Jewish Studies 010: Jewish Civilization
Lesson 1: The Concept of Identity: Studying “What Makes a Jew Jewish”
Lesson 2: Ancient Israel: Israelite Emergence in History
Lesson 3: Israelite Kingdoms: Their Rise and Fall; Heights of Self-Rule; Exile, Return and Renewal
Lesson 4: Sacred Jewish Texts: Their Overview and Construction
Lesson 5: Resistance and Dispersion: The Hasmonean Kingdom, Roman Rule, and Rebellion
Lesson 6: Competing and Alternative Religious Identities: Political-Ideological Upheaval; the Rise of Christianity, and Then of Islam
Lesson 7: Religious Law, Jewish Courts, and Self-Governance: How Jews Maintained Internal Social Order under the Rule of Others
Lesson 8: Jews of Medieval Iberia: Covivencía (Coexistence), Achievement, and Expulsion
Lesson 9: Jews in Medieval Europe: The Consequences of being Socially Situated in an Economic Niche
Lesson 10: The Ottoman Empire and the Pale of Settlement: New Horizons, Hopes and Religious Movements
Lesson 11: Modernity and the Jews: How the Reformation, Humanism, Colonialism, Citizenship and the Enlightenment Affected Jewish Lives and Communities
Lesson 12: The Holocaust: Racial Categories, Anti-Semitism and Policies of Extermination
Lesson 13: Zionism and The State Of Israel: The Hope for Redemption and Rejuvenation through Political Movements
Lesson 14: Modern Jewry and Judaism: New Religious Movements and Types of Community; Responses to Individual and Collective Freedoms
Lesson 15: Gender: Overview of the Relations between Jewish Women and Men
Jews praying in the Synagogue on Yom Kippur.
1878 painting by Maurice Gottlieb
"Asked to make a list of the men who have most dominated the thinking of the modern world, many educated people would name Freud, Einstein, Marx and Darwin. Of these four, only Darwin was not Jewish. In a world where Jews are only a tiny percentage of the population, what is the secret of the disproportionate importance the Jews have had in the history of Western culture?"
- Ernest van den Haag, The Jewish Mystique
New York: Dell Publishing Company, 1971, pg. 13
Under the Imperial Russian coat of arms, traditionally dressed Russian Jews, packs in hand, line Europe's shore as they gaze across the ocean. Waiting for them under an American eagle holding a banner with the legend "Shelter us in the shadow of Your wings" (Psalms 17:8), are their Americanized relatives, whose outstretched arms simultaneously beckon and welcome them to their new home.
Hebrew Publishing Company, between 1900 and 1920.