UNDERGRADUATE COURSES IN JEWISH STUDIES
Courses in Jewish Studies at the University of Manchester are offered in a number of departments, particularly the Department of Middle Eastern Studies and the Department of Religions and Theology. Not all courses are available every year. Here is a provisional list of course units (exact units are subject to change):
1ST YEAR | 2ND YEAR | 3RD YEAR
RELT 10101: The World of the Ancient Israelites - Prof. George Brooke: This course is taught as two distinct halves which run in parallel. Part A: This part will be a consideration of a variety of biblical passages, asking questions about authorship, date, purpose and setting as well as suggesting that the concerns of the modern interpreter are also important. Part B: This part will begin by considering the variety of types of archaeological discovery and their potential relevance for the study of the Bible. Then the main features of Palestine and its geographical regions and several important archaeological sites (including Lachish, Megiddo and Masada) will be considered. Attention will then turn to various textual discoveries from Mesopotamia and Syria. If time permits, the early growth and development of Jerusalem will be considered, and the course will conclude with a brief look at Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls.
RELT 10140: Biblical Hebrew - Prof. George Brooke: This course introduces students to the basic vocabulary, grammar and syntax of Biblical Hebrew, beginning with the alphabet (designed for those who have no prior knowledge of the Hebrew language) and enables them to read the Book of Jonah in Hebrew. The course is primarily intended to prepare you to undertake the subsequent study of Hebrew texts, but those who have successfully completed it should be able to consult the Hebrew text of the Bible and make intelligent use of commentaries and other works which presume a basic knowledge of Hebrew.
RELT 10192: Introduction to Judaism - Dr. Renate Smithuis: provides an historical introduction to contemporary Judaism, defining Judaism as a system of beliefs and practices based on Torah. The basic creed of Judaism is explored, as expressed in law, mysticism, ethics and philosophy. Major practices and rituals are described. The course concludes with a demographic and statistical overview of Judaism today, and a consideration of some of the major issues which currently exercise the Jewish community.
RELT 10271: Religion and Evolution - Prof. Daniel Langton: Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection is one of the most controversial and influential ideas of the modern era. For students of religious studies it is important for several reasons. Evolution has been at the centre of an historic conflict between scientific and religious worldviews that continues to this day, it has impacted on both Jewish and Christian modern theologies, and it has given birth to a range of scientific approaches for understanding the nature of religion itself. This course introduces the student to such contentious and ideologically sensitive ideas as Creationism and Intelligent Design, selfish genes, memes, and evolutionary psychology.
RELT 10811: Introduction to Holocaust Studies - Dr. Jean-Marc Dreyfus: The course will explore ‘the twisted path to Auschwitz’. It will examine the significance of Hitler and other key figures, anti-Semitic policies, the life of Jews in Germany, ghettos, the methods of killing, Jewish resistance, bystander indifference, post-war reparations and the fate of survivors. Special attention will be given to policy documents, memoirs, and diaries, film and photographs.
MEST 10042: Introduction to the Question of Palestine/Israel 1882-1967 - Dr. Moshe Behar: The course provides a comprehensive introduction to causes, consequences and controversies associated with the emergence, development and consolidation of the tortuous conflict in Palestine/Israel from 1882 until the 1967 war. Emphasis is placed on both the socio-political and diplomatic aspects of the conflict.
MEST 10711: The Contemporary Middle East - Dr. Moshe Behar :This is an introductory survey course on the contemporary Middle East, with sections devoted to geography, society, religion, history, politics, economics, international relations, and security and conflict. Two principal questions generally run throughout the course: “What, if anything, is distinctive and/or exceptional about the Middle East?”, and “How has the Middle East changed during the modern age?”. Students will be introduced to the use of a range of sources relating to the contemporary Middle East, including reference and survey works, studies of specific subjects, and internet resources. The course provides foundation for further study of the Middle East and facilitates the acquisition of intellectual and transferable skills.
MEST 10210: Modern Hebrew Language 1 - Mrs. Sophie Garside: This is a beginner’s level language course which teaches the skills of reception (reading and listening), production (speaking and writing) in the target language and mediation between the target language and English (translation and interpretation). The aim is to familiarize the students with the spoken and written forms and grammar of the language and to enable them to begin to express themselves in writing, simple role-play and simple dialogues, and to begin to read simple authentic texts and translate to and from the target language.
MEST 10810: The Middle East Before Islam; an Introduction - Prof. John Healey: The lectures survey the history and religion of the Middle East in the period from c. 2000 BCE to c. 600 CE. Special attention is given to the history of writing, the kingdoms of Syria-Palestine and Anatolia in the Bronze and Iron Ages, pre-Islamic Arabia (Petra, Saba and Himyar) and the impact of Christianity on the whole region before Islam.
ULHB 10030: Beginners' Hebrew (LEAP) - Mrs. Malka Hodgson: This course is for absolute beginners. It aims to give students a basic knowledge of reading, listening, spoken and written skills in a dynamic and communicative way, through individual, pair and group work and studio-based and authentic texts. The focus is on accuracy as well as communication. Students will be expected to use the range of resources available to them in the Language Centre and to communicate with native speakers, wherever possible, in order to develop cultural competence.
Units which are not directly focussed on Jewish Studies but may be of interest:
RELT 10911: Theological Studies in Philosophy and Ethics - Dr. Peter Scott: The course will introduce you to different ways of understanding the interaction between theology, philosophy and ethics, primarily in European contexts. To achieve this, most of the course is given over to an extended consideration of ‘Religion and law’, beginning with the case study of the reaction to Rowan Williams’ lecture to the Inns of Court on Islamic/Sharia law (2008), and his suggestion of its partial incorporation into the British legal system. With the help of lectures, seminars and independent learning, you will acquire the knowledge and skills to place this case study in its context, understand how it has been received and interpreted, and consider critically how it exemplifies the interaction between theology, philosophy and ethics. The lectures are intended to aid you in successfully navigating the theme of ‘Religious pluralism and Law’. In the seminars you will discuss key questions like ‘What is punishment?, justice?, forgiveness?’ And thereby gain an introduction to some key concepts in theology, philosophy and ethics with reference to a range of primary reading materials. You will learn to take a critical look at key concepts such as ‘God’, ‘justice’ and ‘state’, and become aware of how your own presuppositions affect how you see the religious practices and beliefs of others.
RELT 10311: Introduction to the Study of Religions and Theology: More information coming soon.
2ND YEAR
(1st and 3rd year students may be allowed to take one 2nd year course)
SAHC 21112: A History Apart: European Jews in the 19th and 20th Centuries - Dr. Jean-Marc Dreyfus: This course will consider the most important trend in Jewish history: it will question the raison d’être of a history of the Jews as an internal narrative of “communities” or, to the contrary, as a legitimate part of national – or European – narratives. It will describe and analyse a history of the Jews in Europe both internal to communities but also in the national and international narratives of Europe (and marginally the United States and the Arab world too). It will describe a history of nationalisation of minority/ies, of mass migration, of racism and persecution, but also of integration and creativity. A gendered version of those episodes will be considered also: were Jewish women a factor of modernisation of the contrary, the guardians of traditions. The origin and the rise of American Jewry as an offspring of European migration will be analysed.
This course will give a solid introduction to the social history of Jews but also to their political, economic and intellectual history. The course wants to provide a general and more specialised background of many of the central issues and ideas found in the programs within the School. It will be considered how different social sciences question Jewish history and how those questionings nourish the rest of the fields. The course conveyor will interrogate the current trends in identity politics, minorities’ studies and subaltern studies.
RELT 20170: Biblical Hebrew Texts I - Prof. George Brooke and Dr. Renate Smithuis: This course involves translation and exegesis of selected passages of the Hebrew Bible (currently: Genesis 1-3; 2 Samuel 6-7; selected Psalms).
RELT 20182: Ancient Israel's Prophetic Literature - Dr. Adrian Curtis: This course discusses the definition of the term ‘prophet’ and its background in ancient Israel. Some account is given of so-called ‘primitive’ prophecy, but the course concentrates on the messages of certain key figures in the biblical prophetic tradition.
RELT 20611: Introduction to the History of Jewish-Christian Relations - Prof. Daniel Langton: The course provides an initial overview of the history of Jewish-Christian relations and highlights the development of the thought and theology of various individuals, concentrating particularly on the last hundred years or so. It examines Jewish approaches to Jesus and the apostle Paul, Christian approaches to Judaism and the study of Judaism, the history of Jewish and Christian attitudes to dialogue and to 'the other', and such controversial issues as the Holocaust, the State of Israel, Zionism, anti-Judaism in the New Testament, and conversion practices.
RELT 21022: Ethical Issues from Joshua to Jesus - Prof. George Brooke: The aims of this course unit are threefold: (1) to familiarize you with some key texts from the Jewish and Christian Scriptures; (2) to consider what kinds of ethical systems might illuminate such key texts; and (3) to consider how some of the texts have been used in modern ethical debates.
RELT 21231: Religion and Science in the Time of the Crusades: God, Nature and Science in Medieval Jewish, Christian and Muslim Thought - Dr. Renate Smithuis: The aims fo this course unit are: (1) To identify, explain and analyse the key points of the medieval philosophical and theological debates about science; and (2) To trace the history of the knowledge transfer between Muslims, Jews and Christians in the field of medieval science, especially cosmology, astrology/astronomy, medicine and the occult sciences. By the end of this course students should be able to: (1) understand the main points of the medieval debate on science between Muslim, Jewish and Christian scientists and philosophers of religion; (2) understand the history of the medieval transmission of scientific learning from the Muslim to the Christian world; (3) show a more detailed knowledge of some key primary texts of medieval scholars on matters of science and religion; (4) show an ability to analyse rudimentarily a medieval philosophical or scientific text by relating its key points of argument to aspects of the wider medieval debate as discussed in class and explained in the secondary literature.
MEST 20210: Modern Hebrew Language 2 - Mrs. Sophie Garside: This is a lower intermediate level language course which teaches the skills of reception (reading and listening), production (speaking and writing) in the target language and mediation between the target language and English (translation and interpretation).
MEST 20002: The Modern Literatures of the Middle East - Prof. Hoda Elsadda, Dr. Philip Sadgrove and Mrs. Sophie Garside: This course is intended to develop students' critical appreciation of literature, through readings in contemporary Middle Eastern texts translated from the Arabic, Hebrew, Persian and Turkish, as well as through reading and translating texts in the original languages. We shall treat literature as a resource for our own thinking about some of the pressing concerns of modern life in the tension between the West and the Middle East. In what sense do literary works reflect the "realities of life" in the Middle East? What are the themes which Middle Eastern writers feel compelled to address? The aim of the course unit is two-fold: to introduce students to some of the main concepts and approaches used in the contemporary academic discourse on literature, as applied to examples of twentieth-century literature from the Middle East (in English translation); to develop the students’ comprehension and reading skills through translating and analysing a variety of modern texts in their chosen Target Language. The tutorials will enable the students to improve their translation skills, to expand their vocabulary; to improve their reading fluency, to improve their use of dictionaries and to make them aware of the various styles and expressions of different texts in the Target Language.
MEST 20241: Talmudic Judaism: Sources and Concerns - Prof. Alex Samely: The course is concerned with the classical sources of Judaism, including the Mishnah, the Midrashim and the Babylonian Talmud. It explores basic concepts (halakhah, aggadah, Torah, Oral Torah, exile, etc.), the literary forms, and the key genres. We shall discuss the role of Scripture for the talmudic discourse (rabbinic hermeneutics), and address the limitations which the nature of the sources impose on modern reconstructions of rabbinic law, theology or history. The aim of the course unit is to introduce students to the modern academic study of the primary evidence for classical Judaism in its formative period (c. CE 200-700).
MEST 20252: Readings in Talmudic Judaism - Prof. Alex Samely: This aims to complement MEST 20241, Talmudic Judaism: Its Sources and Concerns, by study of selected text samples from talmudic literature in the original and in translation. The text samples will concentrate largely on the legal and hermeneutic discourse of the rabbis, including portions of Mishnah Megillah and Midrash Bereshit Rabba (55/56). Other genres covered are Gemara and Targum.
MEST 20271: Themes in the Formation of Arab and Jewish Nationalisms - Dr. Moshe Behar: How do collective identities come into existence? How do nations emerge (or disintegrate)? What best accounts for the development of nations: ideology, the economy, societal transformation, politics, cultural formation or technological change? This course examines these and other key questions and themes related to the consolidation of collective identities in the 20th Century ME while utilising theoretical studies that focus on additional regions. As such, the course explores the emergence and consolidation of collective identities on competing bases (such as ethnicity, language, region, class, religion, etc.).
GERM 20351: Gender, Sexuality, Race: the Trials of Young Adulthood in Early 20th-Century Literature - Dr. Cathy Gelbin: This course unit looks at notions of difference based on gender, sexuality and race in early twentieth-century German literary text and film. We will explore how during this period, based on the new science of biology, gender, sexuality and race became seen as the defining features of human character. Lectures and seminar discussions will explore the ways in which set literary texts and films both reflect and critically engage especially with the racial ideologies that ultimately gave rise to Nazism. Further readings, such as Otto Weininger’s widely influential theories on gender and race, as well as Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytical work on human sexual development, will sharpen seminar participants’ understanding of major concepts of difference in early twentieth century European culture. Seminar participants are expected to participate actively in seminar discussions. All prescribed texts should be acquired and read before the seminar. Essay questions are comparative and draw on several of the discussed works.
ULHB 20030: Intermediate Hebrew (LEAP) - Mrs. Malka Hodgson: This course is the continuation of level 1. It aims to develop skills in speaking, listening, reading and writing Hebrew. It lays emphasis on communication and comprehension skills but also builds on the grammar base acquired in elementary courses. Topics covered earlier will be revised and extended and new themes introduced which will develop your ability to communicate on daily issues and your understanding of the society and culture of contemporary Israel. Students will be expected to use the resources in the Language Centre and to communicate with native speakers wherever possible.
3RD YEAR
(2nd year students may be allowed one 3rd year course)
RELT 30332: Holocaust Theology - Prof. Daniel Langton: The course surveys a number of Jewish and Christian theological responses to the Holocaust. It explores the differing ways that their religious concepts, beliefs, principles and practice have been affected by the theological challenge of the Holocaust, which has undoubtedly brought about a wide-spread crisis of identity and meaning for many religious thinkers. Among other areas of interest, it considers the wider context of Jewish-Christian relations (in particular Christian anti-Judaism), the question of the uniqueness of the Holocaust, the debate surrounding the phenomenon of Jewish self-definition in terms of the Holocaust, and the future of Holocaust theology itself.
RELT 30380: Biblical Hebrew Texts II - Prof. George Brooke: This course aims to enable you to offer your own translation of and critical comments on the passages studied; and be able to engage with the textual footnotes in the prescribed edition of the Hebrew Bible (Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia) and other critical editions of the texts to be studied. It involves translation and exegesis of selected passages of the Hebrew Bible (currently: Judges 4-5, Jeremiah 1-5, Qoheleth (Ecclesiastes) 1-3, selected passages from the Dead Sea Scrolls). Not running 2011-12.
RELT 30611: Consequences of the Holocaust on Western Societies and Jewish History - Dr. Jean-Marc Dreyfus: Some consequences of the Holocaust only appear after decades of silence and repression. More than just considering the memory of the event, this course will try to deal with different aspects of the aftermath. The changes in Jewish history after the Holocaust will be particularly considered: demography, new Jewish consciousness, the importance of the State of Israel and the interpretation in Jewish theology. The course will study different aspect of Holocaust consequences, in the fields of memorialisation, diplomacy and Jewish history. The sessions will handle, among others, the following themes: - Discovering the camps and the catastrophe: 1944-1946 - Restitution and reparation policies - Holocaust denial: facts and fights - the German Federal Republic facing its past - Holocaust memory and politics in the new Europe : an East-West divide.
RELT 30701: The Jewish-Christian-Muslim Controversies from the Earliest Times to the Middle Ages - Dr. Renate Smithuis: The course will fall into three parts: Part 1 will be devoted to antiquity, and will investigate the reasons for the “parting of the ways” between Judaism and Christianity. Part 2 will cover the high middle ages and focus on the great mediaeval disputations. Part 3 will consider the Jewish-Christian controversy in the modern times.
RELT 30912: Early Jewish Novels - Prof. George Brooke: The aims of the course are to introduce early Jewish novels, from Esther and Daniel, especially in their expanded forms, to 3 Maccabees and the Story of Aseneth, as well as several others, like Tobit and Judith. Many of these novels have a heady mix of politics and romance. They address many of the concerns of Jewish identity in the Second Temple period. Part of the course will be devoted to the subsequent cultural appropriation of these novels. Analysis of recent scholarly approaches to this material will also be undertaken.
MEST 30270: Modern Hebrew Language 4 - Mrs. Sophie Garside: This is an advanced level language course which teaches the skills of reception (reading and listening), production (speaking and writing) in the target language and mediation between the target language and English (translation and interpretation). The aim is to enable students to master complex structures with high fluency in a range of situations and for a variety of purposes.
MEST 30722: Fundamental Debates in the Study of Israel / Palestine - Dr. Moshe Behar: During the last four decades liberal democracies have grappled with questions relating to citizenship, immigration, multi-culturalism, gender gaps, collective rights, and the civil status of ethnic or indigenous minorities. In Israel these issues came to the fore in the 1990s, manifesting themselves in debates between the “old” and “new” historians; disputes between the “critical” and “establishment” sociologists; questions of memory and collective identity; new forms of political organization by Israel’s Palestinian-Arab citizens, Sephardic-Mizrahi Jews, and women. Discussions often revolved around the question whether Israeli society embodies persistent inequalities between European Jews, Middle Eastern Jews, women, Arabs, and Russian and Ethiopian immigrants, or whether it is a place of (comparatively) well-functioning co-existence. This class shall critically survey the following themes that shed light on these debates: “Israeli Inter-generational Conflict?”; “Historical Inquiry and Israel’s Collective Memory”; “Israel: Democracy, Ethnic Democracy or ‘Ethnocracy’?”; “Jewish and Democratic State: Built-in Structural Tension?”; “Arab Citizenship in a Jewish State”; “Sephardim/Mizrahim in Israel” and “The Politics of Land Ownership.”
MEST 30281: Israeli Media - Mrs. Sophie Garside: The course will introduce students to a brief history of the Israeli media, which will be read in Hebrew. The tutorials will deal with the vocabulary, style and content of the modern Israeli press. The material will be drawn from various newspapers, from the internet, from radio and from television. The course will deal systematically with areas of concern within Israel, about the Middle East in particularly and the world in general. It will cover topics such as cultural and social issues, trade and industry, politics, conflicts and terrorism.
MEST 30081: Contemporary cinema of the Middle East (also divided into target language sections) - Mrs Sophie Garside: This course unit is intended to introduce students to the contemporary cinema of the Middle East, in order to develop their critical awareness and appreciation of the various approaches and aesthetics which characterise Arab, Iranian, Turkish, and Israeli cinemas at the present. Students will view films as well as read and analyse texts on film theory and aesthetics. Cinema is a popular and flourishing industry in the Middle East, and has a large audience. We will be discussing cinema as a creative medium which has two main objectives: entertainment, and communicating issues of concern in the life of its audience throughout the Middle East. Cinema will be analysed as an aesthetic tool and as a product of the societies it aims to influence. One important question which we will consider is: to what extent does cinema have an impact on Middle Eastern societies? The course unit will focus on a selection of films from the Arab world, Iran, Turkey, and Israel which address certain themes that are of deep concern to the people of the Middle East today. These themes include: family, class, and gender relations as integral to the societies of the Middle East; the authoritarian apparatus of the state vs. the individual; transformation of life in the cities of the Middle East; identity issues; the youth of the Middle East; the Arab/Israeli conflict; and the Lebanese civil war.
GERM 30482: Screening the Holocaust - Dr. Cathy Gelbin: This course unit will examine the filmic treatment of the Nazi atrocities from the late 1940s through to the present. Tracing the ongoing debates around appropriate modes of Holocaust representation, we will examine the major political and aesthetic issues at stake in feature film in particular. In so doing, we will consider film’s potential to convey the personal dimension of the Holocaust together with art’s ethical implications in the face of atrocity. Among other themes, we will look at the unique vision of the Holocaust in East Bloc cinema, which pioneered central modes of Holocaust representation before 1989. Having looked at issues of gender, sexuality and generation in films from both sides of the Iron Curtain, we will finally turn our attention to the aesthetic and thematic approaches developed by the second and now third generation after the Holocaust. The study of German film in its international context will open up a comparative view of Holocaust film as a transnational body of works.
GERM 30761: Assent and Dissent in the Third Reich - Dr. Matthew Philpotts: In this unit we shall take a fresh look at a range of cultural and literary phenomena produced in Germany under National Socialism. We shall begin by looking at how we define and measure ‘resistance’, how the concept has been re-defined by social historians over the past thirty years, and how such definitions might be applied to art and literature. We shall then examine the specific cases of five artists/ writers who continued to work in Germany between 1933 and 1945, assessing the assent and dissent expressed by them to the Nazi regime. The course unit is divided into three parts. In Part I we shall consider in detail the nature of politics and culture in the Third Reich, covering the following topics: the structure and dynamics of the Nazi regime (Week 1); the nature of Nazi ideology and aesthetic policies (Week 2); the historiography of ‘resistance’ (Week 3); and the nature of assent and dissent in the cultural sphere (Week 4). In Part II (Weeks 5-9), one week will be given over to the careers of each of the following individuals in the Third Reich: the painter Otto Dix; the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe; and the writers Gottfried Benn, Günter Eich, and Ernst Jünger. In each case we shall seek to describe the relative levels of assent and dissent expressed by these creative figures through their work, how their relationship to the National Socialist regime changed over time, and how their work illustrates the mechanisms by which writers and artists were able to express assent and dissent. Part III (Weeks 10 & 11) will be devoted to a series of revision and essay-writing exercises.
GERM 30012: The Search for Normality: German National Identity after the Holocaust, 1945 to the present - Prof. Stefan Berger: Germany's past has been more discontinuous and problematic than that of most other European countries. After 1945 two German states emerged out of the smouldering ruins of Nazi Germany: the “Communist” German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the capitalist Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). Both constructed very different notions of their respective pasts. After the unexpected collapse of the GDR in 1989, Germany was reunified in 1990 and had the massive task of constructing a new national identity in a new post-Cold War Europe. Germany's 'shattered pasts' (Konrad Jarausch) meant that the construction of German national identity was a complex and always contested process. After 1945 the holocaust and the efforts to come to terms with the Nazi dictatorship were central to attempts to rebuild German identities. This module will examine the diverse discursive constructions of Germanness from the post-Second World War period to the present drawing on political debates, newspapers, journals, histories, literature, film, theatre, architecture and other media/ genres in which the discursive construction of national identity found expression. It will raise the question of how successful the democratic re-invention of Germany in the West was and it will also attempt to provide perspectives on the failure of socialist identities in East Germany. Particular attention will be paid to the nation as a 'community of memory'. The gendering of the national discourse, the federal nature of German nationalism and the impact of war (both the Second World War and the Cold War) on the diverse manifestations of German national identity will be considered.
Units which are not directly focussed on Jewish Studies but may be of interest:
HIST 31081: The Second World War and British Society - Prof. Penny Summerfield: The course will explore recent understandings of the effects of the Second World War on British society and culture. It will scrutinise historians’ contradictory interpretations of the war, which has been seen, variously, as an occasion for national unity that ensured the preservation of traditional values; as an episode of exceptional social solidarity leading to sweeping reform; as a set of circumstances which generated pressures for social change that were held in check; and as a period of social and political upheaval that offered unprecedented opportunities for anti-social and divisive behaviours. The course will examine the validity of these contestations in relation to the key social differentiators of gender, social class, race, region and age, using recent historiography as well as primary sources including wartime surveys, film, fiction, cartoons and personal testimony. It will focus on a number of wartime activities, organisations and institutions. Topics covered will include: 1. approaches to ‘the home front’ in the Second World War; 2. the wartime home: call-up, bombing, rationing & making do; 3. Evacuation; 4. the Home Guard; 5. Civil Defence; 6. women in industry, agriculture and the armed forces; 7. strikes and protests; 8. Jews, GIs and aliens; 9. propaganda and morale; 10. remembering the Second World War.