Undergraduate Program

Direct continuation of Hebrew 101 with emphasis on enhancing basic reading, writing, and speaking skills in standard and colloquial modern Hebrew. In addition to texts, relevant language and cultural materials are provided through audio, video, and technology-based components. Completion of HEB 101 or equivalent Hebrew proficiency are required.

Location

(MW 11:50AM - 1:05PM)

This is a fourth semester course in the Hebrew language series designed as a direct continuation of HEB 103. The focus of instruction is on the enhancement of language skills through the acquisition of complex morphological and syntactical structures and the expansion of vocabulary and idioms. The course has an emphasis on oral and written communication in both standard and colloquial modern Hebrew. In addition to texts, relevant language and cultural materials are provided through audio, video, and technology-based components. Completion of HEB 103 or equivalent Hebrew proficiency are required.

Location

(M 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

An introduction to the religious and cultural development of Judaism. Will emphasize Judaism as a living tradition, one which has been subject to both continuity and change among its practitioners throughout its history.

Location

(TR 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

This course revolves around the most essential question in modern German history: was Hitler's regime particular to Germany, German culture, and German society, or was merely the manifestation of an immanent quality in all modern nation states? What does it mean to compare any political figure to Hitler? Was his kind of "evil" suis generis or dangerously banal? This course places the rise and fall of the Nazi Party and Hitler in the longer duree of German history, from the Second Empire and WWI, to Weimar, the Nazi State, and the Two Germanys of the Cold War.

Location

(TR 11:05AM - 12:20PM)

This is a proficiency-oriented course, in which you will continue to develop reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills using Hebrew newspapers, Israeli news broadcasts and movies, Hebrew literature - including a graphic novel! - and Israeli songs, with contextual review of relevant grammar structures. Upon completion of this course, you will have acquired the skills necessary to: 1) read and comprehend Hebrew newspapers, and texts in modern Hebrew prose and poetry; 2) listen to and comprehend Israeli news broadcasts and movies; 3) discuss issues pertaining to Israeli society and culture on the basis of the materials examined; 4) expand your vocabulary to include technical terminology, master complex semantic and syntactical constructions, and further develop your communication skills. We will spend most of the semester reading and discussing a selection of texts by contemporary Israeli writers and poets, including the graphic novel Ha-Nekhes by acclaimed author Rutu Modan, and a selection of articles taken from Israeli newspapers and on-line news sites. The course work will include watching Israeli movies and listening to Israeli songs. Homework will consist of preparing the pre-assigned materials to be able to actively read and discuss them in class, in Hebrew. Additional written assignments on the readings and movies will include answering comprehension questions in Hebrew, and complete relevant grammar and vocabulary exercises.

Location

(MW 4:50PM - 6:05PM)

Boasting two thousand years of uninterrupted presence on the land, Italian Jewry is the oldest Jewish community of the European Diaspora. Located at the center of the Mediterranean basin, over the centuries it was enriched by the contribution of a variety of Jewish internal traditions (autochthonous, Ashkenazi, and Sephardic, among the main ones), while at the same time developing a very complex relation with the surrounding non-Jewish environment. Such dynamics paradoxically reached their apex with the institution, starting in the sixteenth century, of ghettos, i.e., Jewish segregated quarters. Established in 1516 and in existence until 1797, the ghetto of Venice was the first of such settlements and was to give its name to all subsequent ethnic enclosures in modern history. Surrounded by water and walls, physically separated from the Christian population of the city―although, as a matter of fact, not isolated from it―Venetian Jews developed their own communal institutions, an elaborate system of religious and social practices, and articulated a rich cultural and intellectual life.

The course will examine the most relevant aspects of the Italian Jewish experience in its Venetian declination during the existence of the ghetto. Through the examination of a variety of documentary, literary, and artistic sources, both Jewish and non-Jewish, we will explore the conditions that concurred in making sixteenth-eighteenth century Venetian Jewry exemplary among Italian communities, and unique in the context of the European Diaspora.

Location

(TR 12:30PM - 1:45PM)