Judaic Studies (JDS)

Is religion inherently violent, or inherently peaceful? Scholars of religions take a wide range of stances on the relationship between religion and violence, some arguing that it is inherent to religion, others that it is culturally and economically motivated, and others still that it is simply inherent to human nature. We¿ll study critical theories about religion and violence and test them on historical and recent conflicts. The course will be organized around four overlapping modes of violence: martyrdom and redemptive suffering: the violence of social stratification and othering, traditional, political war and; apocalyptic and spiritual warfare..

Survey of Judaism and the rich Jewish legacy: basic philosophical, theological, social, and political values and practices of Judaism as they developed over time in a variety of social and political environments. This course is the same as RSP 104 and course repeat rules will apply. Students should consult with their major department regarding any restrictions on their degree requirements.

Introduces and analyzes great works of Jewish literature from ancient to modern times: the Bible, Talmud; Guide for the Perplexed; Kuzari; poetry of the Golden Age in Spain; the great moderns.

his course will be taught on a rotational basis with faculty from COL, ART and RLL. Beginning in the late 19th Century a new cultural movement was born: the avant garde. This course seeks to understand how and why art and literature that deliberately challenged popular understanding came to be dominant. This course will introduce you to the main currents of 19th and 20th Century avant garde history, theory, and aesthetic practice. Grounding our approach in the specific geographic and historical conditions that gave rise to these individual movements, we will explore their expression through a wide variety of mediums including art and visual culture, literature, poetry, music, and film. We will read both primary and secondary documents as we grapple with these movements¿ modernist and revolutionary agendas in order to assess their successes and failures and evaluate their impacts and legacies.

The one credit UB Seminar is focused on a big idea or challenging issue to engage students with questions of significance in a field of study and, ultimately, to connect their studies with issues of consequence in the wider world. Essential to the UB Curriculum, the Seminar helps transition to UB through an early connection to UB faculty and the undergraduate experience at a comprehensive, research university. This course is equivalent to any 198 offered in any subject. This course is a controlled enrollment (impacted) course. Students who have previously attempted the course and received a grade of F or R may not be able to repeat the course during the fall or spring semester.

The three credit UB Seminar is focused on a big idea or challenging issue to engage students with questions of significance in a field of study and, ultimately, to connect their studies with issues of consequence in the wider world. Essential to the UB Curriculum, the Seminar helps students with common learning outcomes focused on fundamental expectations for critical thinking, ethical reasoning, and oral communication, and learning at a university, all within topic focused subject matter. The Seminars provide students with an early connection to UB faculty and the undergraduate experience at a comprehensive, research university. This course is equivalent to any 199 offered in any subject. This course is a controlled enrollment (impacted) course. Students who have previously attempted the course and received a grade of F or R may not be able to repeat the course during the fall or spring semester.

This course is, at its core, an introduction to the history and archaeology of the Levant, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, and Iran from the end of the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1200 BCE) to the rise of Alexander the Great (334 BCE). Against this vast backdrop, the course will focus specifically on cities and kings: we will explore the diverse histories and cultures of the ancient Near East through the dual lenses of urbanism and imperialism. This course is the same as RSP 201 and CL 201 and course repeat rules will apply. Students should consult with their major department regarding any restrictions on their degree requirements.

This course will examine the meaning of Jewish ethics as a development of character and the obedience to universal principles of justice. We will then examine Jewish perspectives on contemporary ethical issues such as war and peace, feminism, abortion, economics and charity, and the environment.

This course explores the role of gendering in Judaism over time and space, using a variety of primary texts and theoretical models. This course is the same as RSP 207 and course repeat rules will apply. Students should consult with their major department regarding any restrictions on their degree requirements

How did the Holocaust happen? How was the Final Solution developed and executed? How have victims, perpetrators, and bystanders written and re-written the accounts of what happened? And how do we remember this today? This course places the Holocaust in the broad context of Western history, thought, and culture by focusing on a variety of sources that include survivor testimonies, novels, and political theory. We will study classic texts such as Elie Wiesel's Night, Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem, and Art Spiegelman's Maus. We will also view selected films, among them Claude Lanzmann's Shoah, and Alain Resnais' Night and Fog. This course is the same as HIS 299 and course repeat rules will apply. Students should consult with their major department regarding any restrictions on their degree requirements.

Critical, thematic, historic, and literary study of the roots of Judeo-Christian tradition as recorded in the writings of ancient Israel; different methods of biblical criticism. This course is the same as RSP 210 and course repeat rules will apply. Students should consult with their major department regarding any restrictions on their degree requirements.

Topics vary by semester.

Relationships and conflicts that shaped the identity of the American Jewish woman: Jewish women and the American women's rights movement; immigrant Jewish women and labor activism; impact of feminism on Judaism. This course is the same as RSP 214, and course repeat rules will apply. Students should consult with their major department regarding any restrictions on their degree requirements.

The meaning of ethics and its relationship to the formation and purpose of the political community is one of the central debates that have animated Western philosophers and theologians across time. How do political communities form and why? What defines a just and fair society? One society may consider a certain action morally correct and another culture may consider the same action morally incorrect. Why is that? How do we know what is good and evil, right and wrong? Is there one standard that unites different value systems or are all systems equally correct and variable?

The 19th century Industrial Revolution (steam engine, railroad, mass production) is not yet the 20th century Communications Revolution (phone, radio, movies, TV, computers, internet, Wi-Fi, cell phones, cable). The last thoughts and outlooks of a three thousand year old spiritual-intellectual heritage in the West reach their fruition and open new prospects, such as the spread of democracy, the rise of liberal religion, the growth of metropolitan culture, and the prospect of general prosperity. Seeking these breakthroughs at their sources, we will explore the old and the new in the prose and poetry of Mendelsohn, Hegel, Feuerbach, Schopenhauer, Marx, Melville, Dostoyevsky, Whitman, Comte, Darwin, Bergson, Nietzsche and Freud, among others.

Jewish experience from the late 18th century to the present day; Western and Eastern European Jewry; ethnic origins and backgrounds of contemporary Jewry in the United States, Canada, and Israel. This course is the same as HIS 230 and RSP 230, and course repeat rules will apply. Students should consult with their major department regarding any restrictions on their degree requirements.

This course introduces students to the grammatical structure and vocabulary of Biblical Hebrew. It includes basic Biblical passages for students to translate into English and to analyze. The course has no prerequisites and is offered in English.

This course explores Jewish Folk narratives and practices. This course is the same as RSP 255, and course repeat rules will apply. Students should consult with their major department regarding any restrictions on their degree requirements.

Reawakening ancient debates surrounding science, ethics, aesthetics, skepticism, epicureanism, myth, stoicism, poetry, prophecy, polytheism and monotheism, this course will examine the meaning of the good, the true and the beautiful.

The course will examine various depictions of human-animal relationship in Western literature and culture, from classical times to modern times. By looking at these texts, we will chart the emergence of a figure that occupies a borderline state between human and animal, and explore its implications for our understanding of Jewish and Christian relationships as well as human and animal nature. Readings include: Ovid, Marie de France, Hobbes, Shakespeare, Heine, Baudelaire, Tolstoy, Nietzsche, Kafka, and more.

Origins and development of Kabbalah. Kabbalist readings of Creation, the soul, reincarnation, attachment to the divine. Role of "mysticism" in Jewish religion and community life.

A comparative study of the relationship between justice, law, and society in pagan, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Thought. This course is the same as RSP 284 and LAW 284, and course repeat rules will apply. Students should consult with their major department regarding any restrictions on their degree requirements

Introduces various hermeneutic processes, synthetic and analytic, out of which Jewish law developed its specific and intricate legal systems. This course is the same as RSP 285, and course repeat rules will apply. Students should consult with their major department regarding any restrictions on their degree requirements.

What is prayer and how does it work? How is it related to meditation and song? This course explores the phenomenology of prayer, meditation and religious music, their ritual function, and their effects on the brain, on personality, and community. We focus on Jewish sources, placing them in historical context and comparing them to those of other religions such as Hinduism and Christianity.

History and development of Jewish environmental and business law and ethics; comparative study of Jewish and American ethics and law relating to environmental, business and economic issues.

This course examines religious ecstasy achieved through ritual intoxication achieved through sexuality, entheogens, and music, dance and trance.

From paying rent to applying for jobs, we are all occupied with the earning and spending of money, but is there an ethics to our economics? Does accumulating wealth require moral compromises? What are our responsibilities toward impoverished members of our communities? And who decides what counts as work? This course explores these questions through the sources of Jewish thought, including biblical passages and philosophical texts, films and sermons, historical documents and literature. This highly interactive course has been designed so that through our critical exploration of the relationships between religion and economics, students also master the fundamentals of academic writing and oral communication.

Topics vary by semester.

This course introduces the world's religious systems and their cultural bases, including Hinduism, Judaism, and Islam. In this course we will examine the expression of some primary characteristics of religion in primary sources from a variety of religious traditions. We will focus specifically on the ways in which ideas about the sacred are formed and how they are used to order experience, with a focus on space, time, and story. All of these, in turn, are part of imagining deity. We will then look at how these ordering concepts are used to formulate guidelines for daily life, as expressed in scripture, ritual, cosmogony, conceptions of the deity, and ethics. This course is the same as RSP 313 and course repeat rules will apply.

Medieval Judaism is an exploration of Judaism as a minority religion living between the Crescent and Cross, the Islamic and Christian empires between the 9th to 16th centuries. We will explore the dual nature of the medieval period for Jews: part intellectual and cultural flourishing and part persecution and tragedy. Topics to be discussed include: the origins of anti-Semitism, the crusades, philosophy vs. mysticism, the Maimonidean controversy, Jewish-Christian dialogue and polemics, the inquisitions, marranos, responses to tragedy and the Renaissance. This course is the same as HIS 329 and RSP 329, and course repeat rules will apply. Students should consult with their major department regarding any restrictions on their degree requirements.

The interplay between women's social movements and the flow of women's literature within and across national spaces recognizes the power of the word as a critical feminist tool for elevating women's voices in an increasingly technology-oriented global economy. This reading intensive seminar will consider examples of contemporary fiction and nonfiction by representative women; for the purposes of comparing how women living/writing in industrial and developing countries succeed in disrupting the geographic boundaries imposed by culture and politics-specifically the myth of them and us that can frame discussions of social issues foregrounded by women in differing regions. By examining and, hopefully, exposing this myth and its contours, we hope to better understanding why writing and literature remain crucial tools of global feminist activism. This course is the same as GGS 330, and course repeat rules will apply. Students should consult with their major department regarding any restrictions on their degree requirements.

During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, many Jews who fled persecution in Europe immigrated to America. By the 1950s, the United States became home to the largest Jewish community in modern history. In this course, we will explore the ways in which life in a liberal political and capitalist economic order shaped the Jewish experience in America, and how Jews, in turn, came to influence American culture, politics, and society. This course is the same as HIS 335, and course repeat rules will apply. Students should consult with their major department regarding any restrictions on their degree requirements.

This course will chart the development of a prophetic persona in Hebrew Literature in relation to the Zionist Project. We will reflect upon the specific attributes of the genre of prophetic Zionist Literature and consider it within the historical, literary and theological contexts from which it emerged. Readings include: Abraham Mapu, Judah Leib, Gordon, Ahad Ha-am, and Chaim Nachman Bialik. This course is the same as HIS 337 and RSP 337, and course repeat rules will apply. Students should consult with their major department regarding any restrictions on their degree requirements.

How did Jews interpret the Bible before biblical criticism? We will examine the different methodologies of classic interpreters such as Rashi, Nachmanides, Ibn Ezra, Gersonides, Arama and Abravanel through the varied approaches of midrash, philosophy, philology and mysticism. Topics to be discussed include creation, leadership, ethics, sexuality, religious polemics, time, history, and Mosaic authorship. This course is the same as RSP 354 and course repeat rules will apply. Students should consult with their major department regarding any restrictions on their degree requirements.

Studies the history of philosophy from Plotinus to the end of the Middle Ages. This course is the same as PHI 366.

This course offers extensive reading in the Bible, one of the most influential and perennially-popular books in the world, and a fundamental pillar in the construction of Western civilization. Part history, part literature, part philosophy, part law-book, it raises still relevant questions concerning ethics, community, knowledge, the place of man in the world, and the very idea of a responsible self. We will read selections from the Bible including Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, Samuel, several of the prophets, Job, Ecclesiastes, Jonah, some Psalms, and the Gospels of Matthew and John. Students will also consider modern biblical scholarship and explore the more important uses of religious and biblical ideas in various periods of English and American literature. This course is the same as JDS 374 and RSP 339 and course repeat rules will apply.

Examines major contributions to political philosophy from Plato and Aristotle to Machiavelli. This course is the same as PSC 380, and course repeat rules will apply. Students should consult with their major department regarding any restrictions on their degree requirements.

The 19th century Industrial Revolution (steam engine, railroad, mass production) is not yet the 20th century Communications Revolution (phone, radio, movies, TV, computers, internet, Wi-Fi, cell phones, cable). The last thoughts and outlooks of a three thousand year old spiritual-intellectual heritage in the West reach their fruition and open new prospects, such as the spread of democracy, the rise of liberal religion, the growth of metropolitan culture, and the prospect of general prosperity. Seeking these breakthroughs at their sources, we will explore the old and the new in the prose and poetry of Kant, Mendelsohn, Hegel, Feuerbach, Schopenhauer, Marx, Melville, Dostoyevsky, Whitman, Comte, Darwin, Bergson, Nietzsche and Freud, among others. This course is the same as PHI 380.

Considered the greatest Jewish philosopher of all time, this course will examine Maimonides' philosophy, comparing it to contemporary Islamic philosophy and Aristotle. Texts include selections from Mishnah Torah, Guide of the Perplexed, and Thirteen Principles of Faith. This course is the same as RSP 384 and course repeat rules will apply. Students should consult with their major department regarding any restrictions on their degree requirements.

Maimonides Guide of the Perplexed is one of the central philosophical and theological works of the Jewish Middle Ages. It examines the conflict between the Hebrew Bible and Greek philosophy. We will consider topic such as the nature of God and prophecy; the meaning of providence, theodicy and evil; the pursuit of wisdom and human perfection; and how to interpret the Bible. The eminent Maimonides scholar Isadore Twersky observed that although religious rationalism did not begin with Maimonides, it came to be totally identified with him. Protagonists and antagonists would draw the lines of their positions in relation to Maimonides. To a great extent, subsequent Jewish intellectual history may be seen as a debate concerning the wisdom and effectiveness of the Maimonidean position. We will attempt to discern Maimonides' position on the above issues and explore different ways that his thought has been adapted and criticized by medieval and modern interpreters. This course is the same as RSP 384, and course repeat rules will apply. Students should consult with their major department regarding any restrictions on their degree requirements.

In this course, we will explore Jewish Mysticism from its earliest sources in ancient Jewish texts to its contemporary use in New Age Religion. While stories and ideas are important to kabbalah, experience and feeling are its very essence. Mystics seek out deep, transformative, and even potentially destructive feeling with everything they have, beginning with their own, gendered bodies, and the strong emotions most familiar to them through love and sexuality. Often, people cultivate these emotions by means of stories and ritual practices that change or queer gender categories and sexual norms. This class will trace the development of mystical experience and feeling in Jewish mystical narratives and practices over time and space. By the end of the course students will be familiar with the core texts in kabbalah, they will have a good grasp of its cosmological models, and the role of gender, sexuality, and the body in cultivating experience and affect to act on these models.

What is the relationship between science and religion? Is science true and religion merely a myth? How does the relationship between the two affect the structure of human societies? A group of contemporary critics of religion, known as the "New Atheists," such as Christopher Hitchens, Charles Dawkins and Sam Harris, present a scathing and harsh attack on traditional religious doctrines and beliefs seeking to liberate the public sphere from the influence of religion. This course will seek to explore some of the major players in this debate in the Jewish tradition throughout the last thousand years. Topics to be discussed include prophecy, rationality of the commandments, ethics, providence, election, God, creation, dogmas and the meaning of life.

Selected topics in American Jewish history, from colonial to mid-nineteenth century German-Jewish immigration to later East European immigration; formation of American Judaisms; impact of America on Jews and Jews on America.

Historical, sociological, and legal concerns in early and later rabbinic literature; how Jewish life and thought relate to trends in legal interpretation though the centuries.

This course introduces students to major theories of religion and their applications. Readings will come from a variety of relevant disciplines, including sociology, anthropology, psychology, and cognitive science. Themes considered will include defining religion, understanding the nature of religious experience, decoding the symbolic language of ritual, and mapping the social function of religion.

The course will chart the role of women in modern Jewish literature. We will consider portrayals of women in traditional Jewish sources, and focus on the way that Jewish women authors sought to challenge or develop such portrayals in their own writings.

The 20th century philosopher Emmanuel Levinas was a philosopher of ethics, but with a new emphasis: he argued that ethics lies at the foundation of all intelligibility, including that of science, art, technology, politics and religion. Hence he radically challenged the traditional Western privileging of ¿the true¿ over ¿the good,¿ science over ethics. Instead of basing ethics in ¿rules¿ or ¿norms,¿ whether natural or religious, for Levinas the ethical begins in the imperative responsibility one person has for another (morality), to alleviate the other¿s suffering, and building on this in the responsibility each person has for everyone else (justice.) The aim of this course is first to explicate Levinas¿s thought. It will also highlight its differences from other relevant thinkers, ancient, modern and contemporary.

Topics vary by semester.

Topics vary by semester.

A survey of various conceptions of Redemption, in contrast to personal salvation or purely secular utopianism, as the central purpose of Judaism. This course is the same as RSP 399 and course repeat rules will apply. Students should consult with their major department regarding any restrictions on their degree requirements.

The Jewish Studies Internship Program provides a mechanism for highly motivated students of all levels to earn 3 academic credits by combining internship experience with educational knowledge of the Jewish tradition. Upon approval, the student¿s internship is registered for the JDS 496 credit.

The Honors Program in Jewish Studies offers students the opportunity to develop a substantial thesis based on primary source research. Students enjoy the reward of finishing a prolonged, independent project mentored by a faculty member. It can be on any subject area within the academic study of Judaism, as long as one of the faculty members agrees to supervise the student¿s project. Upon admission to the program, junior or senior honors students are responsible for arranging with a faculty mentor to guide their thesis research and writing, normally completed in the senior year. Honors students may, at the discretion of their mentors and upon approval of the directors of undergraduate and graduate studies, participate in a relevant graduate seminar or seminars.