Straus Center Sponsored Undergraduate Courses (SCW and YC)
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Item Restricted JTP1479: Malbim and Modernity(The Straus Center and Yeshiva College, Yeshiva University., 2022-08) Lerner, DovCourse Description: The aim of this class is to explore the thought of one of the most well-known Jewish exegetes of the nineteenth century—Malbim—with a heavy emphasis on his historical and intellectual context. We will briefly survey the major intellectual movements of modern Europe, the Enlightenment and Romanticism, through the prism of some of the key texts that defined the respective projects. We will then consider their impact on the role of the Bible in European life generally, and the resulting crises which faced the newly emancipated Jews of Europe. After succinctly examining the attempts of Mendelssohn, Meklenburg, and Hirsch, to protect and conserve Jewish tradition, we will turn to Malbim. The theses of his sermons and the themes of his exegesis will be contrasted with some of the biblically inspired literature of the age—including Lord Byron’s Cain and Rossini’s Moses in Egypt. We will conclude the course with an assessment of how Malbim’s claims have fared over the past one hundred and fifty years.Item Open Access JPHI1650H: Maimonides and his Enemies(The Zahava and Moshael Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought ; Stern College for Women, 2022-01) Lerner, DovCOURSE OVERVIEW This semester we will explore the legacy of perhaps the most renowned and influential Jewish thinker in history: Maimonides. Over the first half of the course, we will examine his historical and intellectual context, and then survey his central works—attending to their central claims and innovations. The second half of our course will be devoted to the study of a series of thinkers—ranging from Nachmanides and Gersonides to Luzzatto—who opposed at least a portion of Maimonides’ thought, and, through the lens of their critique, deepen our grasp of what’s at stake in the Maimonidean imagination that shaped Judaism as we know it today.Item Restricted POLI 1401: Great Political Thinkers: Introduction to Political Thought(Stern College for Women / Straus Center, Yeshiva University, 2022-01) Rogachevsky, NeilPolitical philosophy examines the fundamental problems faced by human beings both as individuals and as members of associations that, in the Western tradition, have come to be called political. They ask two fundamental questions: “how should I live my life?” and “how can and should we live together?” The great thinkers of the Western tradition have explored these and related questions with tremendous depth. In this class, we will study three seminal thinkers in the history of Western political thought: Plato, Aristotle, and Machiavelli. Plato and Aristotle produced the central writings of ancient political philosophy, while Machiavelli was the founder of modern political philosophy. Between the study of Plato and Aristotle on the one hand and Machiavelli on the other, students will be introduced to both the “ancient” and “modern” perspectives on politics. ¶However, the purpose of this study is not merely to gain historical understandings of how people thought in the past. Rather, through careful study of these writers, students should attempt to grapple with what these authors have to teach us about fundamental political and thus human questions. Such questions include: What is justice? Is thought superior to action, or is action superior to thought? What is philosophy, and how does it relate to politics? How much can expertise or reason be employed in resolving political conflict? What demands does morality make on politics, and what demands do politics make on morality? Along the way, Jewish perspectives on the themes covered will be considered. For Political Science Majors: The class counts toward the Intro course requirement or Political Theory distribution.Item Restricted POL 1401: Great Political Thinkers: Ancient Political Thought(2021-01) Rogachevsky, NeilCourse Description It has been commonly said that Western Civilization—of which America has long been considered a part—was formed through the combination of, or creative tension between, the ideas typified by two cities: Athens and Jerusalem. Scholars have recently highlighted Biblical teachings ideas on questions we might now call political. But it is in the political thought of Greece that we find active philosophic reflection on the nature of politics and an argument for the centrality of politics in human life. One can even go further: in the writers of Greek antiquity we encounter the argument that the study of politics may be the key to understanding everything. This course aims to offer an introductory tour through the political thought of several of the greatest minds of Greece. But their insights are not only “Greek” insights; they remain relevant and in need of reckoning with in our times. Those insights relate to questions including: what is the relationship between individual excellence and communal excellence? Is thought superior to action or is action superior to thought? What is justice and how much justice can be realized in the world? What does war teach us about human nature? What is virtue and what is its relation to laws? To what extent are knowledge and politics tied together? These questions, and many more, will be addressed through a careful and close reading of seminal texts of ancient political thought: Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian war, Plato’s Republic, and Aristotle’s Politics. Read in tandem, these works present difficult and richly illuminating accounts of fundamental questions thoughtful people face in all times and placesItem Restricted ENG 3042: Milton and Religion(2019-09) Lavinsky, David; Lerner, DovdThis course focuses on the life and work of John Milton (1608-74), with special attention to Paradise Lost in its literary and historical contexts. We will seek to understand how Milton's religious knowledge illuminates our reading of this great biblical epic. 0.000 TO 3.000 Credit hoursItem Restricted JHIS 4938H - A Topics: Malbim & Modernity / JPHI 1918H – A Topics: Malbim & Modernity(2021-01) Lerner, DovCourse Overview The aim of this class is to explore the thought of one of the most well-known Jewish exegetes of the nineteenth century—Malbim—with a heavy emphasis on his historical and intellectual context. We will survey the major intellectual movements of modern Europe—the Enlightenment and Romanticism—through the prism of some of the key texts that defined the respective projects, and then consider their impact on the role of the Bible in European life, and the resulting crises which faced the newly emancipated Jews of Europe. After examining the attempts of Mendelssohn, Meklenburg, and Hirsch, to conserve Jewish tradition, we will turn to Malbim. The theses of his sermons and the themes of his exegesis will be explored alongside some of the biblically inspired literature of the age—including Lord Byron’s Cain. We will conclude the course with an assessment of how Malbim’s claims have fared over the past one hundred and fifty years.Item Restricted JHIS 4940H - C Topics: Psalms & Sonnets(2021-01) Koenigsberg, Chaya Sima; Trapedo, ShainaCourse Description: This course will survey the interplay between poetry and prayer in Jewish tradition from Tanakh to the modern era. Using classical meforshim, we will examine the style and significance of biblical prayers and poetry to understand the important power Jewish tradition places on poetry and song as forms of personal and national religious expression. The centerpiece of our course will be Sefer Tehillim whose many lyrical and timeless psalms were recited as part of the Temple service and became the foundation and inspiration for the formalized liturgy of the Siddur. Group and self-study assignments will examine psalms traditionally utilized by Jews to express their joy or distress throughout the long exile. Building on our study of the relationship between Psalms and the liturgy, we will look at the literary genre of piyyut (liturgical poetry) beginning in the Land of Israel in Talmudic times. The impetus, impact, and inclusion of piyyut throughout the Jewish world as well as opposition to piyyutim by some Geonim and Rishonim will be examined. In our discussion of piyyut, important kinnot (poetic laments), composed to commemorate the destruction of the Temple and other national tragedies, especially in medieval Ashkenaz, will be considered, as well as the way Jews in the Middle Ages experimented with structure, meter, rhyme, and rhetoric to compose original works that expressed gratitude, love, longing, displacement, and grief in the Golden Age of Spain. Our survey will continue in the early modern period with the liturgical additions of the Kabbalists of Safed, such as Lekhah Dodi, and the heartfelt Yiddish prayers composed for and by Jewish women known as tehinnes. While these tehinnes continued to be recited by Jewish women daily, or at poignant moments in their lives into the 20th century, they have been all but forgotten with the widespread loss of Yiddish fluency. Indeed, poetry continues to be an important form of religious self-expression as will become apparent in our study of poetry and lamentations composed after the Holocaust and the more recent faith-filled poems and prayers composed by Jews living in the modern State of Israel facing an uncertain future. ___ In accordance with the Straus center mission, in addition to tracing the impact of the poetry of Tanakh on the religious expression of Jews in varied lands and times in Jewish history, we will note their impact on secular Renaissance writers. It may surprise students that toward the end of his life, Italian humanist and poet laureate Francisco Petrarch (credited with the birth of the sonnet), selected King David over Virgil as the “poet” of his soul. Indeed, the Psalms were translated, paraphrased, and alluded to by virtually every author of the period, including but not limited to Sidney, bacon, Shakespeare, Spenser, Donne, and Milton. These acts of literary adaptation and appropriation infused Renaissance and Reformation England with the lyricism and wisdom of ancient Israel that has profoundly shaped Western literature and culture to this day. Lectures on the impact of Psalms on Western literature will be presented by Dr. Shaina Trapedo. ___ Course Objectives: • Students will gain an understanding of the unique features of biblical poetry, as well as fluency in reading and analyzing particular Psalms and prayers. • Students will gain the tools to analyze a chapter of Psalms on their own and convey their analysis in writing. • Students will gain an appreciation of the import of Psalms and its role in formalized and spontaneous religious self-expression throughout different periods of Jewish history. • Students will gain awareness of the need for a uniform liturgical formulations and additional forms of self-expression, as well as the reception and controversies surrounding liturgical additions in different times periods in Jewish history. • Students will gain an appreciation of larger influence of Psalms on Western literature.Item Restricted Topics: Philosophy of Rabbi Sacks - 15412 - JPHI 4934H - E(2021-09) Lerner, DovCourse Overview The aim of this class is to explore the thought of perhaps the most renowned and influential teachers of Judaism at the start of the twenty-first century: the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. With such a wide-ranging and voluminous oeuvre, we will divide his thought into three distinct but intersecting fields—Theology, Ethics, and Politics—and read selections of his writing in those areas. We will cover parts of his Reith Lectures, Covenant & Conversation, The Home We Build Together, To Heal a Fractured World, The Great Partnership, Not in God’s Name, and Future Tense, along with a number of smaller stand-alone essays—with an eye toward considering his sources and examining his central theses, while assessing his unique contribution toward the history of Jewish thought.Item Restricted Topics: Psychology & Jewish Thought - 15413 - JPHI 4935H - M(2021-09) Schiffman, Mordechai_Course Description_ This course will explore the connections between Torah sources and modern psychological theories and research on essential topics of human nature. Topics will cut to the core of what it means to be human, including whether we are born good or evil, the nature of evil, the relationship between cognition and emotion, the necessary ingredients to flourish and live the good life, the components of developing good character, and the nature of mental illness and the challenges of therapeutic treatment. An array of opinions in both the Torah and psychological sources will be presented and analyzed, noting inter and intradisciplinary similarities and differences. Areas of synthesis will be highlighted and conceptual conflicts accentuated. _Course Objectives_ • Students will understand the different approaches taken within the fields of psychology and Jewish thought on topics related to human nature. • Students will appreciate the diversity of responses to these questions of human nature in both fields, while analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches. • Students will be able to point to similarities and differences within the psychological and Judaic approaches, while noting areas still open for debate. • Students will reflect on how these topics and approaches influence their understanding of themselves and how they relate to the world. _Course Values (To be discussed in detail during the first few classes)_ • Communication • Community • Growth Mindset • Grit • HonestyItem Restricted BIBL4931HC: Genesis & Ethics - Fall 2021(2021-01) Lerner, DovThis course will provide a comprehensive survey of and meditation on the book of Genesis, specifically through the lens of ethics. We will begin with some introductory material concerning the genre of Genesis and narrative, more broadly, as a mode of ethical instruction. And then we will turn to the a section by section analysis of the text’s structure, themes, characters, and theologies, as seen through the readings of major exegetes, from the sages to the commentators of today—with a central focus on the claims of Leon Kass’s The Beginning of Wisdom. From the dawn of life to the death of the Egyptian viceroy, we will assess the ethics embedded in the text and the tales that have shaped the Jewish imagination for millennia.