Should we say “Judaism” or “JudaismS”? During the more than 2,500 years of Jewish history, Judaism has been defined as a religion, a civilization, a nationality, an ethnicity, and a culture. In order to sort through all the aspects that make up these collective Judaisms, this course is organized around a comparative examination of Judaism as a regional and global religious system over the last twenty-five-hundred years, but with the bulk of analysis confined to the years since 1945. Chronologically, the course begins with the biblical roots of Judaism in the Ancient Near East, followed by the formation of the Jewish diaspora around the Greek-speaking Mediterranean world and continues through the present.

Students will become familiar with the many iterations of Judaism across the globe, including Sephardic, Ashkenazi, Mizrahi, African, and the many varieties of post- Enlightenment Judaism that proliferated in the Europe and the United States. In each geographic and chronological context, students will explore several themes: sacred texts, beliefs, and ritual activity; holidays; values and ethics; and communal institutions and structures.