Jewish Counterculture of the Sixties

Catalog description

TAUGHT BY GTU/JEWISH STUDIES. The "counterculture" of the 1960s sparked revolutionary change in the United States and beyond. The Civil Rights Movement and the Black Panthers, the Vietnam War and the Free Speech Movement, second-wave feminism and the sexual revolution, the hippies and the Age of Aquarius - all of these phenomena rattled the cultural landscape. And all of them had profound impacts in realms of religion, as new values clashed and cross-pollinated with traditions. In this course, we will focus on how Jews navigated these waters. Topics to be explored include Jewish feminism, the resurgence of Kabbalah and Hasidism, cultural impacts of psychedelics, perspectives on Zionism and identity politics, the Mizrahi "Black Panthers" of Israel, and reinterpretations of Jewish sources.