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University of California, Los Angeles - previously taught
Jews, Judaism, Jewishness: Seminar in Modern Jewish Thought from Spinoza
This course will focus on a select number of Jewish figures, beginning with Spinoza, whose intellectual and social paths help define the contours of “modernity” in Jewish history. Through an examination of these figures, the course will attempt to answer a number of important questions relating to the Jewish experience in modern times: to what extent have modern Jews based their existence as Jews on adherence to traditional religious authority? What new sources of authority and inspiration have given content to Jewish identities in the modern age?
Course Outline
1. Introduction: The Problem of Modernity
2. Spinoza: The Last Medieval or the First Modern
1. Benedict de Spinoza, A Theological-Political Treatise
2. Robert Seltzer, Jewish People, Jewish Thought
Recommended Background Reading:
1. Steven M. Nadler, Spinoza: A Life
2. Steven B. Smith, Spinoza, Liberalism, and the Question of Jewish Identity
3. Moses Mendelsohn and the Foundation of Modern Judaism
1. Moses Mendelsohn, Jerusalem
2. Jacob Katz, Out of the Ghetto
Recommended Background Reading:
1. David Sorkin, Moses Mendelsohn and the Religious Enlightenment
2. Allan Arkush, Moses Mendelsohn and the Enlightenment
4. Daughters of the Enlightenment: Jewish Salon Women in Berlin
1. Hannah Arendt, Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewess
2. Deborah Hertz, Jewish High Society in Old-Regime Berlin
5. Samson Raphael Hirsch and the Invention of Orthodoxy
1. S.R. Hirsch, Nineteen Letters
2. Noah Rosenbloom, Tradition in an Age of Reform
6.Three Faces of Jewish Nationalism: Theodor Herzl, Ahad Ha-am, and Simon Dubnow
1. Ahad Ha-‘am, “The Transvaluation of Values”
2. Simon Dubnow, “Negation and Affirmation,” and “The Sociological View of Jewish History”
3. Arthur Hertzberg, ed., The Zionist Idea
7. Franz Rosenzweig: Judaism beyond Enlightenment
1. Franz Rosenzweig, On Jewish Learning
2. Nahum Glatzner, ed., Franz Rosenzweig: Life and Times
8. Sigmund Freud: Jewishness without Judaism?
1. Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism
2. Peter Gay, A Godless Jew
3. Yosef H. Yerushalmi, Freud’s Moses
9. The Non-Jewish Jew?
1. Karl Marx, “On the Jewish Question”
2. Isaac Deutscher, The Non-Jewish Jew
3. Rosa Luxemburg and Eduard Bernstein, The Jew in the Modern World
10. Joseph B. Soloveitchik: The Loneliness of Faith
Modern Jewish Culture: What is it?
This course will explore the diverse ways in which Jews in the modern age have chosen to define Jewish culture, ranging from strict adherence to traditional Jewish law to eating bagels - with a vast range of options in between. Class discussion will be stimulated by selected readings, as well as by guest speakers who themselves offer distinctive visions of what Jewish culture is.
Jews, Judaism, Jewishness: Seminar in Modern Jewish Thought from Spinoza
This course will focus on a select number of Jewish figures, beginning with Spinoza, whose intellectual and social paths help define the contours of “modernity” in Jewish history. Through an examination of these figures, the course will attempt to answer a number of important questions relating to the Jewish experience in modern times: to what extent have modern Jews based their existence as Jews on adherence to traditional religious authority? What new sources of authority and inspiration have given content to Jewish identities in the modern age?
Course Outline
1. Introduction: The Problem of Modernity
2. Spinoza: The Last Medieval or the First Modern
1. Benedict de Spinoza, A Theological-Political Treatise
2. Robert Seltzer, Jewish People, Jewish Thought
Recommended Background Reading:
1. Steven M. Nadler, Spinoza: A Life
2. Steven B. Smith, Spinoza, Liberalism, and the Question of Jewish Identity
3. Moses Mendelsohn and the Foundation of Modern Judaism
1. Moses Mendelsohn, Jerusalem
2. Jacob Katz, Out of the Ghetto
Recommended Background Reading:
1. David Sorkin, Moses Mendelsohn and the Religious Enlightenment
2. Allan Arkush, Moses Mendelsohn and the Enlightenment
4. Daughters of the Enlightenment: Jewish Salon Women in Berlin
1. Hannah Arendt, Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewess
2. Deborah Hertz, Jewish High Society in Old-Regime Berlin
5. Samson Raphael Hirsch and the Invention of Orthodoxy
1. S.R. Hirsch, Nineteen Letters
2. Noah Rosenbloom, Tradition in an Age of Reform
6.Three Faces of Jewish Nationalism: Theodor Herzl, Ahad Ha-am, and Simon Dubnow
1. Ahad Ha-‘am, “The Transvaluation of Values”
2. Simon Dubnow, “Negation and Affirmation,” and “The Sociological View of Jewish History”
3. Arthur Hertzberg, ed., The Zionist Idea
7. Franz Rosenzweig: Judaism beyond Enlightenment
1. Franz Rosenzweig, On Jewish Learning
2. Nahum Glatzner, ed., Franz Rosenzweig: Life and Times
8. Sigmund Freud: Jewishness without Judaism?
1. Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism
2. Peter Gay, A Godless Jew
3. Yosef H. Yerushalmi, Freud’s Moses
9. The Non-Jewish Jew?
1. Karl Marx, “On the Jewish Question”
2. Isaac Deutscher, The Non-Jewish Jew
3. Rosa Luxemburg and Eduard Bernstein, The Jew in the Modern World
10. Joseph B. Soloveitchik: The Loneliness of Faith
Modern Jewish Culture: What is it?
This course will explore the diverse ways in which Jews in the modern age have chosen to define Jewish culture, ranging from strict adherence to traditional Jewish law to eating bagels - with a vast range of options in between. Class discussion will be stimulated by selected readings, as well as by guest speakers who themselves offer distinctive visions of what Jewish culture is.
Great Jewish Books in the Diaspora focuses on the modern literary revolutions in Hebrew and Yiddish beginning in the late 19th century. Three other courses are: Darwinism and Judaism, Jews and Visual Culture in America, and a seminar that explores the Jewish affinity for and involvement in countercultural movements in the 20th century.
Great Jewish Books in the Diaspora: Modern Jewish Literature: Response and Revitalization
Modern Jewish Literature is arguably the most authentic documentation of the Jewish response to the events of the past 200 years and Jewish efforts to revitalize Judaism in the modern world. These efforts have taken place in both the Diaspora and in Israel. The readings offered in this course stress the Diaspora experience, yet also deal with Israel without which the historical picture would be incomplete. With the increased awareness of transnational trends throughout the world, the literature of Diasporas has become more prominent over the past two decades. Ironically, the most classic Diaspora, the Jewish Diaspora going back to Hellenistic times, is rarely studied under this rubric today.
This course is designed to present the variety of Jewish literary expression in the modern period. They chronicle, among other aspects, the transition of Jews from an exclusively religious to a predominantly secular world. The texts we study have been written in Israel and the Diaspora and reflect the intimate concerns of the Jews living in those surroundings. They are the literary reactions by sensitive and forceful writers to such problems as the impact of modernization, the loss of traditional norms, the adjustment of immigrants to new situations, antisemitism including the Holocaust.
While some of the texts were originally written in English, others were translated into English from Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian, French, and German. The cosmopolitan scope of Jewish Literature in the modern period will be a major topic of our discussions.
Required reading list:
1. Sholem Aleichem, Tevye the Dairyman, etc.. trans, Hillel Halkin. Library of Jewish Classics
2. Robert Alter, Modern Hebrew Literature, Behrman House
3. Isaac Babel, Collected Stories, Norton
4. Henry Roth, Call it Sleep, Farrar, Straus, Giroux
5. Eli Wiesel, Night, Bantam
6. Franz Kafka, The Complete Stories, Knopf
7. Philip Roth, Goodbye Columbus, Knopf
8. Yehudah Amichai, Selected Poems, California
9. Amos Oz, A Story of Love and Darkness, Harcourt
Darwinism and Judaism
Course Description
There is precedent in Jewish thought for incorporating the latest scientific paradigms into one’s presentation of Judaism. This course will explore how Jewish theologians, scientists, and philosophers have responded to the challenges of Darwinism. We will begin by understanding the changes which Darwinism brought to our understanding of nature as well as subsequent modifications of Darwinism. We will then proceed chronologically in our review of Jewish responses to Darwinian evolution. Throughout our examination, we will have any eye on cultural influences upon our respondents as well as the relationship they posit between science and religion.
Syllabus
1. Introduction and Science before Darwin
Reading: Darwin, pp. 31-64
2. Darwin’s Origin
Reading: Darwin, pp. 95-174
3. Darwin’s Descent
Reading: Darwin, pp. 175-254
4. Neo-Darwinian Synthesis
Reading: Darwin, pp. 289-386
5. Models Between Science and Religion
Reading: Barbour, “Ways of Relating” and Y. Leibowitz, “Religion and Science”
Due: Short Paper on Darwinism
6. 19th Century European Rabbinic Responses
Reading: Faur, “The Hebrew Species Concept”; Kaplan, Torah U-Madda; Colp and Kohn, “‘A Real Curiosity’”; and Dubin, Pe’er Ha’adam
7. 19th Century American Rabbinic Responses
Reading: Swetlitz, “American Jewish Responses” and “Responses of American Reform Rabbis”
8. 20th Century Rabbinic Responses
Reading: Cherry, “3 20th-Century Responses”
9. 20th Century Responses by Orthodox Scientists
Reading: Cherry, “Crisis Management”
10. Hans Jonas
Reading: Mortality and Morality
Jewish Visual Culture
From fashion to film, and from museums to magazines, the emerging study of visual culture has leveled the playing field of visual representation. Recognizing any technological interface from a dash in the sand, to painting in the classical tradition, as equally worthy of consideration, visual culture asserts the primacy of a visual vernacular. Visual culture implores us to investigate how ideologies are naturalized, and presented to the public through mundane media. It pushes the frontiers of visual representation, and considers how the visual interfaces with society, culture, politics, anthropology, technology, and communications.
This course investigates the intersection of visual culture and Jewish studies, in order to broaden and deepen our understanding of modern Jewish existence, particularly in America. What is gained and what is lost when new media are introduced into an analysis of Jewish visual representation? And, how does a consideration of Jewish visual culture both contribute to, and exceed the traditional textualist orientation of Jewish studies? Students will consider a variety of topics and motifs from Holocaust museums, to political posters, representations of the Jewish family across various media, to the packaging of Jewish identity through advertising and design. This course will demonstrate how visual culture can provide a more expanded and complex historical picture of Jewish life in America.
Required Reading
Jewish Visual Culture Reader
From Haven to Home: 350 Years of Jewish Life in America
Class Schedule
1. Towards a Definition of Visual Culture
Cartwright, Lisa, and Sturken, Marita, “Practices of Looking: Images, Power, and Politics”
2. Visual Culture and the Jewish Question in Art
Baigell, Matthew, “Jewish American Artists: Identity and Messianism”
Cohen, Richard, “Introduction” to Jewish Icons
“The Visual Image of the Jew and Judaism”
Revel-Neher, Elisheva, “With Wisdom and Knowledge of Workmanship: Jewish Art Without a Question Mark”
3. Advertising and the Packaging of American Jewish Identity
From Haven to Home, “American Judaism” and
“American Jewish Popular Culture”
4. Representation and the Politics of American Jewish Identity
From Haven to Home, “American Jewry Since 1945” and
From Haven to Home, “American Jews and Politics”
Weinstein, Andrew “From International Socialism to Jewish Nationalism”
5. Frum Fashion
Nochlin, Linda, “The Couturier and the Hasid”
Steinberg, Kerri, “Stars and Streits: The Place of Frum Fashion in Visual Culture”
6. Television and the Jewish Body
Berger, Maurice, “The Mouse that Never Roars: Jewish Masculinity on American Television”
Prell, Riv-Ellen, “Why Jewish Princesses Don’t Sweat: Desire and Consumption in Postwar American Jewish Culture”
7. Visual Culture and the Holocaust
Hirsch, Marianne, “Surviving Images: Holocaust Photographs and the Work of Postmemory”
Reading, Anna, “Clicking on Hitler: The Virtual Holocaust @ Home”
Zelizer, Barbie, “On Visualizing the Holocaust”
8. Museum Culture
Von Moltke, Johannes, “Identities on Display: Jewishness and the Representational Politics of the Museum”
9. Hipster Culture
10. Guest Speaker
Final Review
The Twentieth Century Counterculture and the Jews
This seminar examines the effect of the counterculture on the course of the twentieth century in politics, social movements and the arts, and the roles that Jewish thinkers and activists played in the rise and fall of the plethora of the counter-cultural movements. The seminar will explore the following questions: In what ways did Jewish sensibilities shape the contours and agendas of the counter-cultural movements? In what ways did the counter-cultural alternative shape non-traditional, Jewish identities and possible escapes from clutches of tradition or religion? In what ways did it carry the Jewish world into what can be termed non-traditional Judaism? The seminar is open to those interested in the counterculture in its various manifestations in Europe since the fin de siecle through the US in the 1960's, the Jewish contributions, and responses to it.
Jews, Judaism, Jewishness: Seminar in Modern Jewish Thought from Spinoza
This course will focus on a select number of Jewish figures, beginning with Spinoza, whose intellectual and social paths help define the contours of “modernity” in Jewish history. Through an examination of these figures, the course will attempt to answer a number of important questions relating to the Jewish experience in modern times: to what extent have modern Jews based their existence as Jews on adherence to traditional religious authority? What new sources of authority and inspiration have given content to Jewish identities in the modern age?
Course Outline
1. Introduction: The Problem of Modernity
2. Spinoza: The Last Medieval or the First Modern
1. Benedict de Spinoza, A Theological-Political Treatise
2. Robert Seltzer, Jewish People, Jewish Thought
Recommended Background Reading:
1. Steven M. Nadler, Spinoza: A Life
2. Steven B. Smith, Spinoza, Liberalism, and the Question of Jewish Identity
3. Moses Mendelsohn and the Foundation of Modern Judaism
1. Moses Mendelsohn, Jerusalem
2. Jacob Katz, Out of the Ghetto
Recommended Background Reading:
1. David Sorkin, Moses Mendelsohn and the Religious Enlightenment
2. Allan Arkush, Moses Mendelsohn and the Enlightenment
4. Daughters of the Enlightenment: Jewish Salon Women in Berlin
1. Hannah Arendt, Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewess
2. Deborah Hertz, Jewish High Society in Old-Regime Berlin
5. Samson Raphael Hirsch and the Invention of Orthodoxy
1. S.R. Hirsch, Nineteen Letters
2. Noah Rosenbloom, Tradition in an Age of Reform
6.Three Faces of Jewish Nationalism: Theodor Herzl, Ahad Ha-am, and Simon Dubnow
1. Ahad Ha-‘am, “The Transvaluation of Values”
2. Simon Dubnow, “Negation and Affirmation,” and “The Sociological View of Jewish History”
3. Arthur Hertzberg, ed., The Zionist Idea
7. Franz Rosenzweig: Judaism beyond Enlightenment
1. Franz Rosenzweig, On Jewish Learning
2. Nahum Glatzner, ed., Franz Rosenzweig: Life and Times
8. Sigmund Freud: Jewishness without Judaism?
1. Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism
2. Peter Gay, A Godless Jew
3. Yosef H. Yerushalmi, Freud’s Moses
9. The Non-Jewish Jew?
1. Karl Marx, “On the Jewish Question”
2. Isaac Deutscher, The Non-Jewish Jew
3. Rosa Luxemburg and Eduard Bernstein, The Jew in the Modern World
10. Joseph B. Soloveitchik: The Loneliness of Faith
Modern Jewish Culture: What is it?
This course will explore the diverse ways in which Jews in the modern age have chosen to define Jewish culture, ranging from strict adherence to traditional Jewish law to eating bagels - with a vast range of options in between. Class discussion will be stimulated by selected readings, as well as by guest speakers who themselves offer distinctive visions of what Jewish culture is.
Back to Sample Course Descriptions
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