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Distance Learning Seminar
Distance Learning Seminar
Are you joining us for the Winter 2013 Seminar?
Here are links to some nearby hotels
and our neighborhood hostel.
Chicago's Essex Inn >
800 S. Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL 60605
312.939.2800
Wyndham Blake Chicago >
500 S. Dearborn Street, Chicago, IL 60605
312.986.1234
Best Western Grant Park Hotel >
1100 S. Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL 60605
312.922.2900
Hostelling International Chicago >
24 E. Congress Parkway, Chicago, IL 60605
312.360.0300
Winter 2013 Seminar Course Offerings
MORNING COURSES
Sunday 2-4 pm
and Monday-Thursday 9 am-1 pm
3503 The Medieval Jewish Experience: Texts and Contexts [MAJS core, MSJS concentration or elective, DSJS text]
(3 quarter hours)
The history of the Jews does not follow conventional historical divisions. There was no medieval Jewish state and Jews lived in radically different milieus, mainly under Islam and Christianity. This situation presents us with a great opportunity for comparative analysis. This course will survey Jewish history from the rise of Islam to the expulsion of Jews from Spain and Portugal. Themes to be addressed include the legal, social, and religious position of Jews under Islam and Christianity; the rise of Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jewry; heresy and controversy; central medieval Jewish scholars and leaders. The analysis of documents will be an essential component of class discussion.
3161A Jewish Literatures of Late Antiquity [MAJS and MSJS concentration or elective, DSJS text]
(3 quarter hours)
This course will survey the major types of Jewish literatures of Late Antiquity: Mishnah, Tosefta, Palestinian Talmud, Babylonian Talmud, Mystical literatures. We will examine the major scholarly discussions of the texts concerning their histories, literary genres, and textual traditions.
AFTERNOON COURSES
Sunday 4:30-6:30 pm
and Monday-Thursday 2-6pm
3502 The Rabbinic Mind
[MAJS core]
(3 quarter hours)
Judaism is not the religion of the Bible. It is the religion of the Bible as interpreted by the Rabbis. Who were these Rabbis? What were they thinking as they interpreted the Bible? What gave them the authority to believe that they could take the Written Torah and add to it an entire Oral Torah? What effect did their work have on the Judaism of their day and how did it interact with the other religious traditions that were around them? This course will enable us to access the Rabbinic Mind through the historical and literary texts of the Rabbinic period. We will look at the background of the Rabbinic period from a historical and sociological point of view and then move to examine the literary genres of Rabbinic literature. Texts of that period, including Mishna, Tosefta, Gemara and Midrash will be examined both for their literary style and their content. We will also look at some core concepts of the Rabbinic period and see how the Rabbis developed them into an organized way of thinking which set the pattern for the Jewish thought of today.
4195 Between Revolution and Tradition:
An Introduction to Modern Jewish Literature
[MAJS core II, MAJS and MSJS concentration or elective, DSJS elective and comprehensive examination preparation]
(3 quarter hours)
In the early 21st century we tend to think of modern Jewish literature as a given, but the very existence of this polyglot literature is a relatively new and utterly fascinating development in modern Jewish history. This course will examine the development of a largely secular modern Jewish literature, with an eye on articulating the uniquely “Jewish” features of this literature. Initial emphasis will be placed on the ways in which the translation and transposition of pre-existing Jewish languages and sources functioned as a central feature of this literature’s initial emergence. We will next trace the way modern literary forms (autobiography, the novel, etc.) and trends (modernism and postmodernism) have been employed to narrate the Jewish encounter with modernity and make sense of Jewish history over the last two hundred years. Throughout our readings and discussions we will explore the profound tension between continuity and innovation that informs this relatively new literature’s relationship to traditional Jewish culture.
5505 What is Judaism?
[DSJS core, open to master’s students who have completed at least 15 quarter hours]
(3 quarter hours)
What is Judaism? deals with how Judaism has been understood in the intellectual and religious history of the Jews. Issues discussed include: what is the nature of Judaism? What are its fundamental theological claims, what are its boundaries, what it is not, what are its “essentials,” what is not essential to its nature, which of its essential characteristics have been historically endemic and which have not, which can be maintained today? These and related issues will be surveyed as they emerged during the biblical, talmudic, medieval, modern and contemporary periods.
