Cross-listed with HIST329Q. Credit only granted for JWST319A or HIST329Q.

Modern Jewish culture is marked by competing visions of Jewish masculinity, from the traditional learned scholar to the muscle Jew of the 19th century. Athleticism plays an important role in this cultural formation. Attention to Jewish engagement in and with sports including boxing, baseball, basketball, and soccer allows for a better understanding of modern Jewish identity and its development and challenges.

Our modern world is shaped by a confluence of Greek, Jewish, and Christian traditions. How did Greeks, Jews, and Christians relate to oneanother in the ancient world? What have we inherited from them? Working across a range of texts and objects from the first millennium BCE through to the emergence of Christianity in the first century CE, wewill learn justhow Jewish early Christianity is, how Greek ancient Judaism is, and how this triangulation of ancient communities has shapedour modern concepts of religion and secularism, past and future, faith and reason.

The course is organized into four units. Unit 1 ( Ritual ) asks how Greeks, Jews, and early Christians communed with the divine, from templeto synagogue, from the public square to the intimacy of the home. In their uses of prayer, offerings, amulets, and storytelling, these three communities shared similar every-day practices. Unit 2 ( Law ) looks at how Greeks, Jews, and Christians expressed these practices through theories,rules, and regulations. Greek communities lived under local civic law: each city had its own statutes and rites regulating relationswith the divine. Jewish law, by contrast, was grounded in a single, universally binding text: the Law of Moses. Christianity's earliest debates turned on what to do with this Mosaic Law: whether to keep it, abandon it, or reinterpret it. Unit 3 ( Belonging ) asks how each of these communities definedefined the boundaries of community belonging. Both Greekness (Helleni m) and Christianity tended to cross ethnic boundaries, each in very different ways. Judaism remained largelytied to a single ethnic group. In Unit 4 ( Legacy ), we will ask how thenotions we inherit from this entanglement of traditions continue to structure how we understand ourselves in the modern world.

Cross-listed with JWST319Q and ISRL329D. Credit only granted for ISRL329D, JWST319Q, or RELS319Q.

This multidisciplinary course examines religion in Israel from historical, legal, sociological, and political perspectives. It focuses on Judaism as the country's dominant religion and culture, exploring its relationship to ethnicity, Israel's diverse religious landscape, and religion's role in contemporary Middle Eastern affairs. The course also considers Israel's Christian, Muslim, and Baha'i communities, including their shared spaces and interactions.

Cross-listed with HEBR398W and ISRL349W. Credit only granted for HEBR398W, ISRL349W, or JWST319W.

Examination of the history, linguistics, politics and sociology of Modern Israeli Hebrew slang, including influences from popular American culture, technology, the military, Arabic and immigrant group languages. Taught in English; course materials in Hebrew with translation.

Cross-listed with ISRL372. Credit only granted for JWST372 or ISRL372.

Cross-listed with HIST418C and JWST469C. Credit only granted for HIST418C, or JWST419B.

Sacred texts like the Hebrew bible challenge human understanding, demanding constant study, interpretation and reinterpretation. Jewish scholars have been engaged in this process (exegesis) for centuries, trying to make the Bible give up its mysteries while blocking alternative interpretations that they thought unacceptable. Through close reading ofbiblical passages and rabbinic commentaries we will examine issues ranging from vegetarianism to messianism, gender to eros,the holiness of Jerusalem to the legitimacy of Halacha.

Cross-listed with RELS427. Credit only granted for RELS427 or JWST427.

Credit granted only for JWST469C

Additional 1 hour Hebrew text reading section. Course requires Hebrew language competency.

Sacred texts like the Hebrew bible challenge human understanding, demanding constant study, interpretation and reinterpretation. Jewish scholars have been engaged in this process (exegesis) for centuries, trying to make the Bible give up its mysteries while blocking alternative interpretations that they thought unacceptable. Through close reading ofbiblical passages and rabbinic commentaries we will examine issues ranging from vegetarianism to messianism, gender to eros,the holiness ofJerusalem to the legitimacy of Halacha.

Prerequisite: permission of department.