Oranim College Program

The program will include the following 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 Emergence of Jewish Secular Thought in Modernity

An introductory Jewish philosophy course that deals with the gradual secularization of Jewish life and Jewish philosophy in modern times.

The Jewish people created cultural and spiritual treasures that became the founding stone of human culture. Western civilization draws upon the living well of this ancient culture. The modern Jew in Israel and everywhere else, whether observant or not, has access to an unlimited resource of inspiration, ethical language and rich culture. It enriches life with meaning and depth.

Jewish culture has a rich and dynamic history, always in productive dialogue with its neighboring civilizations. The cultures of ancient Babylon and Egypt, Persian Empire, Greco-Roman world, Medieval Europe, the European Renaissance, Islamic countries and modern Western civilization – all have a share in the structure and content of Jewish culture.

Besides its religious content, Jewish culture includes building blocks of a national identity and cultural elements, which we define as \"secular\" or \"humanistic.\" These elements of Jewish culture are sometimes pushed aside and do not always receive the attention they deserve, neither in Israel nor in the Diaspora of the Jewish people.

The course will include the following topics:

1. Pre-modern Jewish world, principal problems of revealed religions and medieval Jewish, Christian, and Muslim theologies, the ghetto reality and Jewish particularity.

2. The Birth of Modern Europe: Historical, economical and sociological changes within European civilization, the Enlightenment Debunking of Religion: critical-historical approaches to the phenomenon of religion and human culture.

3. Spinoza\'s pantheism and criticism of monotheistic religions, secular scientific study of scriptures, the status of Jewish law and Jewish understanding of Jewish unique sacred history (heilgeschichte) from a secular perspective, \"The Ethics\" and the idea of human rationality and human moral autonomy, the ongoing Spinoza debate among Jewish and Christian philosophers.

4. Moses Mendelssohn and European Enlightenment: the enlightenment and Jewish thought, Mendelssohn - the \"Jewish-German Socrates,\" Deism, natural religion and universal ethics, Judaism as the community of Divine Law - Emancipation and the place of Jewish particularity in a liberal society.

5. Shlomo Maimon, Nachman Krochmal and the idea of History: Jewish existence and the idea of History from a secular perspective, the ongoing development of Jewish culture in the course of history, the legitimacy of change and pluralism in Jewish culture, the development of scientific study of Judaism (Wissenschaft des Judentum), the secular study of Jewish history (Gratz, Dubnov) and its contribution to modern Jewish identity.

6. Ethical Monotheism and the liberal idea of community of faith versus national approaches to Jewish identity.


Jewish Culture as a Secular Paradigm of Jewish Existence in Modernity

The course will explore secular paradigms of Jewish existence in a modern world, whether in a national setting in Israel or within a liberal context in the Jewish Diaspora.

Among others the course will include the following topics:

Moses Hess: the revival of Jewish nationality and the possibility of Jewish national state in Palestine

Pinsker and his vision of Auto-emancipation, the development of Social Zionism: Borochov, Berl Katzenelson, the labor movement

Herzl: the liberal and secular Jewish state

Ahad Ha\'am (A. Ginzberg) and spiritual Zionism

A. D. Gordon: Man and Nature, the relevancy of Pantheism to the challenges of Modernity and the revival of holistic \"healthy\" Jewish life in Israel.

Hebrew literary intellectuals of Russia and Eastern Europe, national Jewish existence vs. liberal understanding of Jewish existence as a religious sentiment, Berdichevsky and Brenner\'s radical criticism of \"exile Judaism\" and \'Yavne\' Judaism.

The revival of the Hebrew language, the milieu of Jewish secular existence.

Gershom Sholem: a critical study of Jewish Messianism and other spiritual forces within the Jewish world and their relevancy (or irrelevancy) to the reality of a modern Jewish life.

The life of Jewish \"Normality\" Vs. cosmopolitan perspectives of Jewish life in the 21st century.


Dialogues between Jewish Culture and Neighboring Societies - A Secular Perspective

No culture is an island and the Jewish culture developed through intensive dialogues with its cultural surroundings. This course will explore the cultural dialogues and cross influences between the Jewish civilization and neighboring societies and cultures from the time of ancient Hebrew civilization until modern times.

The course topics will include:

Biblical Hebrew cultures and its connections to the cultures of the neighboring societies of Egypt, Babylon and Canaan.

Persian and Hellenistic influences on early rabbinic Judaism and its contribution to Jewish law, the \'Hellenization\' of Jewish culture, Jewish life in Hellenistic society, Philo and his influence on Christian thought and European culture.

Dialogues between Rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity.

Islamic and Christian civilizations and its dialogues with Medieval Jewish philosophy and medieval Jewish literature: Rabbi Yehuda Halevi and Ibn Gazali, Maimonides and El-Farabi and Ibn Rushed, Tomas Aquinas and Maimonides.

Jews as major contributors to the spread of ideas and cultures in Medieval and Renaissance Europe and the Mediterranean.

The European Renaissance and its influence on Jewish thought, neo-stoic influences on Jewish philosophy, Marcelo Pichini, Pico De-Mirandola, Yehuda Abarbanel and Menashe Ben Israel.

The European enlightenment and its influences on the development of modern Jewish thought and Jewish secular understanding of the world, Spinoza and the spiritual; situation of the Jewish \'Converses,\' the Spinoza Controversy.

Moses Mendelssohn, Kant and 18th century European philosophy.

German Idealism and 19th century Jewish philosophy, Hegel and Rabbi Krochmal, Formschtacher, Herman Cohen.

Existentialism and post-Modern Jewish Philosophy in the 20th century.

Modern political and social philosophies and its role in the formation of Jewish socialism and Jewish nationalism.


Judaism Beyond the Covenant: Universal & Humanistic Ethics in Jewish Culture - Past and Present

Jewish culture was in principal a religious culture of a close group of people, dominated by the idea of a sacred covenant between God and the people of Israel. Jewish philosophers would claim that Judaism without God and Divine law is not Judaism in its very essence; the basic arenas of Jewish life are the synagogue and the house of learning (Beit Midrash).

More than that, Jews who sought emancipation, like Mendelsohn, would claim that Judaism is a private issue of Jews alone and that all universal aspects of humanity are shared by all men and therefore are to be located outside the Jewish particular tradition.

Nonetheless, Judaism as a living culture had throughout its history significant secular elements. Ideas from the Hebrew Bible, Rabbinic literature and Jewish philosophy became spiritual assets of humanity and meaningful resources for Jews and non-Jews alike. These dimensions of Jewish culture, which sometimes were overshadowed by the religious weight of Jewish traditions, became even more relevant in Modernity.

The aim of this course is to explore these aspects of Jewish culture, a potential answer to the challenge of making ancient cultural resources and traditiional heritage relevant to the modernized secular Jew.

The course topics will include:

Social justice in Biblical Hebrew civilization: \'the other,\' the poor, the weak, the stranger, the slave, the woman.

Universal wisdom with Biblical \'Wisdom Literature.\'

Value and meaning of Human life in Biblical and Rabbinic texts (The Mishna).

Peace and War in Biblical and Rabbinic texts. The vision of universal peace and human solidarity within particularistic traditions.

Universal ethics in Medieval Jewish philosophy Spanish Golden Age Jewish culture: who is the proper educated person?

Jewish contributions to the European Renaissance, Humanism and Rationalism: Yehuda Abarbanel, Spinoza, Moses Mendelsohn, Shlomo Maimon, Heinrich Heine.

Jewish role in the development of modern political thought and the creation of the modern state, social thought and involvement in socialistic movements.

Jewish role in various mechanism of modern society, the press, modern economy etc, European national renaissance and Zionism, Jewish scholarly work and Jewish contribution to \'social sciences\' and \'natural sciences.\'

Meaning of life in a modern industrial society, Dialogical philosophy and Jewish existentialism, including Jewish Religious post-modernism: Martin Buber, F. Rosenzweig, Kafka, A.Y. Heschel, Soloveichik.

Modernity and medical ethics and bio-ethics from a Jewish perspective.

Secularism and the challenge of ethical autonomy form a Jewish perspective. Can men alone rule our world in a Nuclear Age?

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