Intensive Arabic Semester

1.  Tanakh (Hebrew Scriptures), the Covenant and the Biblical narrative – The  Land of Israel and the "Promise" from Creation, to the tribal federation, the First Temple and through Ezra and Nehemia

2.  Jews and the Ancient World – Greece, Rome, the destruction of the Second Temple and the development of Oral Law in the Talmudic Period.  The centrality of the Land of Israel challenged. 

3.  Jewish Dispersion – the challenges of discrimination, forced assimilation, minority status and the roots of modern anti-Semitism.  To include Babylonia, Spain and the shift to Eastern Europe as a center.  The Messianic idea as the ultimate hope

4.  Enlightenment – The Jew in the modern world.  Apparent success in Western and Central Europe as led by the French Revolution.  Repression and persecution in the Czarist East.  The Misnagid – Hassidic clash

5.  Dual Challenge:  Orthodoxy and Enlightenment – The development of Modern Orthodoxy, Reform and Conservative Judaism

6.  The Jew as Revolutionary, the Utopian idea. Why? – The rise of socialism/communism and the Jewish contribution.  Marx, Trotsky, Luxemburg and others. The dilemma of Moses Hess.  Establishment of the Soviet Union and the disenfranchisement of the Jews.

7. America, the Liberal Democratic Idea and Jewish Survival – The restructuring of the Jewish community and identity in a free and open society.  The quest for equality and the right to be different.  Do they contradict?

8.  Zionism:  Jewish Nationalism Re-implemented in the Nation State Structure -  Herzl's The Jewish State and playing the game of nations.  The great Zionist ideologies of Labor, Revisionism and the National Religious

9.  Development of the Jewish Community in Mandated Palestine:  From WWI, Balfour, the British Mandate to Independence.  Immigration, military, political and social development

10.  Modern Antisemitism and the Holocaust:  Ancient hatreds reach their crescendo as the Jew embraces Enlightenment and equality.  An overview of the Holocaust and decision making processes under intolerable conditions

11.  Middle Eastern Jewish Communities:  A survey of life under Arab/Moslem regimes.  Questions of equal rights and the dhimma.  The impact of the establishment of the State of Israel and the "Zionization" of traditional Jewish community existence

12.  The Development of the Modern Jewish State from 1948 – 77:  Labor Zionist hegemony led by Ben Gurion and the Labor movement.  Ingathering of the Exiles, economic, political and military development

13.  Soviet Jewry and Its Discontents:   Soviet anti-Semitism and the Jewish predicament from Stalin through the mass emigration of the 1970s and 1990s to Israel and the Western democracies.  The collapse of Marxist utopianism

14.  The Diaspora as led by the American Jewish Community:  Defining oneself as a Jew in the liberal democratic West.  Judaism as universalist religion in the North American Jewish context?  Defining the relationship with Israel/Zionism as "an American Jew" or as a "Jewish American"?  A question of loyalties

15.  Israel as the State Embodiment of the "Messianic Hope":  The last 30 years.  Left vs. Right, religious vs. secular, Land of Israel vs. State of Israel.  Attempts at conflict  resolution with the Arab World.  How does one win the war and win the peace while building a cohesive democratic Jewish State?