First-Year Studies: Is Judaism a Religion?

Catalog description

Is Judaism a religion, a culture, a nationality, a race, an ethnicity—or all or none of these? This question has driven Jewish thought for centuries and has preoccupied both Jewish thinkers and non-Jewish thinkers attempting to make sense of the place of the Jewish minority in surrounding cultures. In this seminar, we will explore the complex and multifaceted ways in which Judaism and Jewish peoplehood are understood historically, theologically, and sociologically and how this form of identity does or does not map onto emergent modern concepts of religion and nationality. We will use Judaism as a test case for exploring the very concept of “religion” itself, as it evolved in European culture, and the question of whether religion is a universal concept that applies to all humans around the world or a particularist construction emerging out of a uniquely Christian history. We will investigate topics such as the nature of Jewish religious practice, the relationship between Jewish law and identity, the rise of secular Jewish movements, and the implications of Jewish nationalist movements. We will engage with key texts from the Hebrew Bible, rabbinic literature, and modern Jewish thought while also considering contemporary debates on Jewish identity, secularism, and the intersection of faith, practice, and culture. We will also spend some time on comparative religious studies, examining how Judaism fits within broader categories of religion and spirituality and how these categories describe the multifaceted nature of Jewish life. The course will encourage students to grapple with the way in which concepts that we use in our everyday life, such as “religion,” in fact reflect deeply embedded histories and cultural biases and to think about what it means to do comparative religious studies as an academic project. Students will complete both short essays and in-class…