Welcome to the website of the Jewish Studies Program!

We invite you to peruse our website and meet some of our vibrant and creative faculty. Look at our course list, with over 20 offerings on subjects ranging from the history and politics of contemporary Israel to sex in ancient Jewish texts, from the memory of the Holocaust to American Jewish identities. This year we are thrilled to offer a number of new courses: the History of the Jewish People; The Formation of Judaism, Christianity and Islam; Jews in Russian Literature and Culture; Jews, Race and Identity in the US; Imagined Homelands: Palestine and West Africa; Art in the Wake of Trauma. We were lucky to get a one-year extension for our Richard and Rhoda Goldman Visiting Israeli Professor Aziza Khazzoom. She will be teaching several courses for us in Sociology such as Multiple Voices of Israel and Social Stratification in Israel and the US.

We were pleased to learn last Spring that our colleague Professor David Biale won the 2011 UC Davis Prize for Undergraduate Teaching and Scholarly Achievement. Prizewinners are leaders in their academic fields nationally and internationally, as well as strong university teachers with a passion for undergraduate education.

This past summer, the Jewish Studies Program joined with The History Project to conduct a one-week intensive teacher training program on The History and Memory of the Holocaust, co-funded by the Claims Conference and the Pell Family Foundation. Drawing on the many scholars at UC Davis who focus on some aspect of the Holocaust, the 15 high school teachers who attended felt that they gained greater knowledge which will carry over into their curriculum.

We continue to be grateful to the Koret Foundation, the Osher Foundation, the Taube Foundation, the Posen Foundation, Eda Pell and Friends of Jewish Studies for their ongoing support of the Jewish Studies Program. We could not continue to create new courses or programming without them.

Please check our Events page; our first program begins on Friday October 21st. We plan to have speakers throughout the year and a Winter quarter conference on circumcision. We are continuing our community outreach with another speaker series for the Sacramento Jewish community at Temple B’nai Israel.

Please contact me should you have any questions about our program. Wishing you a good academic year,

Diane Wolf
Director