Department: Jewish Studies

Code Name Description
JEWISHST101A First-Year Hebrew, First Quarter In the first-year program, students acquire essential Hebrew through abundant opportunities to interact in the language in meaningful ways. The students learn to function appropriately in the language in a variety of social and cultural contexts.
JEWISHST101B First-Year Hebrew, Second Quarter Continuation of AMELANG 128A. Prerequisite: Placement Test, AMELANG 128A.
JEWISHST101C First-Year Hebrew, Third Quarter Continuation of AMELANG 128B. Prerequisite: Placement Test, AMELANG 128B. Fulfill the University Foreign Language Requirement.
JEWISHST102A Second-Year Hebrew, First Quarter Continuation of AMELANG 128C. Sequence integrating culture and language. Emphasis is on proficiency in oral and written discourse including presentational language and socio culturally appropriate discourse in formal and informal, academic, and profe...
JEWISHST102B Second-Year Hebrew, Second Quarter Continuation of AMELANG 129A. Sequence integrating culture and language. Emphasis is on proficiency in oral and written discourse including presentational language and socio culturally appropriate discourse in formal and informal, academic, and profe...
JEWISHST102C Second-Year Hebrew, Third Quarter Continuation of AMELANG 129B. Sequence integrating culture and language. Emphasis is on advanced proficiency in oral and written discourse including presentational language and socio culturally appropriate discourse in formal and informal, academic,...
JEWISHST103A Third-Year Hebrew, First Quarter Continuation of AMELANG 129C. Prerequisite: Placement Test, AMELANG 129C.
JEWISHST104 Hebrew Forum Intermediate and advanced level. Biweekly Hebrew discussion on contemporary issues with Israeli guest speakers. Vocabulary enhancement. Focus on exposure to academic Hebrew. May be repeat for credit up to 4 times
JEWISHST104A First-Year Yiddish, First Quarter Reading, writing, and speaking.
JEWISHST104B First-Year Yiddish, Second Quarter Continuation of AMELANG 140A. Prerequisite: AMELANG.
JEWISHST104C First-Year Yiddish, Third Quarter Continuation of AMELANG 140B. Prerequisite: AMELANG 140B. Fulfills the University Foreign Language Requirement.
JEWISHST105 Hebrew Forum Intermediate and advanced level. Biweekly Hebrew discussion on contemporary issues with Israeli guest speakers. Vocabulary enhancement. Focus on exposure to academic Hebrew. May repeat for credit
JEWISHST106 Reflection on the Other: The Arab Israeli Conflict in Literature and Film How literary works outside the realm of Western culture struggle with questions such as identity, minority, and the issue of the Other; How the Other is viewed in literature, film, and music about the Arab Israeli Conflict. Historical, political, and...
JEWISHST107A Biblical Hebrew, First Quarter Establish a basic familiarity with the grammar and vocabulary of Biblical Hebrew and will begin developing a facility with the language. Students that are enrolled in this course must also enroll in Beginning Hebrew. This course requires no prior kn...
JEWISHST111 Aliens, Asteroids, & The Antichrist: Imagining the World's End When is the world going to end? Could anyone survive it? More importantly, how is it going to happen? The doomsday clock created by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists suggests that we are closer to global catastrophe than ever before. Yet theories abo...
JEWISHST112 Passing: Hidden Identities Onscreen Characters who are Jewish, Black, Latinx, women, and LGBTQ often conceal their identities - or "pass" - in Hollywood film. Our course will trace how Hollywood has depicted"passing" from the early 20th century to the present. Just a few of our films w...
JEWISHST121P Poems, Poetry, Worlds What is poetry? What can Poetry do? What can we do with Poetry? How does it speak in many voices to questions of philosophy, history, society, and personal experience? Why does it matter? The readings address poetry of several cultures in comparativ...
JEWISHST123 Muslims, Jews, and Christians: Conflict, Coexistence, and Collaboration Relationships between Muslims, Jews, and Christians today are informed by a multitude of complex and often painful histories. These faith traditions emerged out of deep and sustained engagement with one another sharing theological and ethical princip...
JEWISHST125 Modern Jewish Mysticism: Devotion in a Secular Age The twentieth-century was a time of tremendous upheaval and unspeakable tragedy for the Jewish communities of Europe. But the past hundred years were also a period of great renewal for Jewish spirituality, a renaissance that has continued into the pr...
JEWISHST127D Readings in Talmudic Literature Readings of Talmudic texts. Some knowledge of Hebrew is preferred, but not necessary. The goal of the ongoing workshop is to provide Stanford students with the opportunity to engage in regular Talmud study, and to be introduced to a variety of approa...
JEWISHST128 Women and Gender in Early Judaism and Christianity Beginning with the Hebrew Bible and New Testament, we will explore female figures in early Jewish and Christian literatures, such as Eve, Ruth, Mary, and Junia. Based on this, we will probe the prescriptions for female comportment in early Judaism an...
JEWISHST129 Sacred Words: Jewish Thought and the Question of Language Jews have long been referred as the people of the book, but they might better be referred to as the people of the word. Drawing upon texts from the Hebrew Bible to the works of modern Hebrew writers like of Hayyim Nahman Bialik and Amoz Oz, this semi...
JEWISHST129A Milk and Honey, Wine and Blood: Food, Justice, and Ethnic Identity in Jewish Culture This course examines Jewish culture and the food practices and traditions that have shaped and continue to shape it. Students learn to prepare a variety of meals while studying about the historical and literary traditions associated with them, such a...
JEWISHST12S Multiculturalism in the Middle Ages: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Medieval Spain Before the year 1492, Spain had been a dynamic and complex region of Muslim and Christian kingdoms populated by Christians, Muslims, and Jews for nearly 800 years. What political, economic, and military exchanges took place among peoples of the three...
JEWISHST130VP Introduction to Social Demography: A Comparative Approach (Israel & US) In this class we will learn about Israel's unique demographic structure and we will compare it to the US and other countries. Reading materials include general theories as well as research published in scholarly journals. In the first half of this...
JEWISHST131VP Poverty and Inequality in Israel and the US: A Comparative Approach Poverty rates in Israel are high and have been relatively stable in recent decades, with about one fifth of all households (and a third of all children) living below the poverty line. In this class we will learn about poverty and inequality in Israe...
JEWISHST132A Social Inequality in Israel Like the US, Israel is a nation of immigrants. Israel additionally shares with the US vast economic, ethnic/racial and gender gaps, which are shaped and are being shaped by the demographic diversity characterizing its society. The course will provide...
JEWISHST132VP Family and Society: A Comparative Approach (Israel & the US) Families are changing: Non-marital partnerships such as cohabitation are becoming more common, marriage is delayed and fertility is declining. In this class we will learn about how families are changing in Israel and we will compare with the US and o...
JEWISHST133A WELFARE, WORK AND POVERTY. Early theorists of the welfare state described it as a reaction to the emergence of needs and interests of specific social groups during processes of economic development and change. Later theorists countered that the welfare state does not merely re...
JEWISHST143 Literature and Society in Africa and the Caribbean This course provides students with an introductory survey of literature and cinema from Francophone Africa and the Caribbean in the 20th and 21st centuries. Students will be encouraged to consider the geographical, historical, and political connectio...
JEWISHST145 Masterpieces: Kafka This class will address major works by Franz Kafka and consider Kafka as a modernist writer whose work reflects on modernity. We will also examine the role of Kafka's themes and poetics in the work of contemporary writers.
JEWISHST147B The Hebrew and Jewish Short Story Short stories from Israel, the US and Europe including works by Agnon, Kafka, Keret, Castel-Bloom, Kashua, Singer, Benjamin, Freud, biblical myths and more. The class will engage with questions related to the short story as a literary form and the hi...
JEWISHST148 Writing Between Languages: The Case of Eastern European Jewish Literature Eastern European Jews spoke and read Hebrew, Yiddish, and their co-territorial languages (Russian, Polish, etc.). In the modern period they developed secular literatures in all of them, and their writing reflected their own multilinguality and evolv...
JEWISHST14B The Crusades: A Global History (HISTORY 14B is 3 units; HISTORY 114B is 5 units.) Questioning traditional western narratives of the crusades, this course studies Latin and Turkic invaders as rival barbarian formations, and explores the societies of western Afro-Eurasia and the Med...
JEWISHST14S Conversion in Ancient and Medieval Judaism, Christianity, and Islam In the third century, a group of Roman soldiers submerged themselves in baptismal waters in the Syrian desert and became Christians, a radical act. A thousand years later, the Jews of Spain were forced to do the same; in 1391, their mass forced bapti...
JEWISHST150 Texts that Changed the World from the Ancient Middle East This course traces the story of the cradle of human civilization. We will begin with the earliest human stories, the Gilgamesh Epic and biblical literature, and follow the path of the development of law, religion, philosophy and literature in the anc...
JEWISHST185B Jews in the Contemporary World: Culture, Pop Culture, and Representation (HISTORY 185B is 5 units; HISTORY 85B is 3 units.) From Barbra Streisand to Volodymyr Zelenskyy, from The Dybbuk to Broad City, and from Moscow to LA, this course applies a multicultural perspective on different experiences of Jewishness in the 20th...
JEWISHST199B Directed Reading in Yiddish, Second Quarter For intermediate or advanced students. May be repeated for credit.
JEWISHST200BG Doing History: Biography as History Although historians often focus on broad social forces, individuals can and do shape these currents in unexpected ways, as the headlines of our own time illustrate. What role do individuals play in historical change? How can we use individual life...
JEWISHST200R Directed Research Independent Research
JEWISHST207 Biography and History Designed along the lines of the PBS series, "In the Actor's Workshop," students will meet weekly with some of the leading literary biographers writing today. Included this spring will be "New Yorker" staff writer Judith Thurman -- whose biography of...
JEWISHST211 Out of Eden: Deportation, Exile, and Expulsion from Antiquity to the Renaissance This course examines the long pedigree of modern deportations and mass expulsions, from the forced resettlements of the ancient world to the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492, and from the outlawry of Saga-era Iceland to the culture of civic exile...
JEWISHST215 Understanding Jews This discussion-based course will give students an opportunity to explore the constellation of religious, ethnic, national, cultural, artistic, spiritual, and political forces that shape Jewish life in the 21st century. Drawing on historical documen...
JEWISHST221C Aramaic Texts Readings in Aramaic/Syriac with special focus on grammar and syntax of ancient texts.
JEWISHST223 Advanced Readings in Jewish Mysticism This seminar allows students and faculty to explore foundational concepts of Jewish mystical literature through immersion in primary sources. Together we will examine these texts from a wide range of philosophical, historical and theological perspect...
JEWISHST226E The Holocaust: Insights from New Research Overview of the history of the Holocaust, the genocide of European Jews. Explores its causes, course, consequences, and memory. Addresses the events themselves, as well as the roles of perpetrators and bystanders, dilemmas faced by victims, collab...
JEWISHST227D Readings in Talmudic Literature Readings of Talmudic texts. Some knowledge of Hebrew is preferred, but not necessary. The goal of the ongoing workshop is to provide Stanford students with the opportunity to engage in regular Talmud study, and to be introduced to a variety of approa...
JEWISHST236A Casablanca - Algiers - Tunis : Cities on the Edge Casablanca, Algiers and Tunis embody three territories, real and imaginary, which never cease to challenge the preconceptions of travelers setting sight on their shores. In this class, we will explore the myriad ways in which these cities of North Af...
JEWISHST242G Myth and Modernity Masters of German 20th- and 21st-Century literature and philosophy as they present aesthetic innovation and confront the challenges of modern technology, social alienation, manmade catastrophes, and imagine the future. Readings include Nietzsche, Fre...
JEWISHST243A Hannah Arendt: Facing Totalitarianism Like hardly any other thinker of the modern age, Hannah Arendt's thought offers us timeless insights into the fabric of the modern age, especially regarding the perennial danger of totalitarianism. This course offers an in-depth introduction to Arend...
JEWISHST249 The Algerian Wars From Algiers the White to Algiers the Red, Algiers, the Mecca of the Revolutionaries in the words of Amilcar Cabral, this course offers to study the Algerian Wars since the French conquest of Algeria (1830-) to the Algerian civil war of the 1990s. We...
JEWISHST249A Levinas and Literature Focus is on major works by French phenomenologist Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995) and their import for literary studies. Aim is to discuss and evaluate Levinas's (often latent) aesthetics through a close reading of his work in phenomenology, ethics, and...
JEWISHST263 Paul Celan: The Poetic Event Paul Celan (1920-1970) is one of the greatest poets of our time. Touching on philosophy, history, our relation to nature, and love, his poetry is a profound meditation on the modern human condition. This course will present some of Celan's best work...
JEWISHST265 Jewish Law: Introduction and Topics This course will provide an overview of the field of Jewish Law and will seek to provide a few case studies of topics in Jewish Law. All the readings are in English and this course presupposes no background in Jewish Law. Jewish Law is the world's ol...
JEWISHST274 Wonder: The Event of Art and Literature What falls below, or beyond, rational inquiry? How do we write about the awe we feel in front of certain works of art, in reading lines of poetry or philosophy, or watching a scene in a film without ruining the feeling that drove us to write in the f...
JEWISHST281K Departures: Late Ottoman Displacements of Muslims, Christians, and Jews, 1853-1923 In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, millions of people moved into and out of the Ottoman Empire, sometimes voluntarily and sometimes under extremely violent circumstances. More often than not, they moved in groups that were religiou...
JEWISHST282 Circles of Hell: Poland in World War II Looks at the experience and representation of Poland's wartime history from the Nazi-Soviet Pact (1939) to the aftermath of Yalta (1945). Examines Nazi and Soviet ideology and practice in Poland, as well as the ways Poles responded, resisted, and sur...
JEWISHST282K Refugees and Migrants in the Middle East and Balkans: 18th Century to Present This course studies one of the most pressing issues of our day--massive population displacements--from a historical perspective. Our focus will be the Ottoman Empire and its successor states, including Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, Bosnia and Her...
JEWISHST282S The History of Genocide This course will explore the history, politics, and character of genocide from the beginning of world history to the present. It will also consider the ways that the international system has developed to prevent and punish genocide.
JEWISHST283K Muslims, Christians, and Jews in the Eastern Mediterranean: From Ottoman to Modern Times At a time when Europe was riven by sectarian war, the expanding Ottoman Empire came to rule over a religiously diverse population in what we now call the Balkans and Middle East. Focusing on the period 1323-1789, this course asks the following questi...
JEWISHST284C Genocide and Humanitarian Intervention Open to medical students, graduate students, and undergraduate students. Traces the history of genocide in the 20th century and the question of humanitarian intervention to stop it, a topic that has been especially controversial since the end of the...
JEWISHST285 Post-Colonial and Post-Shoah Readings: The Conundrums of Memory Politics In April of 2020, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, a huge controversy erupted in Germany on the relation between Postcolonial and Holocaust Studies. Previously, in 2012, Judith Butler on the occasion of being awarded the Adorno Prize was assailed for he...
JEWISHST285C The Immigrant in Modern America The 2016 presidential election propelled the topic of immigration to the center of public attention. This is not the first time, however, that questions of immigration and what it means to be an American have revealed deep divisions within the U.S. T...
JEWISHST286D Yours in Struggle: African Americans and Jews in the 20th Century U.S. This colloquium explores the history of African Americans and Jews in 20th century US beginning with Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe and the Great Migration to America's urban centers. It considers the geographical and economic tensions that d...
JEWISHST287 Hope in the Modern Age Immanuel Kant famously considered "What may I hope?" to be the third and final question of philosophy. This course considers the thinkers, from Immanuel Kant to Judith Butler, who have attempted to answer this question from within the context of mode...
JEWISHST287S Graduate Research Seminar in Ottoman and Middle East History Student-selected research topics. May be repeated for credit
JEWISHST288C Jews of the Modern Middle East and North Africa This course will explore the cultural, social, and political histories of the Jews of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) from 1860 to present times. The geographic concentration will range from Morocco to Iran, Iraq to Turkey, and everywhere in...
JEWISHST291X Learning Religion: How People Acquire Religious Commitments This course will examine how people learn religion outside of school, and in conversation with popular cultural texts and practices. Taking a broad social-constructivist approach to the variety of ways people learn, this course will explore how peopl...
JEWISHST299A Directed Reading in Yiddish, First Quarter Directed Reading in Yiddish, First Quarter
JEWISHST301 Colloquium on Jews, Judaism, and Jewish Culture An interdisciplinary graduate student colloquium for Stanford graduate students interested in Jewish Studies.
JEWISHST31Q Resistance and Collaboration in Hitler's Europe What is resistance and what did it entail in Nazi-occupied Europe? What prompted some to resist, while others accommodated or actively collaborated with the occupiers? How have postwar societies remembered their resistance movements and collaboration...
JEWISHST321C Aramaic Texts Readings in Aramaic/Syriac with special focus on grammar and syntax of ancient texts.
JEWISHST326D The Holocaust: Insights from New Research Overview of the history of the Holocaust, the genocide of European Jews. Explores its causes, course, consequences, and memory. Addresses the events themselves, as well as the roles of perpetrators and bystanders, dilemmas faced by victims, collab...
JEWISHST333 Comparative Mysticism This graduate seminar will explore the mystical writings of the major religious traditions represented in our department: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism. It will address major issues in the study of mysticism, exposing students t...
JEWISHST342 Myth and Modernity Masters of German 20th- and 21st-Century literature and philosophy as they present aesthetic innovation and confront the challenges of modern technology, social alienation, manmade catastrophes, and imagine the future. Readings include Nietzsche, Fre...
JEWISHST348 Writing Between Languages: The Case of Eastern European Jewish Literature Eastern European Jews spoke and read Hebrew, Yiddish, and their co-territorial languages (Russian, Polish, etc.). In the modern period they developed secular literatures in all of them, and their writing reflected their own multilinguality and evolv...
JEWISHST37Q Zionism and the Novel At the end of the nineteenth century, Zionism emerged as a political movement to establish a national homeland for the Jews, eventually leading to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. This seminar uses novels to explore the changes in Zi...
JEWISHST382 Circles of Hell: Poland in World War II Looks at the experience and representation of Poland's wartime history from the Nazi-Soviet Pact (1939) to the aftermath of Yalta (1945). Examines Nazi and Soviet ideology and practice in Poland, as well as the ways Poles responded, resisted, and sur...
JEWISHST384C Genocide and Humanitarian Intervention Open to medical students, graduate students, and undergraduate students. Traces the history of genocide in the 20th century and the question of humanitarian intervention to stop it, a topic that has been especially controversial since the end of the...
JEWISHST385A Graduate Colloquium in Early Modern Jewish History Core colloquium in Jewish History, 17th to 19th centuries.
JEWISHST393X The Education of American Jews This course will take an interdisciplinary approach to the question of how American Jews negotiate the desire to retain a unique ethnic sensibility without excluding themselves from American culture more broadly. Students will examine the various way...
JEWISHST39S The Other Side: Ethnography and Travel Writing through Jewish, Christian and Muslim Eyes In an age of reality television and social media, we are bombarded with snapshots of the exotic, monstrous, and bizarre. Yet despite their quantity, these images pale in comparison to the qualities of terror, wonder and curiosity that ancient travele...
JEWISHST4 What Didn't Make the Bible Over two billion people alive today consider the Bible to be sacred scripture. But how did the books that made it into the bible get there in the first place? Who decided what was to be part of the bible and what wasn't? How would history look differ...
JEWISHST481 Graduate Research Seminar in Ottoman and Middle East History Student-selected research topics. May be repeated for credit
JEWISHST482D The History of Genocide This course will explore the history, politics, and character of genocide from the beginning of world history to the present. It will also consider the ways that the international system has developed to prevent and punish genocide.
JEWISHST486A Graduate Research Seminar in Jewish History Graduate Research Seminar in Jewish History
JEWISHST486B Graduate Research Seminar in Jewish History Prerequisite: HISTORY 486A.
JEWISHST5 Biblical Greek This is a one term intensive class in Biblical Greek. After quickly learning the basics of the language, we will then dive right into readings from the New Testament and the Septuagint, which is the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. No...
JEWISHST53 Exploring Jewish Spirituality It was once accepted as fact that Judaism is, at its core, a rational religion devoid of any authentic mystical tradition. But the past century of scholarship has reversed this claim, demonstrating that the spiritual life has been integral to Judaism...
JEWISHST5B Biblical Greek This is a continuation of the Winter Quarter Biblical Greek Course. Pre-requisite: CLASSICS 6G or a similar introductory course in Ancient Greek.
JEWISHST77 "Jewish" in 7 Concepts This course explores Jewish religion, history, and culture by tracing seven key concepts that shape what we mean when we say "Jewish." This course offers a gateway for students pursuing a minor in Jewish Studies or a degree in CSRE, but is open to ev...
JEWISHST80A Jewish Music of the Diaspora Through the perspective of Jewish music, the students will be exposed to diverse musical cultures from around the globe while simultaneously being exposed to the rich and multi-faceted cultures of Jewish music. Because the Jews were dispersed around...
JEWISHST85B Jews in the Contemporary World: Culture, Pop Culture, and Representation (HISTORY 85B is 3 units; HISTORY 185B is 5 units.) From Barbra Streisand to Volodymyr Zelenskyy, from The Dybbuk to Broad City, and from Moscow to LA, this course applies a multicultural perspective on different experiences of Jewishness in the 20th...
JEWISHST86 Exploring the New Testament To explore the historical context of the earliest Christians, students will read most of the New Testament as well as many documents that didn't make the final cut. Non-Christian texts, Roman art, and surviving archeological remains will better situa...
JEWISHST86Q Blood and Money: The Origins of Antisemitism For over two millennia, Jews and Judaism have been the object of sustained anxieties, fears, and fantasies, which have in turn underpinned repeated outbreaks of violence and persecution. This course will explore the development and impact of antisemi...