture.

The University of Texas is offering the following course, Jewish Identity in Modern Secular Thought: from Spinoza to Finkielkraut.

The University of Toronto is offering a core course, Secularism and Strife: The Cultural History of Modern Jews and peripheral courses entitled The Spinozist Challenge: Secularization in Modern Jewish Thought, Outsiders Inside: Jews and American Popular Culture, Canadian Jewish Culture, and Culture and Society of Modern Israel.

The University of Virginia is offering three courses, one core and two peripheral. The core course is a two semester course, Judaism between Modernity and Secularization: An Introduction to Judaism as a Culture that will explore the variety of Jewish responses and adjustments to the modern world and their implications for present day Judaism in its many forms.The peripheral courses are American Jewish Popular Music, Science and Judaism and Klezmer Ensemble.

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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