This class treats France and the Francophone world as a laboratory for the study of Jewish civilization over the past millennium. France has the world’s second largest Jewish population outside of Israel. It has a rich and complex history that traces all the key developments of the Jewish experience since ancient times: expulsions and migrations; codification of Jewish law; religious reform; the rise of anti-Semitism and the tragedy of the Holocaust; struggles between Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jews; complex relations between Muslims and Jews; the emergence modern Jewish politics; and the impact of the Israeli-Arab conflict. As we explore these themes and other themes, students become introduced to most fields of Jewish studies.

– Meets Philosophy & Values, L&S Breadth
– Meets Historical Studies, L&S Breadth
– Counts towards the Jewish Studies Minor

Judeo-Spanish, also known as Ladino, is the linguistic legacy of the Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal in the late fifteenth century. In this translation-driven course, students will learn to read and analyze Judeo-Spanish literary and cultural texts. Combining language instruction with elements of literary studies, this fast-paced course exposes students to Sephardic culture in the longue durée, including Hispano-Jewish poetry, Moroccan balladry, liturgical texts from Amsterdam, Ottoman-era memoir, holocaust testimony from the Balkans, and Jewish-American reportage and satire.

Depending on course composition, students will have the opportunity to practice basic conversational skills. No knowledge of Hebrew or a Romance language required.

– Counts towards the Jewish Studies Minor

Despite small size, Jews and Judaism have held a large place in the American political mind. This course examines the role of Jewish thought in American ideas since before the Founding, analyzes past and current views on Jews and Judaism across the American political spectrum, and explores continuing anti-Semitism and philo-Semitism in the US.

– Counts towards the Jewish Studies Minor

Folklore helps us make sense of the world we live in at the same time that it entertains us.

• Curious about dybbuks, golems, genies (jinns)?
• Want to know the folktales Shakespeare used?
• Want to learn new Jewish jokes?

In this course, we’ll read a sampling of folktales and jokes from diverse Jewish communities (German, Kurdish, Moroccan, Russian, Yemeni, etc.) while exploring themes such as creativity and artistic expression. We’ll also address gender, group identity and values, stereotypes, and the interactions of Jews and non-Jews. Films, videos, and guest storytellers will complement discussions. Final projects allow students to pursue their interests. Students from all majors and backgrounds are welcome. Conducted in English with readings in English.

– Meets Arts & Literature, L&S breadth
– Counts towards the Jewish Studies Minor

Describing the interaction of places, times, languages, identities, cultural formats, dominant and marginal narratives that characterize cultures in diaspora requires a multidimensionality that traditional maps no longer meet. In today’s world, we “map” diasporas through digital narratives, and often perform culture acting as archivists and curators. In this course, students will work with the cultural objects held in The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life-including art, material culture, books, manuscripts, digital assets and data -learning to conduct collaborative research and documentation, to create maps and narratives, and to curate and publish their findings in museum galleries and online.

– Meets Arts & Literature, L&S breadth
– Counts towards the Jewish Studies Minor

This course examines Japanese and Jewish responses to twentieth-century atrocities, paying close attention to how catastrophic events are treated in a variety of artistic forms, including memoir, fiction, feature film and filmed testimony, documentary, photography, painting, and music. Throughout, we will be asking about the possibilities, and the difficulties, of comparing responses by different cultures to different types of atrocities. The course will require close and careful reading, viewing, and writing.

– Meets Arts & Literature, L&S breadth
– Meets Philosophy & Values, L&S breadth
– Counts towards the Jewish Studies Minor

This course will examine the roles of religion and spirituality in education from the perspective liberal democratic society in two paradigm cases, Israel and the United States. It will review similarities and differences in the ways each school system conceives and practices such notions as secular and religious, initiation and indoctrination, diversity and inclusion, and public and private. For example, public schools do not offer religious instruction in the United States, due to the constitutional separation of religion and state, whereas religious schools receive state funding in Israel, as they do in many other countries that require no such separation. The course will also consider critiques of these concepts and practices based on gender, race, class, nationality, language, and the search for meaning, as well as similarities and differences between the impact of religious affiliation and nationalism and the influence of extremism in each educational system.

– Counts towards the Jewish Studies Minor

This course will be a curriculum lab devoted to the new California high school graduation requirement in ethnic studies. We will reflect on some of the most pressing public debates surrounding the legislation through the prism of curriculum studies, including the positioning of Jewish and Arab Americans and Israel/Palestine, in addition to African, Asian, Latin, and Native Americans. Alongside a review and critique of relevant research literature, we will engage in a curriculum deliberation to consider possible purposes, contents, and pedagogies to meet the requirement. Students will be asked to write papers that address one or more of the issues being debated, review curriculum proposals currently available, or offer new design principles to meet the requirement. Interested parties from beyond the university may be invited to participate in the deliberation, either as participants or guest speakers. The course will culminate in a colloquium/consultation in which some of the debates, ideas, and proposals deliberated during the semester will be presented and discussed.

– Counts towards the Jewish Studies Minor

This course deals with the early modern history of the Jews between the expulsion of the Jews from Spain (1492) and the emancipation of the Jews (1790/91) in the wake of the French Revolution. In Jewish history, the early modern period forms a distinct epoch between the Middle Ages and the modern era, which has certain characteristics. It is an epoch in which, in the wake of the rise of mercantilism and European colonialism, but also as a result of expulsion and violence, numerous new communities are established throughout the world; it is a time in which the mobility of Jews increases immensely, in which community autonomy is consolidated, and at the same time rabbinic authority is plunged into a fundamental crisis; it is a period in which a knowledge revolution takes place through the invention of the printing press and in which the Jewish curriculum is expanded by secular sciences; it is a time in which the foundations of the Enlightenment are laid and at the same time mystical movements such as Sabbateanism and Hasidism emerge; and it is an era in which the question of what is Jewish is renegotiated. Geographically, the course deals with places as different as Amsterdam and Vilnius, London and Prague, Venice and Bordeaux, Smyrna and Frankfurt, New York and Reçife, Safed and Salonika.

– Counts toward the Jewish Studies Minor

In this course students will learn to speak, read, and write Yiddish, the original language of East European Jews. Using the communicative method and the new textbook In Eynem, students will focus in class on speaking by playing out short dialogues. Grammar will be taught inductively, through examples. The course will introduce Yiddish culture through a variety of songs, stories, film clips, and illustrations.

– Counts toward the Jewish Studies Minor

This class begins with a historical overview of war in the region. The second part of the class introduces theories that complement and elaborate on theories from PS124A: arguments about the relationship between war and resources,religion, authoritarianism, civil military relations, territorial disputes, sovereignty, and power. In the third part of the course, we will explore current policy concerns related to conflict in the region: Nuclear proliferation, terrorism, the civil war in Syria, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, drone warfare, and the U.S. role in the region.

– Counts toward the Jewish Studies Minor

This course explores modern Hebrew literature through short prose and poetry (in English translation) using the lenses of gender and sexuality studies. During the semester, we will follow the late 19th-century revival of Hebrew letters in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, moving on to 20th-century modernist and post-modernist writings and ending with contemporary literature. Throughout this historical progression, the class will showcase the different ways in which Hebrew writers reflected and refracted social issues while asking about the sexual norms, gendered roles, and queer realities that have defined and substantiated Jewish lives of the time. The semester itself will be divided into five sections: introduction; 19th century Fin de Siècle Jewish masculinity; “Women poetry” and the gendered politics of canonicity, 1920-1980s; Intersectional Mizrahi feminist literature, 1920-2010s; Gay, lesbian, and queer Hebrew poetry, 1930-2010s.

No prior knowledge in Hebrew, literature, or gender studies is required. All texts will be discussed in English [Hebrew originals will be supplied upon request]. This is an R&C course, and while the topics above will be discussed in detail, our central focus will be on improving students’ academic writing, reading, and comprehension skills.

– Counts toward the Jewish Studies Minor

Elementary Hebrew instruction.

– Counts toward the Jewish Studies Minor

An introduction to the language of the Hebrew Bible.

– Counts toward the Jewish Studies Minor

Intermediate Hebrew instruction.

– Counts toward the Jewish Studies Minor

Historical and literary study of Hebrew and Aramaic Judaic texts.

– Counts toward the Jewish Studies Minor

Freshman and Sophomore seminar. European Jewry’s destruction in the Holocaust has greatly impacted the subsequent development of the Western tradition and Jewish civilization. Students in this course will examine responses to the Holocaust across a range of intellectual and artistic domains, including poetry, philosophy, history, memoir, and more.

This course introduces students to the diversity of Jewish communities across time and geographies through a survey of literatures, histories, and cultures. Jewish cultures have always been co-produced in interaction with their non-Jewish neighbors. Through this study of Jewish cultural pluralism throughout history, we will investigate complex issues of identity and layers of belonging. Students from all majors and backgrounds are welcome. No previous knowledge of Judaism or Jewish Studies is necessary.

– Meets Philosophy & Values, L&S Breadth
– Meets Historical Studies, L&S Breadth
– Counts towards the Jewish Studies Minor

Coming from exclusion and powerlessness, Jewish creators invented the modern comic book. Comics are where Jewish stories get told, from the Holocaust to daily life. The superhero genre, mostly invented by Jews, narrates core Jewish ethical concepts such as Responsibility to the Other. We will read lots of comics and focus on the overlapping themes of Jewish history, identity, and faith.

– Meets Arts & Literature, L&S Breadth
– Counts towards the Jewish Studies Minor

This course deals with the occupation of the Netherlands by Nazi Germany in World War II and the Holocaust, with a special focus on the Anne Frank’s diary. We will discuss literature, film and historiography with a focus on anti-Semitism, collaboration and resistance as well as the postwar discussion on guilt and responsibility. All materials will be in English, no knowledge of Dutch is required.

– Meets Arts & Literature, L&S Breadth
– Counts towards the Jewish Studies Minor

The course will explore dynamics of change in issues of state, religion and gender in Israel, as manifested in social movement activism through law and society. The course will illustrate and reflect upon different strategies and spheres for promoting social change, by examining core issues involving state, religion, and gender in Israel: religious marriage and divorce, gender equality in the religious establishment, conversion, spiritual leadership of women, and free exercise of religion at the Western Wall (the struggle of Women of the Wall). Spheres of activism to be covered include parliament, state courts, alternative private initiatives and courts, and social media.

– Meets Philosophy & Values, L&S Breadth
– Meets International Studies, L&S Breadth
– Counts towards the Jewish Studies Minor

Israel is the ultimate immigrant society: 95% of its Jewish population is built of immigrants of the 1st, 2nd or 3rd generation, and 40% of today’s Israelis were born abroad. In fact, immigration of the Jews from over 70 countries of the world has been the major resource of the nation building for the Jewish State since its foundation in May 1948. The goal of this course is to familiarize the students with the main landmarks of Israel’s social history in conjunction with the mass immigration waves (Aliyah) and show how these subsequent waves of Olim (newcomers) have gradually shaped the social, ethnic and cultural tapestry of modern Israel. We will explore the main schisms and contested issues of religion and inter-cultural relations among Israeli Jews. Our perspective will be both historical and sociological, and the readings discussed in class will reflect the cross-fertilization of these disciplines and outlooks.

– Meets International Studies, L&S Breadth
– Counts towards the Jewish Studies Minor

In this class, we will read a selection of biblical texts as literature; that is, we will read them in many ways but not as divine revelation. We will take up traditional literary questions of form, style, and structure, but we will also learn how to ask historical, political, and theoretical questions of a text that is multi-authored, dialogic, and historically layered. Among other topics, we will pay special attention to how authority is established and contested in biblical texts; how biblical authors negotiate the ancient Hebrew prohibition against representing God in images; and how the gospels are socially and historically poised between the original Jesus movement that is their source and the institutionalization of the church that follows. Assignments will include a midterm exam, a paper, and a final exam.

– Meets Arts and Literature, L&S Breadth
– Counts towards the Jewish Studies Minor

France prides itself on being the birthplace and the home of human rights which were first articulated in the “Declaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen” (1789). Indeed, it conceives many of its engagements around the world today as the necessary corollary of its commitment to human rights. Why was it that the idea of human rights first came into being in France? How did a notion of the “human” evolve there and how did the idea of “rights” get attached to it? How and why did literature participate in the creation of what we might call a culture or a “mentalité” of human rights? Why and how did rights appear as a remedy to problems of suffering and inequality? How did a specifically literary discourse act upon and with other discourses, e.g., political and economic? Can we distinguish a literary history of human rights? In this course we will examine the development of the idea and the figure of the human—that is, of some nature that is specific to human beings, on the one hand, but that is shared by all of them on the other. We will see how the human evolves in relation to the State, the family, and love. We will examine the relation between citizenship and humanity—why and when are some humans and some citizens? Who is included and who is excluded from these categories? We will also study critiques of human rights and debates over human rights both from the earliest period of the invention of human rights and in our period. Readings will include primary literary texts such as Corneille, Horace, Montesquieu, “Les Lettres persanes,” Rousseau, “Le Discours sur l’origine de l’inégalité” and more. We will also discuss some of the voluminous secondary literature: Hannah Arendt, Samuel Moyn, Jacques Rancière and more.

– Meets Historical Studies, L&S Breadth
– Meets International Studies, L&S Breadth
– Social & Behavioral Sciences Breadth
– Counts towards the Jewish Studies Minor

Elementary Hebrew instruction.

– Counts towards the Jewish Studies Minor

Intermediate Hebrew instruction.

– Counts towards the Jewish Studies Minor

Advanced Hebrew, especially designed for those going on to the study of modern Hebrew literature. Vocabulary building, grammar review, and literary analysis of a sampling of modern texts.

– Counts towards the Jewish Studies Minor

An introduction to the language of the Hebrew Bible.

– Counts towards the Jewish Studies Minor

Historical and literary study of Hebrew and Aramaic Judaic texts (e.g., Talmud and Midrash).

– Counts towards the Jewish Studies Minor

This course studies Jewish-Muslim relations as they developed in the Middle East and North Africa from the rise of Islam to the present day. It analyzes how ethnic and religious boundaries were both drawn and transcended in historical settings including Arabia during the time of Muhammad, Islamic Spain, the Ottoman Empire, and modern Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Morocco, Palestine, and Israel. It asks how this shared cultural heritage is remembered and mobilized in the contemporary world, shedding light on the current state of Muslim-Jewish relations not only in the MENA but in Europe and the US as well. Films, memoirs, scripture, and historical works will form the basis of our inquiry.

– Meets Historical Studies, L&S Breadth
– Social & Behavioral Sciences Breadth
– Counts towards the Jewish Studies Minor

This course will survey the political, economic, social, and cultural development of Germany since 1914. Special attention will be paid to the impact of World War I; problems of democratization under the impact of defeat, inflation, and depression; National Socialist racism and imperialism; the evolution of the German Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic; unification and its problems; and modern Germany’s role in Europe.

– Meets Historical Studies, L&S Breadth
– Social & Behavioral Sciences L&S Breadth
– Counts towards the Jewish Studies Minor

The class explores the history of the Zionist movement and the State of Israel in all its complexity and contradictions. What is Zionism? What are its roots? Is it a liberation movement? A religious cause? A colonial ideology? A set of state policies? And what is the relationship between Zionism and the modern State of Israel? How do Zionism and Israel look different when considered from the standpoint of Jewish, Palestinian, European, or Middle Eastern history? Exploring Zionism and Israel from its roots in the nineteenth century to the present, this class offers in-depth knowledge and discussion on all of these topics and more.

– Meets Historical Studies, L&S Breadth
– Application for Social & Behavioral Sciences, L&S Breadth currently in process
– Counts towards the Jewish Studies Minor

This class will explore the intersection of antisemitism and the law. It will begin by covering the history of law as a vehicle for institutionalizing antisemitism, law as a vehicle for combating antisemitism, and law as a political tool to combat antisemitism. Historical topics will include, the Dreyfus case, the Holocaust denial trial of Irving v. Lipstadt, the Damascus blood libel trial of 1840, the blood libel trial of Mendel Beilis, and the impact of the lynching of Leo Frank. We will also review discriminatory laws in the United States and other areas and countries against Jews, including in Nazi Germany. Other topics covered will include the intersection of legal antisemitism definitions and anti-Zionism, the intersection of free speech laws and antisemitism (e.g., the Skokie march), the historical discrimination of college and university campuses against Jews through admission quotas as well as the modern day application of Title VI of the Higher Education Act to issues of antisemitism on college and university campuses.

This is a seminar class. 10 seats are reserved for students with 3 or more terms in attendance; 19 seats are reserved for Legal Studies Majors.

– Counts towards the Jewish Studies Minor

War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing! Is this necessarily true? Wars are brutal and horrific events, but are they all necessarily the result of miscalculation, accident, or fanaticism? Can war serve a rational purpose? Are wars governed by rules and do states care about these rules? This course is designed for upper-level undergraduate students.

– Meets Historical Studies, L&S Breadth
– Meets International Studies, L&S Breadth
– Meets Social & Behavioral Sciences, L&S Breadth
– Counts towards the Jewish Studies Minor

This course will examine the origins and forms of what a legal scholar once called an “odious scourge”: genocide. For years, genocide mainly referred to the Nazi attempt to exterminate the Jews during World War II. However, since the end of the Cold War events in Eastern Europe, Central Africa, and elsewhere have drawn scholars’ attention to genocide as a political phenomenon that may be studied across regions and time periods. Although ethical and policy concerns will underlie the discussion, as they do whenever genocide is the topic of study, our main objective will be to examine the determinants of genocide and related forms of mass violence.

– Counts towards the Jewish Studies Minor

Junior Seminar. Interested students should submit a 300-word proposal for a research topic related to Israel’s society or politics that they would like to investigate over the course of the semester.  The proposal should not include sources or references.  It should list a clear puzzle and one or more hypotheses.  Please send the proposal, and only the proposal, via email to Prof. Hassner at hassner@berkeley.edu no later than April 17th.  Please use “Israel Research Proposal” as the subject of your email.  Decisions will be made before the end of Phase 1.

Prerequisite: PS 124A

– Meets the Historical & Modern City Course Thread
– Meets the Human Rights Course Thread
– Meets the Law & Humanities Course Thread
– Counts towards the Jewish Studies Minor

The modern world we live in seems to be a constant procession of overlapping and intersecting catastrophes. From climate change to the Covid-19 pandemic, it appears that we are living in a unique historical period. However, to truly understand the world of crises we currently inhabit, one must look back. The Russian and Yiddish literary traditions provide just such a means of seeing how culture preserves the scars of tragedy, along with testimonies of survival and perseverance which inspire us today. To think about how culture responds to historical catastrophe, Russian and Yiddish literature make for a good comparison. Both traditions predominantly developed in Eastern Europe and responded to many of the same, or co-occurring, historical events. By the late 19th century, many Yiddish writers were actively turning to models developed in the Russian literary tradition, and many Russian writers were grappling with the social injustices which Jews faced in the Russian Empire through their prose. However, despite their similarities, Russian and Yiddish literature developed distinct forms for representing and responding to historical catastrophe. This course will look at the broad arc of Russian and Yiddish literature’s reaction to moments of destruction and rupture throughout history. Starting with the Book of Lamentations, we will then turn to an investigation of texts which primarily respond to the historical catastrophes of the modern era including the pogroms of the late 19th century, the Holocaust, and the Gulag. Throughout the course we will ask ourselves the questions: how do writers develop and adopt literary forms in depicting historical catastrophe? How do literary texts work with and present the dynamics of cultural memory and collective trauma? How do ideas such as messianism and millenarianism inform our understanding of historical catastrophe? Authors may include Nikolai Gogol, Lev Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov, Maxim Gorky, Isaac Babel, I.B. Singer, Lamed Shapiro, and Varlam Shalamov. The focus of this course will be academic writing and literary analysis. By the end of the class students should be able to produce short and medium length compositions which are tightly argued, text-based, and stylistically appropriate. Students will also learn how to closely read texts, place texts in their appropriate cultural and historical contexts, and utilize concepts foundational to literary analysis such as: genre, style, point-of-view, figurative language, and intertext.

Requisite: Satisfaction of the Entry Level Writing Requirement.

– Meets the Humanities & Environment Course Thread
– First half of the Reading and Composition Requirement
– Counts towards the Jewish Studies Minor

In this beginners’ course students will learn to speak, read, and write Yiddish, the original language of East European Jews. Using the communicative method and the new textbook In Eynem, students will focus in class on speaking by playing out short dialogues. Grammar will be taught inductively, through examples. The course will introduce Yiddish culture through a variety of songs, stories, film clips, and illustrations.

– Counts towards the Jewish Studies Minor