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REL 315:  Judaism

This course will tell the story of Jewish life, practice, and thought from Biblical times to the present.  In the first part of the course we will look at the origins of the major Jewish festivals and holy days, as well as the origins and roles of the Pharisees, Sadducees, and other  Jewish parties and sects.  We will also examine the rise of the distinctively Jewish institutions such as the Sabbath and the synagogue.   We will then study the world of the rabbis, the completion of the canon of the Hebrew Bible, and the development of the Talmud.  The next part of the course will focus on the golden Age of Judeo-Arabic culture, Jewish life in late medieval Europe, and the rise of Jewish mysticism and the Hasidic movement.  This will bring us up to the time of the Jewish Enlightenment period and the rise of the Reform movement, which we will review in both its European and American forms.  The last part of the course will trace the rise of Anti-Semitism in Europe, the rise of the Zionist movement and the early Jewish settlements in Palestine, the impact of the Nazi Holocaust on Jewish life and thought, the establishment of the State of Israel, and the variety of Jewish life and thought in America.  Some attention also well be given to some major twentieth-century Jewish thinkers and current issues in Jewish life and identity.