Spring 2010 Courses
Religious Tradition and Faith
JWST 4095: Senior Majors Seminar in Jewish Studies
Asher Biemann
RELG 7559 Philosophic Resources for Abrahamic Theologies: The Meanings of "Universal," "Particular" and "True"
Peter Ochs
RELJ 1420 Elementary Classical Hebrew II
Greg Schmidt Goering
RELJ 2420 Intermediate Classical Hebrew II
Greg Schmidt Goering
RELJ 3559 Scriptural Reasoning in Judaism (underg)
Peter Ochs
RELJ 3559 New Course in Judaism: Text, Tradition and Modernity (undergrad)
Elizabeth Alexander
RELJ 3559 New Course in Judaism: Passover Haggadah (undergrad)
Vanessa Ochs
RELJ 5050 Judaism in Antiquity
Elizabeth Alexander
RELJ 5559 On Hannah Arendt
Jennifer Geddes
RELJ 7559 Scriptural Reasoning in Judaism (grad)
Peter Ochs
RELG 7559 New Course in Religion: Feasting Fasting and Faith: Food in Jewish and Christian Traditions
Vanessa Ochs
History and Culture
HIME 2559/RELJ 2559 Women in Israeli Society
Rakefet Zalashik
HIME 3559/RELJ 3559 Israel: Immigration and Immigrants
Rakefet Zalashik
MUEN 3630-004: Klezmer
Joel Rubin
PLIR 3650 International Relations of the Middle East
William Quandt
PLIR 5240 Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace
William Quandt
Spanish 4701/5701: The Inquisition in Spain and Latin America
Alison P. Weber
Language and Literature
COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
Religious Tradition and Faith
JWST 4095: Senior Majors Seminar in Jewish Studies
Asher Biemann
This course introduces students to the history and methods of Jewish Studies, allowing them to do advanced research in the field. The
course is open to Jewish Studies majors and advanced non-majors by instructor's permission.
RELG 7559 Philosophic Resources for Abrahamic Theologies: The Meanings of "Universal," "Particular" and "True."
Peter Ochs
This seminar provides some philosophic disciplines needed for theological study today: resources in logic, philosophic reasoning, metaphysics, and epistemology, from classic Greek sources through the contemporary period. Students will examine how these resources inform works in Christian, Jewish, and Muslim theology: medieval, modern and contemporary. For Spring 2010, the seminar will focus on sources and uses of claims about the “universal,” the “particular” and the “true.”
Recommendation: prospective students should review basic logic before taking the course. For those lacking this background, a required 1 hr workshop will be offered each week.
RELJ 1420 Elementary Classical Hebrew II
Greg Schmidt Goering
A sequel to RELJ 1410, this course introduces students to the derived stems and weak verbs, cardinal and ordinal numbers, Masoretic accents, oath formulas, and parsing, thus completing the study of the verbal system and of basic Hebrew grammar as a whole. In addition, students will learn to use a Hebrew lexicon and read prose passages directly from the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. At the completion of the two semester sequence, students will have learned the basic tools required to read longer prose passages from the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament in the original language.
RELJ 2420 Intermediate Classical Hebrew II
Greg Schmidt Goering
This course continues and builds upon RELJ 2410. The primary objective of this course is to develop facility in the reading and translation of biblical Hebrew. The course reviews basic grammar, analyzes syntax, and builds vocabulary. A secondary objective of the course is the interpretation of biblical poetry. To this end, the course teaches repetition, acrostic, inclusio, refrain, metaphor, correspondence, elision, compensation, and other poetic devices. A major focus of the course is grasping the complex phenomenon of poetic parallelism.
RELJ 3559 Scriptural Reasoning in Judaism (underg)
Peter Ochs
The first half of the course will examine how recent Jewish philosophy and theology has turned back to the study of sacred texts. The second half will examine how that turn has engendered another turn: to intensive dialogue with like-minded Christian and Muslim philosophers and theologians. The course will include various methods of study: one-on-one fellowship study, small group study, large group. It will require considerable reading in scriptural texts and in both classical and contemporary commentaries - philosophic and theological. There will be several papers and papers in place of exams. Students are advised to peruse these websites to taste the kind of work the course will undertake: the e-journal of textual reasoning (housed at uva): http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/journals/tr/; and the e-journal of scriptural reasoning (created at uva): http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/journals/ssr/.
RELJ 3559 New Course in Judaism: Text, Tradition and Modernity
Elizabeth Alexander
This course explores the ways in which religious texts and traditions function as compelling points of reference in the construction of secular Jewish identity. We will read Jewish literature of an secular nature (novels, memoirs and academic scholarship), noting places where motifs, language and themes from classical Jewish texts play a central role. We will ask why authors working in a secular context are draw to incorporate elements from religious texts and tradition into their writing. The course explores what is meant by the term "secular" and asks how and why elements from religious texts and tradition make their way into secular literature.
RELJ 3559 New Course in Judaism: Passover Haggadah
Vanessa Ochs
This is a comprehensive study of the most beloved of Jewish texts, the Haggadah, the often illustrated text read and performed at home by families during the Passover seder, a meal of symbolic foods and storytelling fulfilling the biblical directive to tell the story of the Exodus from Egypt. Over 4000 versions of the Haggadah have been published: the most recent reflect the Holocaust, the establishment of the State of Israel, social justice concerns, ecology and feminism. We will study the Haggadah as a sacred text, script, art object and reflection of religious adaptabilty.
RELJ 5050 Judaism in Antiquity
Elizabeth Alexander
A critical survey of the development of Judaism from Ezra to the Talmud (c. 450 BCE-600 CE). During this period "Jewishness" gradually began to emerge as a form of identity that was different from biblical Israel. We will consider the forces (Hellenism, the development of a diaspora community, the emergence of Christianity) that exerted pressure on the the growth and development of Judaism during this period, leading to this development. We will also examine the manifold ways in which Jewish identity manifested itself (apocalypticism, wisdom tradition, sectarianism and rabbinic Judaism). Finally, we will consider the question of how a normative form of Judaism, today known as Rabbinic Judaism, grew out of the variety of Jewish expressions that characterized the Second Temple period and eventually achieved hegemony.
RELJ 5559 On Hannah Arendt
Jennifer Geddes
In this course, we will explore the resources for a modern secular Jewish ethics in the work of Hannah Arendt. Though thought of primarily as a political philosopher, Arendt’s work contains some significant and even startling ethical ideas, formulated in response to the particularities of post-Shoah (post)modernity. We will study her work on the human condition, from her construal of thinking as an ethical act to her vision of the nature and possibilities of the public realm. We will think together about Arendt’s analyses of the contours of modernity, including her seminal work on the origins of totalitarianism and on modern forms of evil, and how she construes the relation of secularity to modernity. As one of the most significant secular Jewish intellectuals of the twentieth century, Arendt’s ideas about the Jewish people have not received sufficient attention—the controversies surrounding Eichmann in Jerusalem and the recent publication of a collection of her “Jewish Writings” not withstanding. While some of these ideas are explicitly stated, others are implicit in her work, and we will need to trace them through both her better-known books and some lesser-read essays. It must be noted that Arendt’s work has been provocative and controversial, and the controversies themselves are important to study for what they reveal and what they obscure in her oeuvre. Thus, we will also look at some of the ethical controversies that surrounded Arendt’s work and explore how these controversies reflect on the ethical ideas within Arendt’s work.
RELJ 7559: Scriptural Reasoning in Judaism (grad)
Peter Ochs
A graduate-level study of pedagogical approaches to Jewish textual reasoning and to Abrahamic scriptural reasoning. Grad students will
participate in an undergrad course on (1) how Jewish theology has returned to study sacred texts.; (2) how this study has engendered a turn to inter-Abrahamic study. Grad students will help mentor the undergrads, while contributing more extensive readings in and writings on scriptural resaoning. See RELJ 3559
RELG 7559 New Course in Religion: Feasting Fasting and Faith: Food in Jewish and Christian Traditions
Vanessa Ochs
We will study lived religious practices of eating, particularly the feast and the fast from anthropological, theological, historical, literary and cinematic perspectives. Students will be required to engage in ethnographic fieldwork and analysis.
This course is of particular relevance to SIP students studying ritual practice.
History and Culture
HIME 2559/RELJ 2559 Women in Israeli Society
Rakefet Zalashik
This course studies the role of women in the Yishuv and Israeli society from the end of the 19th century until today from historical, sociological and legal perspectives. Topics to be discussed include the myth of gender equality in Ottoman and Mandatory Palestine and later in the state of Israel; images of the “new Hebrew woman,” the reality and life of these women, their contributions to the new Israeli society and culture; and the concepts of gender and national identities. In addition, the course will also consider the political and personal position of women (including minorities groups such as Russian, Ethiopian and Palestinian women) within Israeli society from social, cultural, ethnic and national perspectives.
HIME 3559/RELJ 3559 Israel: Immigration and Immigrants
Rakefet Zalashik
This course studies Jewish immigration (Aliya) from the 1880s to the 1990s from historical, sociological and legal perspectives. Topics to be
discussed: immigration to the national homeland as a means of self-realization within Zionist thought; the various policies of both the
British Mandate and the Zionist movement regarding Jewish immigration; the special characteristics of the pre-statehood five waves of Aliya and their uniqueness in comparison to other destinations of immigration; the cultural and ideological tensions between the absorbing Jewish society and the new immigrants; immigration of Holocaust survivors; the Law of Return, mass immigration from Arab countries in the 1950s and the question of selection, the immigration from the Eastern Block in 1956/7, 1964, 1967/8, 1970, the tensions between American Jewish organizations and the Jewish Agency, the policy of the State of Israel toward communist politics and Jewish immigration, immigration of Ethiopian Jewry and Jews from former Communist countries as a continuity and discontinuity of previous policies of absorption, and religious and political questions relating to Ethiopian and Russian immigration. The course will also discuss universal and particular characteristics of immigration to Israel from a comparative perspective.
MUEN 3630-004: Klezmer
Joel Rubin
Under the direction of Director of Music Performance and acclaimed
clarinetist Joel Rubin, the Klezmer Ensemble focuses on the music of the
klezmorim, the Jewish professional instrumentalists of Eastern Europe. The
ensemble is made up of both undergraduate and graduate students, faculty and
other members of the greater Charlottesville community, and is dedicated to
exploring klezmer and other Jewish musical traditions from the 18th century
to the present. Now in its third year, the UVA Klezmer Ensemble has rapidly
become a vital part of the musical community of Central and Northern
Virginia. Besides performing in Old Cabell Hall, recent appearances have
included the College of William and Mary, Gravity Lounge, the 214 Community
Arts Center (former Prism Coffeehouse), WeArts Festival (McGuffey Arts
Center), New Bridges (Harrisonburg), Congregation Beth Israel, Chabad of
UVA, and the Jewish Community Council (Lynchburg). Klezmer was brought to
North America by immigrants around the turn of the last century. Since the
1970s, a dynamic revival of this tradition has been taking place in America
and beyond. Klezmer¹s recent popularity has brought it far from its roots in
medieval minstrelsy and Jewish ritual and into the sphere of mainstream
culture. The Klezmer Ensemble at UVA performs at the end of each semester.
Each semester the ensemble is coached by and plays together with a renowned
guest artist. Recent guests have included the Kálmán Balogh/Ferenc Kovács
Duo, violinist, Alicia Svigals, co-founder of the Grammy-winning Klezmatics,
and trumpeter Susan Watts (Mikveh, Klez Dispensers). The ensemble's guest in
Spring 2010 will be klezmer hip hop artist Socalled from Montreal.
Spanish 4701/5701: The Inquisition in Spain and Latin America
Alison P. Weber
This course will explore the history of the Inquisition in Spain from its origins in 1478 to its demise in 1834. Topics will include: organization and jurisprudence; the prosecution of Jewish converts to Christianity, Protestants, and Moriscos; crypto-Judaism in Spain and the New World; censorship and its impact on science and culture; attitudes toward magic, madness, witchcraft, and religious enthusiasm; the control of sexuality; gender and Inquisitorial practice; myths about the Inquisition; its representation in art and literature. Readings (in Spanish and English) will include case histories and other primary source documents from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as well as recent books and articles on the Inquisition. The course will be conducted in Spanish. This course counts toward the Jewish Studies major, fulfills the culture and civilization requirement for the Spanish major, and fulfills the College historical studies requirement. Pre-requisite: one 4000-level Spanish course. Students registered in 4701 will be required to write a 15-page research paper using primary sources; students in 5701 will write a longer paper and have additional assignments. Graduate students, fifth-year Curry students, and Distinguished Majors in Spanish should enroll under the 5701 rubric. Please note: course requires a high level of proficiency in reading Spanish.
Language and Literature