Jewish Studies

Are you interested in meeting college students from another culture? In this course, you will virtually join an Interfaith Dialogue course based at Forman Christian College in Lahore, Pakistan, to learn more about Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.  We will first study each other’s religious traditions, history, beliefs, and practices, and then apply essential communication and dialogue skills in a series of one-on-one conversations across geographical and cultural differences.

How have Jews and Christians understood epidemics, illness, healing, and medical ethics in history? How are major life experiences like birth and death, conception, and sexual health understood in Jewish and Christian thought? This course will explore religious perspectives on controversial topics including eugenics, abortion, organ donation, circumcision, and dietary ethics. 

Jerusalem is sacred for Jews, Christians, and Muslims. We will examine Jerusalem's long history, divisive politics, contested character, and possible futures from different religious, cultural, and political perspectives. The course honors Jerusalem's complicated role as a nexus for “Abrahamic” faiths, and explores how religion, nationalism, and identity shape the city in war and in peace.

This course examines the Nazi racial state and the genocide perpetrated against Europe's Jews and other so-called "racial enemies." Using primary sources including laws, identity papers, diaries, photographs, maps, testimonies, and much more, we will consider many voices and experiences from this era. 

Explores major intellectual, political, and historical movements that define the modern Jewish experience in Europe, America, and the Middle East. Considers topics like emancipation and assimilation, Zionism, race, migration, and the Holocaust to understand the radical shifts of the Jewish diaspora.

We will consider notions of gender, sexuality, and purity in the Hebrew Bible as well as Talmudic and later rabbinic sources. Reading through a critical-historical lens, we will explore the innovations and controversies that exist in Jewish texts and traditions regarding issues like women's leadership, LGBTQ+ inclusion, and interfaith marriage.

From “convivencia” among Jews, Christians and Muslim to the Spanish Inquisition and Expulsion of 1492, this course will explore the explore the history and culture of Jews from the Iberian Peninsula from the medieval period through the modern day.