This course is an introduction to Modern Hebrew. Students attending the three courses in the sequence will learn the language with an emphasis on communicative, interactive classroom activities. This course introduces students to speaking, listening, comprehension, reading, and writing fundamentals of Modern Hebrew. The overall goal of these courses is to provide the students with "survival" skills in the target language. This course sequence is geared for students who are matchileem, beginners.

What has it meant to be Jewish in a country that has defined race relations primarily in terms of black and white? This course explores how American Jews have negotiated their racial identity and relations with other racial and ethnic groups. The first part of the course considers the process by which American Jews, as one scholar has put it, “became white folks” and what this history reveals about the construction of race in the US. Readings then consider the complicated history of black-Jewish relations in America from the cooperative efforts of the New Deal coalition and civil rights movement to the conflicts that emerged between Zionists and black nationalists. The class concludes with an examination of the implications of multiculturalism for American Jewish identity.

This course explores the causes, course, and implications of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It examines the history of the conflict, comparing the conflicting narratives of the Palestinians, the Arab States, and Israel. It explores the politics of force over the course of the conflict, as well as the diplomacy of the conflict. It examines the relationships among Arabs and Israelis, as well as inter-Arab relations and the relations between the rivals and external powers. The course offers a window into the interrelations between domestic forces-political, economic, social-and the international relations of Israel and the Arabs.

The period on which this course centers saw fundamental transformations in the religion of the Mediterranean and Near Eastern worlds, transformations that inform culture and religion to this very day. This period saw the spread of an allegiance to a single God, the end of animal sacrifice, the emergence of heaven and hell. It also saw the rise of traditions we now call Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. This course is an introduction to a critical examination of these changes. It focuses on understanding religious change in general. Why do new traditions emerge? How do political struggles and economic conditions inform religious changes? How do new traditions justify themselves against older ones?

This course introduces students to the Hebrew Scriptures through selected primary source readings and secondary modern scholarship. No previous academic knowledge is expected or required. Course work is done in English translation; therefore, no knowledge of Hebrew is required. Students will be exposed to a variety of modern critical tools for analysis, including historical, literary and sociological approaches.

How can we know God’s law? How can we include contradictory opinions in a single sacred text? How can an entire people be called holy? How can we keep our culture up to date without compromising tradition? In this course we will examine how the ancient rabbis – who invented Judaism as we know it today – answered these and other questions through their creation of literature, law and religion. We will also examine how, in these answers, the rabbis tried to secure their own leadership of the Jewish people at the expense of competing groups and advanced their own vision of Judaism while silencing others. Prereqs: RST 21, 23, 40 or 125, or permission of instructor.

This course is an introduction to Modern Hebrew. Students attending the three courses in the sequence will learn the language with an emphasis on communicative, interactive classroom activities. This course introduces students to speaking, listening, comprehension, reading, and writing fundamentals of Modern Hebrew. The overall goal of these courses is to provide the students with "survival" skills in the target language. This course sequence is geared for students who are matchileem, beginners.

Advanced topics in Hebrew grammar and syntax, selected literary texts, and advanced work in modern spoken Hebrew.

A survey of the history of the Jewish people as a world culture from their origins in Mesopotamia to the present- day. Topics include: Jews and the Bible, Jews and Classical civilization, the Rabbinic tradition, the Jews of Islam, Jews in the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, modern anti-Semitism and Jewish nationalism, Jews in pre- World War II Europe, the Holocaust and Jewish memory, the impact of the state of Israel, the Jewish-American experience.

Jews and Muslims have coexisted in the Mediterranean and the Middle East for more than a thousand years-- sometimes in harmony, other times in conflict, but always with passion. This course traces Jewish-Muslims relations from their origins in early Islam up to the present, focusing on the cultural group known as “Sephardim.” Topics include: legal structures and cultural frameworks for co-existence, the medieval consensus, the rise of Jewish and Arab nationalism and the impact of Zionism, new Jewish diasporas of the twentieth century, the Palestine conflict and non-European Jews, their status in Israel and the Sephardic “Diaspora” today.

The international politics of the Middle East are a microcosm of world politics. This course focuses on key aspects of politics among nations in the region and on the structure of, and the processes undergoing in, the Middle East regional system as a whole. Topics include the formation of the Middle East regional system, state formation processes, war and peace in the Middle East, the relationships between domestic politics and international processes, alliances and regional organizations, the superpowers and the regional system, and the political economy of the Middle East.

This course is designed as an undergraduate introduction to the study of earliest Christianity as a development in ancient Judaism, and of the documents that later came to be understood as a “New Testament.” In order to understand these documents, we will be looking at many different aspects of the contexts in which they were written. Students will come to an understanding of how earliest Christian thought emerged from: the political situation of Judaism in Roman Palestine; the intellectual and cultural situation of Judaism in the wider Hellenistic and Roman world; Greek and Roman religions and philosophies; Greek and Roman literary genres. Students will also learn the basic methods of modern New Testament studies, in order to understand why the academic study of the New Testament takes the shape that it does.

The discussion about sexual morality in our age is filled with Jewish and Christian texts from antiquity: quotes from the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, Rabbinic texts or quote from the Church Fathers are continuously used today to make claims about how we should conduct our sexual lives, which passions are worthy of our embrace and which we should abandon, when and whom we should marry. Yet these texts themselves come from a very different world, with different values and different facts and different passions of its own. This course examines the classical Jewish and Christian texts on sexuality within their own ancient historical context: What is lost in the modern translation? What was at stake at the different debates in antiquity? Why did rabbis have one- night marriages? Why made celibacy compelling? Why did Paul suspect his audience was more promiscuous than any other group in the ancient world? How was ancient religion itself erotic? Throughout the course, we will emphasize the diversity of positions in antiquity and the socio-cultural context in which they were staked.

This course is a survey of the most influential works on stratification and inequality in Israel and the US. Among the questions considered:

• To what extent is an individual born into the lower classes destined to remain in the lower classes? Why? And what do we mean by class, anyway?
• Is education really the key to occupational success?
• Why do so many societies have a pattern of residential segregation, in which racial/ethnic/national minorities or immigrants live in separate sections of a town or country? How does segregation affect their attainment?  Are there times that discrimination can paradoxically be an advantage to those discriminated against?
• How do ethnicity and gender affect the acquisition of resources, in Israel, the US, and elsewhere?

Note that because this course is a survey, it does not necessarily consider the newest work, but rather work that has been labeled "classic." We will of course ask questions about how things get labeled classic, and ask whether that labeling process is itself a dynamic of inequality and the exercise of power. We will also use student presentations to "update" these classics by examining their relevance to US and Israeli society today.

It sometimes it seems that we live in an era whose main feature is a sense of continuous catastrophe: ecological disasters, demographic crises, a constant political state of emergency. But this, in itself, is not new. Eric Hobsbawm has famously characterized the 20th century as “The Age of Extremes,” in which wars, genocides, the uprooting of entire populations, and legions of rightless and dispossessed people are, in fact, the rule; Jews were oftentimes seen as the paradigmatic protagonist of these events. In this course we will read both literary and theoretical works which are informed, in various ways, by 20th century rich history of political catastrophe, violence, and resistance, and ask how these events affect the forms of writing, discursive practices, and textual operations of the works themselves. We will discuss the apparatus of violence and its marks on the body, inflicting violence on others and bearing witness to it, states of loss and the endless work of mourning, speech and collectivity in the face of catastrophe, and different possibilities for political resistance in and outside poetic language. We'll read works by Franz Kafka, S. Yizhar, Paul Celan, Adrienne Rich, Sigmund Freud, Maurice Blanchot, Albert Memmi, and Marc Nichanian, among others.

This course is an introduction to the narratives, poetry, and writings of the Hebrew Bible, from Genesis to the prophets. Special attention will be given to methods of interpretation through time, the making of the canon, translations, the texts that have particular importance to English literature, and the Bible as the source of symbolic language in literary and other cultural forms. Visual presentations will support the discussions of interpretative methods.

This course is a continuation of Hebrew I and II, we will move on to book 2 (Ivrit Sh'lav Bet) by Ora Band. We will learn the future tense and command, other Binyanim (Stems) and their different forms, through stories, exercises, and short movies.

This course will continue with IVRIT MIN HAHATJALA, BET (II), including text reading and grammar, movies and conversation.

In a century of genocides, the Holocaust of the European Jews remains perhaps the most systematic attempt to destroy a whole people. In this course, we will attempt to understand how one nation committed genocide against another. The course will consider the history of the Holocaust against the background of Jewish and German history in modern times We will also take up the question of the uniqueness of the Holocaust and comparisons with other instances of mass death, both by the Nazis (against the disabled and mentally retarded, the Sinti/Roma, homosexuals, Poles and Russian prisoners of war) and by others in the twentieth century. Students should be aware that this is an emotionally, as well as intellectually challenging subject and they should treat it with the seriousness it deserves.

This course explores the causes, course, and implications of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It examines the history of the conflict, comparing the conflicting narratives of the Palestinians, the Arab States, and Israel. It explores the politics of force over the course of the conflict, as well as the diplomacy of the conflict. It examines the relationships among Arabs and Israelis, as well as inter-Arab relations and the relations between the rivals and external powers. The course offers a window into the interrelations between domestic forces-political, economic, social-and the international relations of Israel and the Arabs.

This course is a survey of the most influential works on stratification and inequality in Israel and the US. Among the questions considered:

• To what extent is an individual born into the lower classes destined to remain in the lower classes? Why? And what do we mean by class, anyway?
• Is education really the key to occupational success?
• Why do so many societies have a pattern of residential segregation, in which racial/ethnic/national minorities or immigrants live in separate sections of a town or country? How does segregation affect their attainment?
• Are there times that discrimination can paradoxically be an advantage to those discriminated against?
• How do ethnicity and gender affect the acquisition of resources, in Israel, the US, and elsewhere?

Note that because this course is a survey, it does not necessarily consider the newest work, but rather work that has been labeled "classic." We will of course ask questions about how things get labeled classic, and ask whether that labeling process is itself a dynamic of inequality and the exercise of power. We will also use student presentations to "update" these classics by examining their relevance to US and Israeli society today.

This course is a continuation of Hebrew 1 and will include conversational Hebrew, vocabulary and some grammar. Students work in small groups, to maximize their speaking skills, as well as writing and reading. As the class progress, we will watch short Israeli movies.

This course is intermediate level Hebrew for students who have a vocabulary and grammar level at second year Hebrew. This class will continue in Spring quarter as Hebrew 23. Students who are eligible to take HEB 22 in Winter and HEB 23 in Spring will fulfill the requirement for a two year level language. The intermediate class will include four days of Modern Hebrew every week, and one day of Biblical Hebrew- reading and translating biblical text. Toward the end of fall quarter, a placement test will be offered for those students who are interested in taking Hebrew 22. For any questions, please E-mail Galia Franco: ghfranco@ucdavis.edu.

Jews have often been represented as the consummate example of an urban people. In European and North American thought, Jews were not only a prime case of urban adaptation, but served as a prototype for an entire range of new social thought about and cultural representation of the urban experience and the modern world. In the Jew-as-urbanite we are often faced with rhetorical gestures that recall older archetypical "Jewish" representations, such as the wandering Jew able to move freely (and therefore easily depicted as "rootless"). This course will survey a range of urban Jewish connections. Among the questions to be addressed are: how have cities been conceptualized in the Christian and Muslim societies in which Jews lived? What roles have Jews (and other minorities) played in these conceptualizations? What precisely was Jewish life like in cities at various times? What were the ghetto and the mella? How have Jews been integrated into and removed from the fabric of certain cities, and what is the Jewish memory of cities that once had large and influential Jewish populations in Europe and the Middle East?

In this course, we will try to throw further light on the other Jewish history, that of Jews in Muslim milieus, where the majority of them lived before the Modern period. We will compare the experience of Jews under Medieval Christian and Muslim rule; and, we will study the obligations imposed upon and the opportunities allowed Jews in these Muslim societies in theory and in practice, and how the two differed from one another in different such societies and changed over time. We will see the ways in which what are today thought of as high points in Jewish thought and Hebrew literature, and in fact, a normative Rabbinic tradition developed in line with comparative processes amongst Muslims. In the second half of the course, we will study how the European penetration of the Middle-East and North Africa and, with this, the emergence of new conceptions of self and society, complicated the Jewish position in Muslim contexts; and, how, against this background, Zionism and the advent of Israel produced stark polarizations, choices and outcomes.

One of the most hotly contested subjects in the world today, the century-long struggle between Jews and Arabs requires understanding the conflicting narratives of the various parties to the conflict. In this course, we will listen to these different Jewish and Palestinian voices in the context of Israel’s politics and culture, as they have developed since the 1880s. We will examine such subjects as the rise and fall of utopian Zionism, the development of modern Hebrew culture, the conflict between religious and secular Jews, and the relationships between Mizrahi, Ashkenazi, Russian, Ethiopian and Arab citizens of Israel’s multicultural society. The course will create a space where students can discuss the contemporary conflict rationally and on the basis of informed opinion.

• How do Israeli sociologists perceive Israel, and how does that compare to the way other sociologists view their countries?
• Who are the different ethnic, national, class, religious, and immigrant groups that live in Israel today? How do they perceive Israel differently from each other?
• How does Israel compare to other countries on issues like gay rights or gender egalitarianism?

Recent academic research has stressed that Israel is a heterogeneous society. Thus one problematic in the study of Israeli society has centered around heterogeneity. Scholars have asked such questions as: which groups should be studied as part of Israeli society, how much diversity can a society tolerate without being torn asunder from inside, and what kinds of mechanisms generate loyalty to a state, even under conditions of significant ethnic, lifestyle, and religious differences. In this course, we review contemporary work on Israeli society, with the diversity question as the framework. Each week, we read work that looks at Israel from the perspective of a different group that lives there, such as religious Jewish women, gay men, Middle Eastern Jews, Palestinian men, Jewish settlers, Bedouin women. The course focuses on student-led discussions and critical evaluation of scholarly work. Note that this course is not on the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. It is rather about identities in Israel.

This is the first of three courses comprising First-Year Modern Hebrew. It is geared for students who are matchileem, beginners. This course introduces students to speaking, listening, comprehension, reading, and writing fundamentals of modern Hebrew. Lecture/Discussion-5 hours.

The Hebrew letters existed before the creation of the world- from the Aggada. This is the first of three classes comprising first year Biblical Hebrew. We will learn the Alef Bet, the basics of grammar and vocabulary and read the Tanach. While focusing on the foundations and mechanics of the language and their acquisition, we will also learn basic Hebrew calligraphy and about the historical development and the culture where Ivrit was born. By the end of the quarter we will be reading and translating Biblical verses and stories. The basic textbook we will use is The Cambridge Introduction to Biblical Hebrew by Brian L. Webster, in addition to a lexicon, dictionary, The Hebrew Alphabet: A Mystical Journey by Edward Hoffman, and of course the Bible. No previous knowledge of the language is required.

This seminar is an exercise in comparative history--- and not victimology. The class will compare the construction of blacks and Jews as outsiders in the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century. Stated another way, how did two peoples separated by color, time and place become victims of progress. We will begin with Stanley Elkins book, Slavery A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life.

The international politics of the Middle East are a microcosm of world politics. This course focuses on the key aspects of politics among nations in the region, and on the structure of, and the processes undergoing in, the Middle East regional system as a whole.

Selected texts from the Hebrew Scriptures (Genesis-II Chronicles) and review of modern scholarship on the texts from a variety of perspectives (historical, literary, sociological, psychological). Course work is based on an English translation and no knowledge of Hebrew is required.

This course is an introduction to the study of earliest Christianity as it developed in and around ancient Judaism, and an introduction to the documents that later came to be called a "New Testament." In order to understand these documents, we will be looking at many different aspects of the contexts in which they were written. Students will come to an understanding of how earliest Christian thought emerged from: the political situation of Judaism in Roman Palestine; the intellectual and cultural situation of Judaism in the wider Hellenistic and Roman world; Greek and Roman religions and philosophies; Greek and Roman literary genres. Students will also learn the basic methods of modern New Testament studies, in order to understand why the academic study of the New Testament takes the shape that it does.

This program focuses on Arab-Israeli relations from World War I to the present. It examines the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, comparing the narratives of the Palestinians, the Arab States, and Israel.

Courses
POL 136: The Arab-Israeli Conflict (4 units).
POL 198: Directed Group Study (4 units) (P/NP grading only).
Both courses are taught in English

This course explores Jewish women's transition from Eastern Europe to America through works of fiction, non-fictional narratives, poetry and film, alongside queer and feminist theory. Beyond immigration, this course is about imagination, memory, legacy and the queer construction of history. We will read a wide range of texts by women writing English and Yiddish (in English translation), and will discuss the contexts in which these texts were produced, be it the Lower East Side of New York in the 1920 or the feminist movement of the 1970's. We will read these texts both as historical documents and as negotiations with the production of history itself. Through them, we will learn about Jewish literature and culture focusing on the status of women. The particular confluence of conditions faced by Jewish women making this transition will also enable us to question social constructions of gender and race as they are manifest in disparate settings. PDF

The relationship between American Jews and film is long and complicated. From Edison's classic short "Cohen's Fire Sale" to the decidedly mixed reception of Quentin Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds," American Jews have been historically concerned with their cinematic representations. Coupled with Jewish overrepresentation in the film industry and anti-semitic claims about what that overrepresentation means, the debate among Jewish screenwriters, studio owners, actors, audiences and fictional characters has revealed significant and powerful insights about the relationships between media, power, politics, ethnicity, religion and representation. Focusing on a selection of films as our primary source material, this course will examine the complex and contentious debates that these films have sparked, in an effort to better understand what the specific circumstances of this ethnic group might reveal about the power of film in American culture more broadly.

Speaking, listening comprehension, reading, and writing fundamentals of Modern Hebrew.

Advanced topics in Hebrew grammar and syntax, selected literary texts, and advanced work in modern spoken Hebrew.

For more than a millennium, Jews and Muslims have coexisted in the Mediterranean and the Middle Eastern regions, sometimes in harmony, at other times in dissonance, but never indifferently. This lecture course traces the path of this relationship from its beginnings under early Islam up to the current era, examining legal and cultural frameworks, dilemmas posed by the rise of the nation-state, the impact of ideologies such as Zionism, Fascism and Arab Nationalism, the formation of new Muslim and Jewish diasporas in the wake of decolonization, the conflict over Palestine, and the central position this historically intense dyad holds in international politics today.

This course deals with the myriad ways the memory of genocide has been constructed in the half century since the event. The goal of the course is to teach students how to analyze critically the way memory shapes and sometimes distorts our images of the past, especially when that past involves a collective trauma that may defy representation. The course is interdisciplinary in nature, involving varied texts from memoirs, literature, film, architecture and philosophy.

For the past one hundred years, the encounter between the Israeli and Palestinian people has been one of strife and war, but also filled with many expressions of friendship and hope. Beyond the statements of the guns there exists a rich tradition of artists and writers, on both sides, looking at the "other" and their relations with each other. Based on the belief that film and literature often reflect dominant values in their society as well as help to shape new ways of action, this class will examine artistic expressions of the complex and tangled relationship between the two nations. Films include: Israel-Birth of a Nation, Al Nakba, Hill 24 Does not Answer, The Land Speaks Arabic, The Milky Way, Frontiers of Dreams and Fears, My Terrorist, Black Sunday, Reel Bad Arabs, Cup Final, Crossfire, Out for Love, Divine Intervention, and Promises.

How can we know the law of God? How can we include contradictory opinions in a single sacred text? How can an entire people be called holy? How can we keep our culture up to date without compromising tradition? In this course we will examine how the ancient rabbis - who invented Judaism as we know it today - answered these and other questions through their creation of literature, law and religion. We will also examine how, in these answers, the rabbis tried to secure their own leadership of the Jewish people at the expense of competing groups and advanced their own vision of Judaism while silencing others. Texts: Selections from the Talmud, the Mishnah, and Midrashic works. The Cambridge Companion to Talmud and Rabbinic Literature and an online course reader.

This quarter is the second of three comprising First Year Modern Hebrew. It is geared for students who have had studied one quarter of the language. This class will expand vocabulary and grammar and improve the ability to speak, read, and write. Alongside the Ivrit Min Hahtchala- ("Hebrew from Scratch") textbook and the accompanying CD, we will incorporate song lyrics, poems, readings from Sha'ar ("Gate", the newspaper for immigrants to Israel) "Havaynu Shalom Aleichem" video lessons, and web-sites. By the end of the quarter, AYH, the student will be able, with growing ease, to read elementary texts and converse about everyday situations and topics and some not so common, and be able to write about a variety of subjects.

This quarter is the second of three comprising Second Year Modern Hebrew. It is geared for students who have had studied four quarters of the language. Conducting the class ninety percent of the time in Hebrew, we will expand our vocabulary and grammar and improve our ability to speak, read, and write. Alongside the second book of Ivrit Min Hahtchala- ("Hebrew from Scratch") textbook and the accompanying CD, we will incorporate more advanced song lyrics, poems, readings from Sha'ar ("Gate", the newspaper for immigrants to Israel,) Israeli TV programs, and web-sites. By the end of the quarter, AYH, the student will be able to read with ease, intermediate level texts and converse with ease about everyday situations and topics and some not so common, and be able to write, about a variety of subjects.

What is Judaism? Who are the Jews, where did they come from? What is the relationship between Judaism and the other Abrahamic faiths, Christianity and Islam? From its roots in the ancient Near East to its contemporary American context, Judaism has both influenced and been influenced by surrounding cultures and religions. We will explore the historical, philosophical and theological trends that helped shape modern Judaism, beginning with the ancient Israelite cult, with its focus on Temple ritual. We will study the origins and development of Rabbinic Judaism in the post-Second Temple period and look at the relationship between antique Judaism and the Greek world, Christianity and Islam. We will follow the growth of Ashkenazic Jewry from its inception through the medieval ages, pre-modernity, up until the modern period. We will discuss the development of key Jewish texts, including the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud, and we will explore the interpretive relationship between Judaism and these texts. With that background we will then look at different forms of contemporary American Jewish ritual, keeping in mind its historical and philosophical development.

This course surveys ancient Jewish texts from a period of formative importance to the history of Judaism and Christianity. We will examine topics such as good and evil, the end of the world, divine knowledge and the structure of the heavens; discuss how these topics were used by the ancient authors to negotiate political and social conflicts; and consider the implications of these texts for the broader study of religious concepts such as canon, heresy and orthodoxy, and mysticism. GE Credit: Wrt. Format: Lecture/Discussion - 3 hours; Term Paper.

What does it mean to be a Jew in North America today? Where do Jews "fit" in contemporary US multicultural society? Are those who claim a Jewish identity referring to religion, race, or ethnicity? Who is a Jew? And who defines "who is a Jew?" What challenges confront the future of Jewish identity in the US? This course will use readings and films to explore the complexity of these issues from diverse perspectives. We will analyze some of the attempts made by different groups and communities to form, (re)create and perpetuate Jewish identities. We will examine such issues as: notions of "community," the new Orthodox, gender images of Jewish men and Jewish women, queer Jews, and others.

This course considers the place of Jews and Jewish life and culture in Germany after 1945. The focus will not so much be on representations of the Holocaust - although, obviously, the topics addressed will dovetail and be overdetermined by the Holocaust - but rather on how Jews, the Jewish community, and representations of Jews have played a role in German culture, society, and politics after the war. In no other country has history, memory, and the place of one minority - as well as the long history of collective hatred against that minority - played such an important role in the political and civic life of a nation. Yet, most courses have focused on Jews up to and in the Holocaust rather than on the role Jews and Jewish life have played in Germany since World War II. The course contends that many of the most important debates and controversies in and about postwar Germany and its status as a nation have intersected, in fundamental ways, with Germany's long and complicated history with Jewish peoples. The class will be a seminar with strong emphasis on active participation and, given the recent nature of much of the materials, the interpretation of primary sources. The seminar and assignments are geared to encourage debate and writing among the students.

Is it possible to be Jewish without believing in Judaism? Since the dawn of the modern age, secular Jewish thinkers have sought to construct identities beyond Judaism, that is, beyond the bounds of religion. After examining the European process of secularization starting in the seventeenth century, this course will trace the history of secular Jewish thought from the seventeenth-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza to the twentieth century. Some of the thinkers who will be considered, such as Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud, rejected religion altogether, while others, including Spinoza, Franz Kafka, and Gershom Scholem, redefined religion and theology in new, often radically subversive ways. Finally, we will examine secular redefinitions of Judaism, such as those of certain Zionist thinkers and writers such as Ahad Ha'am, Micha Yosef Berdichevsky, Hayim Nahman Bialik and Saul Tchernikhovsky. This is a course not only for those interested in modern Jewish thought, but in modernity itself.

The international politics of the Middle East are a microcosm of world politics. This course focuses on key aspects of politics among nations in the region and on the structure of, and the processes undergoing in, the Middle East regional system as a whole. Topics include the formation of the Middle East regional system, state formation processes, war and peace in the Middle East, the relationships between domestic politics and international processes, alliances and regional organizations, the superpowers and the regional system, and the political economy of the Middle East.

This course introduces students to the Hebrew Scriptures through selected primary source readings and secondary modern scholarship. No previous academic knowledge is expected or required. Course work is done in English translation; therefore, no knowledge of Hebrew is required. Students will be exposed to a variety of modern critical tools for analysis, including historical, literary, and sociological approaches. GE credit: ArtHum, Div, Wrt.—I. (I.)

This class will explore some of the representations of Heaven and Hell through the lens of film. While the focus will be on Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, we will also note their importance in other religions. The class will address some of the key stories and themes of the Bible and ways in which ideas about Heaven and Hell are expressed literally, symbolically and through images. We will use primary source materials from the Tanach and the New Testament, as well as Midrashim, Agadah, comics, rock videos, and scholarly works.

Israeli society is still struggling to define its borders and boundaries and the tensions between its commitments to a Jewish and a Democratic state. It is divided across national, religious, ideological, and ethnic lines that display not only an internal dynamism, but also a dynamic relation between them. This course will introduce students to the history of the Zionist movement and the state of Israel through different perspectives. The first part of the course will follow the rise of Zionism and the different interpretations of Zionism and the Jewish-Arab struggle until the formation of the Israeli state. The second part of the course will focus on the borders of the state through the different wars related to the Israeli-Arab and Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Finally, the third part of the course will engage with Israel's institutions and internal boundaries and examine whether its social and political institutions are able to sustain the various pressures and demands. This part of the course will examine the historical evolution of Israel's central schisms - Jewish-Arab, Religious-secular, Hawks and Doves, ethnicity and class from pre and early statehood to contemporary globalization.

Speaking, listening comprehension, reading, and writing fundamentals of Modern Hebrew.

Advanced topics in Hebrew grammar and syntax, selected literary texts, and advanced work in modern spoken Hebrew.

The Jewish Image in American Cinema. American cinema was invented through the pure ambition and creativity of Jewish immigrants. As these new arrivals found success, many of them shed their ethnic identities as Jews. This cinema class will explore through film the core issue of ethnic identity vs. assimilation. We will discuss both positive and negative media images of the American Jew, how Jewish humor was blended into popular culture, and the impact of anti-Semitism on American cinema and the Hollywood black list. Exploring humor, melodrama, political history, and coming-of-age stories, this class will reveal the evolving landscape of American Jewish identity from the Marx Brothers to Adam Sandler.

For the past 130 years, the encounter between the Israeli and Palestinian people has been one of strife and war, but also filled with many expressions of friendship and hope. Beyond the statements of the guns, there exists a rich tradition of artists and writers, on both sides, looking at the “other” and their relations with each other. Film and literature often reflect dominant values in their society as well as help to shape new ways of seeing and acting. This class will examine artistic expressions of the complex and tangled relationship between the two nations. Prerequisite: Course RST 23 or consent of instructor.

The relationship between Jews and non-Jews has often been marred by feelings of antipathy for Jews, both latent and explicit. These feelings are all too often expressed as violent outbursts against individual Jews and entire Jewish populations. We most commonly refer to such expressions as “anti-Semitism.” This class will explore the historical, social, and theological roots of anti-Semitism and its development over time, with an emphasis on Jewish/Christian interactions within a European context. The class will combine lecture and discussion in an effort to advance an open dialogue between students of different faiths on this sensitive and central issue of Jewish/Christian relations.

This seminar will focus on Jewish families in various cultural and historical settings. These settings will include the US, the kibbutz in Israel, and Europe, including during the Holocaust. Drawing on multiple sources, including novels and popular films as well as scholarly literature, we will analyze both images and practices in order to understand Jewish family dynamics. This course will depend upon considerable student participation. It is suggested, but not required, that students have taken Sociology 131 or some basic courses on Judaism. For students who are not Sociology majors, contact the instructor at dlwolf@ucdavis.edu for consent. Upper-division students only.

What has it meant to be Jewish in a country that has defined race relations primarily in terms of black and white? This course explores how American Jews have negotiated their racial identity and relations with other racial and ethnic groups. The first part of the course considers the process by which American Jews, as one scholar has put it, "became white folks," and what this history reveals about the construction of race in the US. Readings then consider the complicated history of black-Jewish relations in America from the cooperative efforts of the New Deal coalition and civil rights movement to the conflicts that emerged between Zionists and black nationalists. The class concludes with an examination of the implications of multiculturalism for American Jewish identity.

Readings
  • Eric L. Goldstein, The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race, and American Identity
  • Hettie Jones, How I Became Hettie Jones
  • Debra L. Schultz, Going South: Jewish Women in the Civil Rights Movement
  • Course Reader

How did the Jews of the non-Western world engage with modernity, the rise of a global capitalist economy, and the political upheavals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries? How did ideologies such as Zionism, Fascism, and Arab Nationalism transform their collective world views? What were the consequences of displacement and the formation of new Diasporas? This course will follow the trajectory of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews in the modern era, tracing and problematizing their responses to wider historical changes.

Selected Readings
  •Ammiel Alcalay, After Jews and Arabs: Remaking Levantine Culture
  •Mark Mazower, Salonica, City of Ghosts
  •Albert Memmi, Pillar of Salt
  •Sasson Somekh, Baghdad Yesterday
  •Sarah A. Stein, Plumes: Ostrich Feathers, Jews, and a Lost World of Global Commerce

Israeli society is still struggling to define its borders and boundaries and the tensions between its commitments to a Jewish and a Democratic state. It is divided across national, religious, ideological, and ethnic lines that display not only an internal dynamism, but also a dynamic relation between them. This course will introduce students to the history of the Zionist movement and the state of Israel through different perspectives. The first part of the course will follow the rise of Zionism and the different interpretations of Zionism and the Jewish-Arab struggle until the formation of the Israeli state. The second part of the course will focus on the borders of the state through the different wars related to the Israeli-Arab and Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Finally, the third part of the course will engage with Israel's institutions and internal boundaries and examine whether its social and political institutions are able to sustain the various pressures and demands. This part of the course will examine the historical evolution of Israel's central schisms - Jewish-Arab, Religious-secular, Hawks and Doves, ethnicity and class – from pre and early statehood to contemporary globalization.

Speaking, listening comprehension, reading, and writing fundamentals of Modern Hebrew.

Advanced topics in Hebrew grammar and syntax, selected literary texts, and advanced work in modern spoken Hebrew.

RST 23 Introduction to Judaism. Using Jewish religious texts, philosophical treatises, and other works of cultural production, we will trace the evolution and transformation of a single set of Jewish rituals, those surrounding the Sabbath, as a lens through which to explore Jewish thought and practice in general. Throughout the course, we will examine the effects and limits of studying Judaism as a "religion." Reader responses, research paper.

Known by many names and in various guises, God and Satan are among the most central figures in many cultures. This class will explore some of their manifestations and actions by using the lens of film. While the focus will be on Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, we will also note their importance in other religions. Films will include works by Bresson, Polanski and Kissleski, and works from Mexico, the USA, and Russia. Texts will include biblical books, Bulgakov's Master and Margarite, and scholarly studies. Gusts speakers will also present their interpretations and share their knowledge.

The twentieth century has been described as the "century of genocides." This course will explore how the concept of genocide emerged in the twentieth century and will then examine the histories of genocides in Armenia, the Holocaust of the European Jews, ethnic cleansing after World War II, Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda and, finally, Darfur. We will ask the question: how can one explain the perpetrators of such mass crimes? The course will also take up issues of justice, reconciliation and memory after genocidal events. Readings will include first-hand accounts (diaries, memoirs) as well as historical accounts.

The Mediterranean world stretching from Spain and Italy through North Africa, Egypt, the Levant Turkey and Greece forms a cohesive historical and cultural unit distinguished by a Greek and Roman heritage blended with Christian, Muslim, Arab, Berber, Balkan and Turkish influences. It is also the setting for a far-flung Jewish Diaspora, which is the subject of this course. Beginning with late antiquity and ending in the mid-eighteenth century, we shall follow the path of Jewish settlement around the Mediterranean, studying the literature and social values, the political conflicts and continuities, the economic shifts, the religious debates and the changes in language, customs, and cuisine that contributed to making a distinctive Mediterranean Jewish culture.

Is it possible to be Jewish without believing in Judaism? Since the dawn of the modern age, secular Jewish thinkers have sought to construct identities beyond Judaism, that is, beyond the bounds of religion. After examining the European process of secularization starting in the seventeenth century, this course will trace the history of secular Jewish thought from the seventeenth-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza to the twentieth century. Some of the thinkers who will be considered, such as Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud, rejected religion altogether, while others, including Spinoza, Franz Kafka, and Gershom Scholem, redefined religion and theology in new, often radically subversive ways. Finally, we will examine secular redefinitions of Judaism, such as those of certain Zionist thinkers and writers such as Ahad Ha'am, Micha Yosef Berdichevsky, Hayim Nahman Bialik and Saul Tchernikhovsky. This is a course not only for those interested in modern Jewish thought, but in modernity itself.

This course explores the causes, course, and implications of the Arab-Israeli conflict from World War I to the present. It examines the history of the conflict, comparing the conflicting narratives of the Palestinians, the Arab States, and Israel. It explores the politics of force over the course of the conflict, as well as the diplomacy of the conflict. It examines the relationships among Arabs and Israelis, as well as inter-Arab relations and the relations between the rivals and external powers. The course offers a window into the interrelations between domestic forces-political, economic, social-and the international relations of Israel and the Arabs. Finally, it examines the ramifications of the conflict for the rivals and for the international system writ large.

Speaking, listening comprehension, reading and writing fundamentals of Modern Hebrew.

Advanced topics in Hebrew grammar and syntax, selected literary texts, and advanced work in modern spoken Hebrew.

In a century of genocides, the Holocaust of the European Jews remains perhaps the most systematic attempt to destroy a whole people. In this course, we will attempt to understand how one nation committed genocide against another. The course will consider the history of the Holocaust against the background of Jewish and German history in modern times. We will also take up the question of the uniqueness of the Holocaust and compare with other instances of mass death, both by the Nazis (against the disabled and mentally retarded, the Sinti/Roma, homosexuals, Poles and Russian prisoners of war) and by others in the twentieth century. Students should be aware that this is an emotionally and intellectually challenging subject, and they should treat it with the seriousness it deserves.

There is, perhaps, no other ethnic group in America with as complex a relationship with the media as American Jews. Classic antisemitic tracts espouse the view that Jews control the media. Simultaneously, a number of Jewish authors have taken a certain amount of pride in Jewish over-representation in the media and politics. The core of this course lies in exploring the tension between both of those inaccurate but popular views, and asking, ultimately: why do they remain so deeply embedded in our understanding of the relationship between American Jews and the media? Beginning with newspapers in the 19th century, we will trace the complex and often vexing life of this relationship as it manifests in Hollywood cinema, popular music, television, and onto the internet. Placing media theory in conversation with American Jewish history will reveal the myths, images, and realities of the relationship between American Jews and the media.

Over the last 3000 years, the Jewish people have developed a wide variety of different cultures, combining both secular and religious elements. Working within a chronological framework, this course will trace the development of Jewish cultures from ancient to modern times, and across different regions. Taking into account inter-cultural contact and historical events, we will explore developments in Jewish literature, culture, and philosophy. Readings for the course will include essays by contemporary Jewish Studies scholars. Students will also have the opportunity to critically engage with primary texts from the Bible, Talmud, and medieval and modern Jewish textual traditions.

Selected texts from the Hebrew Scriptures (Genesis - II Chronicles) and review of modern scholarship on the texts from a variety of perspectives (historical, literary, sociological, psychological). Course work is based on English translation and no knowledge of Hebrew is required.

The international politics of the Middle East are a microcosm of world politics. This course focuses on key aspects of politics among nations in the region and on the structure of, and the processes undergoing in, the Middle East regional system as a whole. Topics include the formation of the Middle East regional system, state formation processes, war and peace in the Middle East, the relationships between domestic politics and international processes, alliances and regional organizations, the superpowers and the regional system, and the political economy of the Middle East.

Speaking, listening comprehension, reading and writing fundamentals of Modern Hebrew.

Advanced topics in Hebrew grammar and syntax, selected literary texts, and advanced work in modern spoken Hebrew.