Course Descriptions

Course Description: This is a course on the history of Israel, from the emergence of the modern Zionist movement beginning in 1881 to the present day.  We will start off by discussing the biblical foundations for the emergence of modern Zionism, the Jewish people’s links to the land of Israel through almost 2000 years of exile, and the idea of a return to the land in mid 19th century Europe.  We will then quickly engage with the establishment of new Jewish settlements in Palestine under Ottoman rule and the problems and opportunities that such settlement engendered.  We will explore the manner in which the European powers redrew the map of the post-World War I Middle East – including Palestine, and what kinds of possibilities emerged for a Jewish state in the region in the aftermath of the war. Settlement and competition for land and resources with the Arab population will be explored under the British Mandate (1917-1948).  The emergence of the modern state – along with mass Jewish immigration, integration and polarization among Jews, dilemmas over integrating Arabs while under threat from her neighbors, and the role of the army as both an instrument of national defense as well as a mechanism of socialization will be fully explored.  We will discuss Israel’s wars as well as the opportunities, difficulties, and dilemmas in achieving peace.  Current events will be discussed in class on a regular basis, albeit briefly; we have a large amount of material to cover but, as we will see, many of the events debated in present day Israel have long preoccupied both Israel’s founders and sons. 

Course Requirements: There will be three essays as well as a final exam.

Grading will be calculated on the following basis:

Attendance and participation: 10%

Essay 1 – 20%

Essay 2 – 20%

Essay 3 – 20%

Final Exam – 30%

Papers should be turned in precisely on the due dates assigned.  You should try to make every class.  Occasionally that can’t happen during the course of a semester, but more than 6 absences will be grounds for failure.  Obviously, excellent attendance and participation will have a strong and positive impact on your grade.

Course Objectives: Through a critical study of both primary and secondary sources, students will engage with the dilemmas and decisions that Israel’s leaders – and people – have made while trying to survive, thrive, and forge a unique national identity in an often hostile regional environment. 

Teaching Method: The course will consist of lectures, in-class critical examination of documents, maps, and video presentations.  Class discussions will constitute a major part of the course; on that basis, students are urged to come to class prepared as well as to follow the news closely.  Contemporary events will be discussed in light of their historical perspective.

Texts:

1). Howard Sachar, A History of Israel (Alfred A. Knopf, 2007)

2). Alan Dowty, Israel/Palestine (Cambridge: Polity, 2008)

3). Itamar Rabinovich and Jehuda Reinharz, Israel in the Middle East: Documents and Readings on Society, Politics, and Foreign Relations, Pre-1948 to the Present. (Brandeis University Press, 2007).

4). Martin Gilbert, Atlas of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (newest edition available).

Articles will be placed on the web sit.

May be repeated for credit. Tutorially directed research in Jewish Studies. Prereq: Upper-division standing and consent of instructor.

Israel’s second king, David son of Jesse, is remembered in later literature as the ideal king—he overcame obstacles to rule a large kingdom; he was loyal to and beloved of Yahweh, Israel’s god; he played the lyre and wrote psalms; he was even the type of the Messiah, an idea taken over by the early Christians. But is that really the way the Hebrew Bible paints him? Was he a king by Yahweh’s design or a usurper? Was he moved to compose a lovely poem to King Saul and his son Jonathan or responsible for their deaths? What kind of loyal Yahwist would send his pregnant mistress’s husband to die in battle?

David is an enigma, no less to modern scholars than to ancient narrators. We will examine his story in the context of the Hebrew Bible, of archaeology, of other kings in the ancient Near East, and of his relationships—with his family, with Saul, and with Yahweh.

Texts/Readings

B. Halpern, David’s Secret Demons S. McKenzie, King David: A Biography Articles posted on Blackboard

Grading

25% oral report presenting the reading for one day’s class 10% peer review of the oral report 40% 2 4-page reviews of readings from a list provided by the professor 25% attendance and participation in class

Palestinian and Israeli societies have lived side by side for generations, developing their cultural traits in parallel and often within a framework marked by animosity and mutual rejection.  What is the role of popular culture in shaping the political and social consciousness of these societies? Can we find in the respective popular cultures the marks of interaction and mutual influence in addition to the obvious signs of conflict? The course will explore a variety of themes considered central to both societies, focusing on their expression in popular culture.  Students who complete the course successfully will be able to articulate the fundamental values of these societies and draw lines of similarity and difference between them as they reflect on the history of the region and its future.  The themes covered will include, among others, child rearing, rites of passage, romance, dress codes, cuisine, nature conservation, commemoration practices and the power of language.  Each theme will be observed in both societies, with Dr. Mohammad driving the Palestinian perspective and Dr. Raizen driving the Israeli one.  The course will culminate in group projects that will draw on the perspectives of both societies.

The course will be taught in English, and does not assume familiarity with a regional language.  Students will be taught 150 or so words and phrases in Arabic and Hebrew in the course of the semester, and will be introduced to a number of regional proverbs in their original languages.

Texts/Readings

In addition to newspaper articles from Israel and Palestine and other media resources, we will read segments from the following books:

Rebecca L. Stein and Ted Swedenburg, eds.  Palestine, Israel, and the Politics of Popular Culture.  Duke University Press, 2005.

Motti Regev and Edwin Seroussi .  Popular Music and National Culture in Israel.  University of California Press, 2004.Alexandra Nocke.  The Place of the Mediterranean in Modern Israeli Identity.  Middle Eastern Studies Volume 47, Issue 1, 2011.

Grading Policy

Attendance and participation: 30%Three essays:   45%Final project: 25%

Jerusalem has been described famously as a golden bowl full of scorpions. As this proverb suggests, Jerusalem not only has been regarded as a treasure but also as something that is difficult to possess. This course surveys the often-tumultuous religious, political, and cultural history of Jerusalem over three millennia and examines the city's role as a symbolic focus for Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The course examines literary evidence, artifacts, architecture, geography, and iconography to explore the development of the city and how its sacred space and symbolic significance has been shaped by history.Texts

Coogan, Michael D. et al., eds. The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha, Augmented Fourth Edition, New Revised Standard Version, College Edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

The Qur'an. Any modern edition with English translation.

Bahat, Dan & Chaim T. Rubenstein. The Carta Jerusalem Atlas. Third edition. Carta, 2011.

Cline, Eric H. Jerusalem Besieged: From Ancient Canaan to Modern Israel. Ann Arbor, Mich. 2005.

Montefiore, Simon Sebag. Jerusalem: The Biography. New York: Knopf, 2011.

Grading Policy

Three in-class one-hour examinations (60%)

One cumulative, final examination (30%)

Class attendance (10%)

This course will examine the complex relationship between the Western Church and the Jews over two millenia. How did theological ideas about the Jews crystallize in the early centuries? How were they expressed in legal and social terms in the centuries that followed? How did economic and social realities dovetail with theology to produce the extreme persecutions of the Jews in the late medieval period? What led to the striking changes in Christian attitudes to Jews in from the post-Reformation period to the present? We will analyze relevant documents and images, emphasizing how theological positions both created and responded to the socio-economic roles of Jews.

Required to purchase:

Revised Standard Version of the Bible (any edition)

The course will make used of a website designed specifically for it by the instructor. The website includes many of the readings. Other assigned readings will be posted on Blackboard.

Grading:

Class attendance and participation (10%), participation on Discussion Board (20%), two 1-3 pp. assignments (20%), mid-term exam (20%), final exam (30%).

The Spanish Inquisition operated for three and a half centuries, and became one of the most notorious institutions in history. It is popularly known for its secret trials, autos-da-fe, and burnings at the stake. But why was it established? Why did it survive even when heresy seemed virtually eliminated? What purposes did it serve that allowed it to survive for so long? These are some of the issues we will explore in this course. Each student will carry out a project “tracing” one (fictitious) personality through the various phases of the inquisitorial process, from the time of arrest (or re-arrest) to the day of the sentencing. By discussing one another’s projects we will get a sense of the great diversity - in time and space, and in motives and aims - of this institution. 

Required books:

Henry Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision

Lu Ann Homza, The Spanish Inquisition, 1478-1614

Grading:

Attendance and participation (20%), project proposal (20%), draft of project (20%). Final project (40%).

This course introduces students to a burgeoning field of  American Jewish cultural studies that deals with what one theorist calls, “the social value of things” (Arjun Appadurai). Focusing on the interplay between material culture and Jewish identity and thought in contemporary America, the course explores how Jews think about, work with, display and “perform’ objects in the course of their everyday lives. This is not a course on the production of fine art by or about Jews, so much as it is about the everyday arts of adornment, celebration, memorialization and identity negotiation through the material cultures of our everyday lives.

Why have Jews been hated and mistrusted for so long? How, if at all, does judeophobia differ from other types of xenophobia or racism?  In which societies have we historically seen intense hatred or mistrust of Jews? Where do we see it today? And where do we see the opposite phenomenon: philosemitism?

In this upper-level undergraduate course, we tackle these and related questions. We identify distinct types of judeophobia/antisemitism over 2,500 years, identifying when and where new and discrete layers of antisemitic ideas developed and flourished. Although our primary focus is on antisemitism in contemporary and historical Christian and Muslim societies, we begin in the antisemitic bedrock—Ancient Greece and Rome. We also look at antisemitism in peripheral societies which have had few Jews, if any (e.g., Japan). Finally, we consider judeophobia among Jews themselves—that is, the enduring phenomenon in which some Jews have not only internalized antisemitic discourse but have become “self-hating.”

Throughout the course, we use antisemitism to explore more general ideas in social theory, including habitus, globalization, and the nature of conflict related to race, ethnicity, class, and ideology. Perhaps most surprising and disturbing—this being a university—we look at the repeated role of intellectual elites in generating and justifying new forms of judeophobia, and in so doing, perpetuating this ancient hatred.

Grading

To be provided by instructor. 

The events of the Holocaust changed Western culture in fundamental ways. Not only was a great part of Jewish culture in Europe destroyed, the circumstances of the Nazi genocide as a modern, highly rationalized, efficient form of mass murder which took place in the heart of civilized Europe changed the conception of the progress of modernity and the Enlightenment in fundamental ways. This course explores the historical, political, psychological, theological, and cultural fall-out, as well as literary and cinematic responses in Europe and the U.S. to these events as they first became known, and as one moved further away from it in time and came to understand its pronounced and often problematic after effects. Central to our inquiry is the realization that the events of the Holocaust have left indelible traces in European and U.S. culture and culture production, of which a closer look (first, decade by decade, then moving on to a number of themes and questions), reveals profound insights into current day culture, politics, and society.

Supervised individual reading and research for one semester, followed by writing substantial honors thesis during the second semester. Restricted to Jewish Studies majors. Prereq: For 679HA, admission to the Jewish Studies Honors Programs, and for 679HB, Jewish Studies, 679HA.

Supervised individual reading and research for one semester, followed by writing substantial honors thesis during the second semester. Restricted to Jewish Studies majors. Prereq: For 679HA, admission to the Jewish Studies Honors Programs, and for 679HB, Jewish Studies, 679HA.