Israel

This course is a study in intermediate practical Hebrew. It emphasizes communication, oral skills, and listening comprehension. 

This course focuses on intersections between Holocaust memory and cinema in the digital age. It discusses films from various countries and decades in relation to present challenges of commemorating the Holocaust in the 21st century and various concepts of cultural and collective memory. The course provides interdisciplinary knowledge in cinema studies, media studies, and memory studies. Students analyze visual culture in relation to social and historical discourses and situate current cinema in context of global memory cultures and digital technologies as well as within the film historical context. Students examine topics including the history of Holocaust cinema and other media representation of the Holocaust, contemporary discourses on Holocaust memory, analyzing films and other visual and digital medias and applying knowledge of narrative and stylistic conventions in order to explore media of memory as social and historiographical mediators in the global age, and using and applying theoretical and empirical concepts of Holocaust memory (including memory conflicts) on popular visual and digital culture.

This course is the first elementary level out of six levels of Modern Hebrew language instruction at the Hebrew University. In this course, students acquire the foundations of the language. Hebrew classes in level Aleph are generally subdivided into Aleph Beginners (for absolute beginners), Aleph Intermediate Beginners, and Aleph Advanced Beginners (for students with basic knowledge, including the alphabet and a limited vocabulary).

This course focuses on the intersection of technology, media, communication, and society. In light of its rapid growth and broad adoption, the internet has become both the medium and the target of military, political, social, and cultural conflicts. This course focuses on the technological, institutional, and political aspects of online conflict. Students will study this space by analyzing three interrelated dualities of internet design, regulation, and use. This class takes a broad look at cybersecurity as a core issue in an information society. Students develop analytical thinking about the role of technology design, regulation, and use in contemporary conflict.

This course explores issues of diversity and multiculturalism as part of the civic education process. Students first read theoretical writings that highlight the importance of dealing with different types of diversity as part of education in a democratic state. Students then examine the Israeli educational system as a case study that deals (for better or for worse) with such issues, examining the following topics: national diversity, religious diversity, racial diversity, gender diversity, and linguistic diversity. Finally, the course discusses several pedagogical approaches that enable teachers and practitioners to address such topics in the classrooms. Throughout the course, students reflect on their personal stances and roles in this regard.

This course deals with a range of aspects of Internet research including theoretical, practical, and ethical aspects. The course utilizes three approaches to explore the topic. The first approach looks at how the Internet can be used as a research tool. How can data collected through the Internet help us understand the world around us? This includes the use of search engines, online databases, and other digitally-generated resources, such as the discussion pages for Wikipedia articles, hyperlinks, and Facebook profiles. The second approach looks at research of internet phenomena, such as social network sites, search engines, and more. The third approach uses internet-based tools or data to study online phenomena. The course examines how the Internet can be used as a research tool, and how to research the Internet. Throughout the course, special emphasis is placed on different aspects that set the Internet apart from other media environments: multimedia interactive contents, recorded behavior, technological and social structures, as well as its capacity to act as a social environment in its own right. While the main class focuses on discussing the conceptual and theoretical implications of Internet research, the tutorial includes a practical orientation, where students practice using new tools.

For centuries, the Jewish mystical tradition was a highly guarded, orally transmitted body of knowledge. Today, Kabbalah is everywhere, from the internet, to Hollywood, to popular charms and amulets. This course presents both an introduction to the basic principles of Jewish mysticism, as well as the way in which Kabbalah and Jewish spirituality has entered diverse forms of contemporary spirituality, new-age thought, religious cross-fertilization, art, cinema, and even politics. It explores the nature of mystical experience and the unique approach of Kabbalah and Hasidism; studies Jewish texts, both ancient and modern, that seek to understand the nature of spirituality; and introduces living teachers of the Jewish esoteric tradition who are developing new philosophies and practices. The course examines how thinkers across the entire range of Jewish experience have drawn upon Kabbalistic ideas to enrich the spirituality of their adherents. Primary texts are read and discussed and guest speakers are invited regularly, providing a unique opportunity to meet leading spirituality thinkers in Israel and around the world.

This advanced level course provides a high level of proficiency in quick reading and translation (with the help of a dictionary that can be applied to most available texts in the standard literary language. It is intended for students with sound knowledge of Modern Standard Arabic. The course focuses on listening comprehension, oral expression, and writing in Modern Standard Arabic, based on the learned vocabulary. It deals with advanced grammatical and morphological topics, including additional adverbial accusatives, complex sentences, and the conjugation of double, hamzate and weak verbs, including double weak verbs. By the end of the course students will be able to read a broad range of texts.

This course explores the basic conceptual tools and competing theoretical arguments within the academic field of International Relations, which try to explain the nature, scope, and degree of success of various regional cooperation schemes. The course is divided into three sections: The first section outlines the key concepts and theoretical arguments. The second section explores, using these concepts, the nature and fortunes of regional cooperation in Europe, Asia, Latin American, and Africa. The third section focuses specifically on the challenges and various examples of regional cooperation in the Middle East.

Using Jerusalem as a case study, this course analyzes the politics of planning when municipal management is complicated by religious and ethnic conflict. The course sheds light on issues of urban planning from a comparative perspective, which examines Jerusalem vis-a-vis Belfast, Nicosia, and Johannesburg; a historical perspective, which explores political and urban developments in the 20th century; and a planning perspective, which examines political, governmental, and municipal policies and policy making.