Jewish Studies

Mara Benjamin, Chair


205 Skinner Hall
413-538-2249
https://www.mtholyoke.edu/academics/find-your-program/jewish-studies

Overview and Contact Information

The curriculum in Jewish studies provides course offerings in a range of fields and disciplines, including English, history, international relations, politics, and religion. Courses represent a variety of methodological approaches and are intended to introduce students to the broad and rich diversity of Jewish culture and experience.

See Also

Learning Goals

Jewish Studies is an interdisciplinary field that critically examines the global diversity and historical varieties of Jewish experience. A minor in Jewish Studies is an organic component of a liberal arts education and provides a lens through which to understand the human experience. Students who minor in Jewish studies at Mount Holyoke College are expected to:

  1. Critically examine the varieties of Jewish cultural, religious, and literary expression from ancient Israel to contemporary times.

  2. Incorporate subject matter and modes of inquiry from across the college, including religious studies, literature, history, anthropology, and politics, in order to understand the global Jewish diaspora and its contact with other civilizations.

  3. Study one of the languages in which Jews have expressed themselves throughout the centuries, especially Hebrew and/or Yiddish.

Faculty

This area of study is administered by the Jewish Studies Committee:

Mara Benjamin, Irene Kaplan Leiwant Professor of Jewish Studies

Sohail Hashmi, Professor of International Relations on the Alum Foundation and Professor of Politics

Jeremy King, Professor of History

Madeleine Cohen, Visiting Assistant Professor in Jewish Studies 

Requirements for the Minor

A minimum of 16 credits:

12 credits in Jewish Studies at the 200 or 300 level12
At least 4 credits in Jewish Studies at the 300 level4
Total Credits16

Additional Specifications

  • Those choosing a minor in Jewish studies should consult as early as possible with the program chair in order to devise a course of study in consultation with the chair and other members of the program.

  • Students should consider taking Hebrew language as part of the Jewish studies minor and, in addition to the approved Jewish Studies courses at Mount Holyoke, are encouraged to consider Jewish studies offerings at the other Five Colleges.

  • Elementary Hebrew is offered regularly at Smith College. The course will be conducted in person at Smith and through a simultaneous video connection for students at Mount Holyoke. Mount Holyoke students can register for this Smith class (JUD-101) through regular Five College interchange procedures, and then will have the option to participate in the class directly from Mount Holyoke via simulcast without regularly having to travel to Smith for class meetings.
  • Other courses in Jewish studies are offered regularly on campus. Consult with the program chair for a list of current courses in other departments that may be taken for credit toward a Jewish Studies minor. Students are encouraged to take advantage of the Jewish studies course offerings at Smith College, the University of Massachusetts, and Amherst College.

Related Courses in Other Departments

For a list of current courses that may be taken for credit toward a Jewish studies minor, consult with the chair of the program.

Course Offerings

JWST-112 Introduction to Judaism

Spring. Credits: 4

Judaism is a 3,500-year-old tradition that has developed over time as Jewish communities all over the world creatively interacted with the different cultural and historical milieus in which they lived. This course explores the ways in which Judaism has sought to transform ordinary life into sacred life. What are the ways in which Judaism conceives of God, and what is the meaning of life? What roles do study, prayer, ethics, sex, marriage, family, rituals of the life cycle, and community play in Judaism? These and other questions will be taken up through study of diverse types of religious literature and historical evidence.

Crosslisted as: RELIG-112
Applies to requirement(s): Humanities; Multicultural Perspectives

JWST-213 The Gender of Yiddish

Not Scheduled for This Year. Credits: 4

Yiddish and questions of gender have a long history. The language was called "mame-loshn" (mother tongue); it was associated with home and family. Jewish women were the primary intended readers of Yiddish, beginning with religious literature for those who could not read Hebrew and developing into a modern, secular, often moralizing literature. Despite the strong connections between Yiddish and women, women writers have been marginalized and underestimated. This course will explore the gendered history of Yiddish, including through the lens of queer theory. We will also read English translations of literature by modern Yiddish women writers who are being rediscovered today through new translations and scholarly attention.

Crosslisted as: GNDST-210YD
Applies to requirement(s): Humanities
Notes: Taught in English.

JWST-218 Yiddish Nation: Language as Homeland

Not Scheduled for This Year. Credits: 4

For roughly 1000 years Ashkenazi Jewish culture has existed in exile. Since these stateless people were living in diaspora, without a sovereign territory, the Yiddish language itself became a symbolic homeland. This course will explore how some Yiddish-speaking Jews embraced their stateless existence not as a historic tragedy but as a revolutionary form of identity called diaspora nationalism. We will explore Yiddish cultural identity through literature, music, film, and politics. We will read works of history and cultural theory and seek points of intersection with other migrant, refugee, stateless, and diasporic cultures.

Applies to requirement(s): Humanities
Notes: All readings will be in English, prior knowledge of Yiddish is not required.

JWST-219 Translation Theory and Practice in Jewish Literature

Fall. Credits: 4

This course examines translation as a mode of cultural transmission, creativity, and theoretical inquiry for Jewish literature and thought. Topics include: translation as a means of mediating access to the sacred; women's roles as readers and creators of translations; enduring debates about what may be "lost" in translation; and whether translation into "Global English" helps or hurts the survival of literatures in Yiddish, Ladino, and other minoritized languages. Students put theory into practice by reading translations of Jewish literature critically and comparatively and by producing their own translations.

Crosslisted as: ENGL-217TJ
Applies to requirement(s): Humanities
Advisory: Knowledge of any language other than English is helpful but not required.

JWST-225 Topics in Judaism

JWST-225HH Topics in Judaism: 'The Habsburgs, Hitler, and the Law'

Fall. Credits: 4

This course explores the complex, often comic, and ultimately tragic history of Bohemia, a territory located today in the Czech Republic, but previously a part of the Habsburg Monarchy, then of Czechoslovakia, and then of Hitler's Third Reich. Students will complement historical studies with autobiographical material and contemporary fiction, beginning with the Revolution of 1848, progressing through the achievements and worrisome trends of Emperor Francis Joseph's 68-year reign, and concluding with the world wars. Emphasis on the interplay among Czechs, Germans, Jews, and other pivotal players: the House of Habsburg and its supporters, and the political elites of neighboring countries.

Crosslisted as: HIST-260HH
Applies to requirement(s): Humanities

JWST-225ST Topics in Judaism: 'Stalinism in Central Europe'

Not Scheduled for This Year. Credits: 4

This course explores the use of revolutionary terror by the state. More specifically, it examines policies of terror pursued by Communist dictatorships in Hungary and Czechoslovakia during the early years of the Cold War. Who did what to whom, and why? What insights do secret police work and public propaganda, knitted together in macabre show trials, allow us into Stalinist rule, European politics, and maybe ourselves? How did memories of terror shape politics after Stalin's death? Students should deepen their understanding for the discipline of History, improve their reading and writing, and develop a working knowledge of Central European politics at the middle of the twentieth century.

Crosslisted as: HIST-262
Applies to requirement(s): Humanities

JWST-234 Women and Gender in Judaism

Fall. Credits: 4

This course examines gender as a key category in Jewish religious thought and practice. Students examine different theories of gender and intersectional feminisms, concepts of gender in a range of Jewish sources, and feminist Jewish responses to those sources. Students work with the Judaica collection at the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum and consider material culture as a source for women's and gender studies. Topics may include: how Jewish practice and law regulate sexuality and desire; feminist, queer and trans methods of engaging patriarchal texts; methods of studying women and gender in Jewish cultures; racialization.

Crosslisted as: RELIG-234, GNDST-210JD
Applies to requirement(s): Humanities; Multicultural Perspectives

JWST-240 The Holocaust in History

Not Scheduled for This Year. Credits: 4

An attempt at understanding the Nazi-led assault on Europe's Jews. Course units include an exploration of origins, both German and European; an analysis of the evolving mechanics of genocide (mobile killing squads, death camps, etc.); comparisons (Germany proper vs. Poland, the Holocaust vs. other instances of state-sponsored mass murder); legal dimensions; and an introduction to the politics of Holocaust remembrance since 1945.

Crosslisted as: HIST-240
Applies to requirement(s): Humanities

JWST-257 OMG: God and Her Critics, from the Bible to Ecological Crisis

Spring. Credits: 4

For a being often said to be immutable, God has been imagined in myriad, often contradictory, ways over the centuries -- even within a single religious tradition. Using Jewish studies as a springboard, this course examines the idea of God through the writings of philosophers and poets, mystics and rationalists from ancient to contemporary times. Topics include: body/spirit dualism and feminist and ecological critique thereof; cross-cultural encounter, diaspora and cultural mixing as generative forces; superstition and other kinds of heterodoxy; and ritual performance.

Crosslisted as: RELIG-257
Applies to requirement(s): Humanities
Notes: Students who wish to take this course as a 300-level class in Jewish Studies may do so with permission of with the instructor.

JWST-269 Citizens and Subjects: Jews in the Modern World

Fall. Credits: 4

This course examines key themes in Jewish intellectual, religious, and political life from the late 17th century to the present. We examine: the effect of civil emancipation and the Enlightenment on Jewish philosophy and theology; Jews as both architects of modern thought and the paradigmatic Other in European liberal nation-states; the transformation of traditional Jewish religious rituals and belief systems in response to dramatic social and political life; new patterns of gender and family organization; the effect of antisemitism, Zionism, and imperialism on Jewish politics; and contemporary Jewish intellectual innovation, including feminist and queer thought.

Crosslisted as: RELIG-269
Applies to requirement(s): Humanities

JWST-295 Independent Study

Fall and Spring. Credits: 1 - 4

Restrictions: Contact instructor for independent study declaration form and signatures.
Instructor permission required.

JWST-343 Against Productivity: Sabbath as Countercultural Practice

Not Scheduled for This Year. Credits: 4

The practice of a weekly day of rest dates back millennia. Today, the Sabbath beckons as an antidote to the relentless demand to be productive. This seminar explores the ideas, actions, and communal dimensions of the sacred day that anchors the seven-day calendar, focusing on Jewish texts and practices. Key themes include sacred time, cultural identity, and the transformation of religious life over time. Students explore the development of the Sabbath using narrative, folk, and legal primary sources and in experiential learning. Students will pursue an extended research project.

Crosslisted as: RELIG-343
Applies to requirement(s): Humanities; Multicultural Perspectives
Restrictions: This course is open to juniors and seniors

JWST-350 Special Topics in Jewish Studies

JWST-395 Independent Study

Fall and Spring. Credits: 1 - 8

Restrictions: Contact instructor for independent study declaration form and signatures.
Instructor permission required.