The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

This course explores the shaping of Jewish identity and the formation of border lines between Jews and non-Jews in the rabbinic period. Through critical readings of Talmudic texts from the second to sixth centuries CE, it investigates how rabbinic laws and ideas inform the contemporary understanding of what it means to be Jewish. The course begins by delving into texts which highlight the shift of defining Judaism as a religion rather than an ethnicity. It then focus on the challenge of integrating into a non-Jewish society while protecting Jewish separateness from the other. The course also studies texts which reveal the deep influence that non-Jewish cultural context had on rabbinic practice. The final unit of the course explores the essential question of how the rabbis see the role of Judaism in the world at large.

This reading, field-trip, and discussion course exposes a range of contemporary geographic narratives, and then works to apply the narratives while exploring daily life in Jerusalem with and for diverse populations. The course examines a series of readings introducing frameworks including the ordinary city; the global, world and capital city; the Zionist city; and the city as shaped by history and religion. The course also weaves a set of four field trips in Jerusalem, three guided and one self-guided. It provides a platform for informed, critical, and multi-perspective discussion about contemporary spatial practices in Jerusalem. The course also encourages challenging values and perspectives while exploring the impact of ideology on the built environment and on the range of Jerusalemites.

This course addresses major issues in the history of anti-Semitism in the last seventy years. Topics include: origins of modern anti-Semitism and its difference from older theological forms of anti-Judaism; variations in anti-Semitic patterns in eastern, central, and western Europe; anti-Zionism and the delegitimization of the State of Israel; anti-Semitism in music, literature, and cinema; Jewish self-hatred and the internalization of anti-Semitic stereotypes by Jews; patterns of post-Holocaust anti-Semitism in America; Holocaust denial; the ambiguous religious connection between evangelical Christian pro-Zionism and anti-Semitism; anti-Semitism on the Internet; and contemporary debates on the persistence and new forms of anti-Semitism. A strong emphasis is placed on the Jews’ political, social, and ideological responses to this hatred. 

This intermediate level course provides an opportunity to strengthen listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills in Colloquial Arabic. The course focuses on the basic principles of verb conjugations in past and present-future tenses. It includes reading and responding to more complicated dialogues, both written and oral, while expanding vocabular. Instruction is conducted in Arabic and accompanied by original study material and audio tracks. The course allows students to discuss a variety of topics including time (hours, time of day, days of the week), daily activities, weather, clothes, colors, and occupation. 

This course for intermediate beginners teaches the fundamental structures of Hebrew and its basic forms, and the necessary vocabulary for everyday conversations, reading, and writing on a limited scale. Focus is placed on comprehension: listening to short stories and recorded conversations; conversation: simple dialogues and stories from everyday life; reading: easy dialogues and passages without vowels, headlines, and simple, short texts in easy Hebrew; writing: short dialogues and passages on the topics taught in class; and grammatical skills: elementary syntactic and grammatical structures, inflection of the strong verb in the past and present tenses, and frequent weak verbs.

This course deals with the concepts of national and personal identities in conflicts. It explores how ethnic, national, and cultural group identity is connected to individual identity, how groups in conflict take part in a dialogue, and how the individuals comprising them do so. Topics include collective memory, ethnic and national group narratives, and ethos. The course integrates theory and practice, providing an opportunity to get acquainted with core theories, experience how group identity is formed, and how a dialogue between opposing sides is conducted. The course includes guest lectures of people, organizations, and institutions who deal with these topics.

This course focuses on the meaning of "peace" as a classical Jewish value demonstrating the significant differences between it and the modern Western secular model. The course starts with an analysis of the politics of peace in western philosophy, tracing this discourse from the work of Kant to that of contemporary post-critical political philosophers. Students trace similarities between contemporary critiques of Kant and the alternative strategies for peace-making offered in the Jewish tradition. The course studies the meaning of peace in both classical and modern Jewish literature, examining the connection between peace and Messianism and exploring the implications of this connection for Zionist and religious Zionist political thought. Finally, the course examines the different ways in which alternative articulations of peace might suggest entirely new approaches to the challenge of accomplishing peace in today's Middle East after a fashion that enables us to tackle such loaded questions as the sanctity of the holy land, the Temple Mount, etc. This course requires students have completed one course in Jewish Studies, Political Philosophy, Middle East Studies, or International Relations as a prerequisite.

This is a course in Cognitive Neuroscience in which various disciplines (such as psychology, biology, physics, philosophy, medicine, and more) meet in a joint effort to understand the most remarkable mechanism in nature: the human brain. The first part of the course involves a brief historic overview on the methodology used to learn about brain functions and specializations with an emphasis on the novel methods characterizing neuroscience research. The remainder of the course sheds light on sensation and perception, namely the flow of information from the outside world into our inside world, and about behavior and motion, specifically the flow of information from the inside world back to the external environment. The course covers a wide variety of cognitive functions, from basic perception of color, touch, and sound, to higher functions such as object representation, emotion, and consciousness. In each part of the course, students explore neurological cases, experiments, and studies that have made great advances in the specific field with a special focus on how neuroscience research helped in significantly advancing the human brain is conceptualized. During the course, students gain an in-depth understanding of cutting-edge studies in neuroscience and deal with the most acute questions in the field, such as: How does the brain represent stimuli from the different senses? How can we efficiently act in our environment? How much can the brain change its functioning or even regain lost functionalities through our lifetime? The course also explores studies and information in order to separate knowledge from theory and propose questions for further scientific research.

This course studies how to communicate on a basic level in the spoken dialect of Jerusalem: colloquial Arabic. During the course students acquire the four skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing colloquial Arabic. The course discusses the conjugation of the verbs, declination of the nouns and the prepositions, and a large vocabulary from different fields of daily life. Attention is given to active use of the spoken dialect. Classes are conducted in Arabic, and students are expected to gradually participate in class in Arabic. The course utilizes primary sources including original study material written in Arabic and songs.

This course explores classic works of Jewish feminist critique of traditional Judaism and proposals for a Judaism which is in female as well as male image. The course covers contemporary issues that engage feminist Jews, women, and men, such as law, rituals, and prayer, and explores how theory gets applied in practice.