JUST 1600 Jews in the Islamic World, 632 C.E. - 1948 C.E. (4 Credits)

This course deals with Jewish history in the Islamic world from the death of Muhammad to the establishment of the state of Israel. Students are exposed to the political, social, and economic histories of various Jewish communities, many of which no longer exist, in numerous Islamic empires and/or political units. While studying these communities we also compare the treatment of Jews under Islamic rule to the treatment of Jews under Christian rule and the treatment of Christians under Islamic rule. Cross listed with HIST 1600. This course counts toward the Analytical Inquiry: Society and Culture requirement.

JUST 1610 The History of the Crusades: 1095-1300 (4 Credits)

This course traces the origins and development of the Crusading movement as well as its impact on Christian, Muslim, and Jewish society in Europe and the Middle East from the 11th through the 14th centuries C.E. This course also examines ideas of Christian/Muslim/Jewish difference in this period. We pay special attention to primary source material. This course counts toward the Analytical Inquiry: Society and Culture requirement. Cross listed with HIST 1610.

JUST 2012 Jewish Politics and Political Jews in the United States (4 Credits)

Milton Himmelfarb famously quipped that “Jews earn like Episcopalians, and vote like Puerto Ricans.” This statement captures the surprising loyalty of American Jews to liberalism and the Democratic party despite the group’s significant socioeconomic achievement in the post-World War II era. This course considers Jewish political behavior in the United States through a variety of disciplinary lenses. Our study will be enriched through archival research in the Beck archives (held at DU) and through conversations with local political figures. The course will also track and analyze relevant developments for Jews and politics related to the 2020 Presidential election. This course counts toward the Analytical Inquiry: Society requirement for the Undergraduate Core Curriculum. Cross-listed with RLGS 2012.

JUST 2014 Religious Existentialism: Christian and Jewish (4 Credits)

Existentialism focuses on the human experience of living, often with a focus on the sheer freedom of the human condition. Religious existentialism subtly modifies this picture through its own vision of human freedom as the ultimate encounter between the human subject and God (with 'God' understood in various ways). The religious existentialist in this sense philosophically explores that which is most-fully-human as a moment of relation and encounter between self and that which is beyond self. Starting with Sartre's non-religious statement of existentialism in Existentialism is a Humanism (1946), we go on to examine the Christian and Jewish existentialisms of Kierkegaard (1813-1855), Tillich (1886-1965), Buber (1878-1965), and Heschel (1907-1972). In the course of our reflections, we compare non-religious with religious approaches to basic questions about self, God and world, and we consider the relationship between Christian and Jewish existentialist approaches to these questions. This course counts toward the Analytical Inquiry: Society and Culture requirement.Cross-listed with PHIL 2014 and RLGS 2014.

JUST 2025 Coexistence (4 Credits)

Building skills for ethical, emotionally-intelligent, and equity-minded encounter, this course is about facing neighbors responsively, responsibly, and non-violently—even when our values clash, and even as we work to defeat each other in the voting booth. Exploring new civic modes of “dialogue across difference” and serving as an antidote to polarization and rising tides of hate, the course invites students to consider new ways of holding onto their own views, values, and identities without erasing others—but also without necessarily embracing or being embraced by them. And it does so while helping them understand and utilize “phenomenology,” a philosophical method for assessing “lived feels” in complex relation to human meaning-making in a range of personal, professional, and political contexts. Focused in particular on interhuman coexistence, the course attends to the three-fold human cord of “our structures, our neighbors, and our selves.” It invites students to navigate between structural equity, interpersonal ethics, and personal authenticity. And it equips students to consider the “feels,” “flavors,” and “temperatures” of different coexistence strategies: from the lukewarm framework of tolerance to the warm embrace of friendship to the complicated contours of responsibility-without-friendship in such thinkers as BIPOC thought-leader Martin Luther King, Jr, philosopher and Holocaust Survivor Emmanuel Levinas, and political theorist Karl Marx. Helping students consider what sorts of coexistence goals are most and least appropriate for different contexts and why, the course asks questions like: When it comes to opponents, should we be aiming to befriend them or is it sometimes OK to set the bar lower? Should we try to “find common ground” or is it sometimes OK to “agree to disagree”? Is bridge-building always the best goal, or do we sometimes need to learn to live alongside one another without violence but also without bridges? Drawing on an inclusive reading list of BIPOC, Jewish, Islamic, Christian, African, Indigenous, and Japanese traditions, the course delves into Ubuntu principles of coexistence alongside Aztec principles of selfhood, BIPOC principles of justice alongside spiritual and atheist existentialisms, Queer Chicana feminism alongside the practice of Kintsugi, spiritual calls to love alongside political calls to respect, multicultural calls to recognition alongside social justice critiques of such calls, philosophical traditions of friendship alongside critiques of civility, and ancient wisdom traditions hand-in-hand with popular contemporary insights from Brené Brown’s work on vulnerability and Harvard’s near-century-long study of happiness. The course also explores the dangers of Islamophobia and Antisemitism; includes a visit to the campus’ Holocaust Memorial Social Action Site inspired by “radical ethics”; considers new modes of activism; and invites participants into a “Belonging and Expression” framework for navigating possibilities and tensions in important joint calls to social justice and freedom of expression. This course counts toward the Analytical Inquiry: Society and Culture requirement. This course is crosslisted with PHIL and JUST.

JUST 2050 Jewish Philosophy (4 Credits)

This course sets out to explore the self and the sacred in Jewish tradition by exploring the nature of faith and reason, the call to ethical response, and the meaning of divine revelation in multiple Jewish philosophical voices across the ages, including Philo, Saadya, Halevi, Maimonides, Soloveitchik, Buber, Rosenzweig, and Levinas. This course counts toward the Analytical Inquiry: Society and Culture requirement. Cross listed with PHIL 2050.

JUST 2070 American Jewish Experience (4 Credits)

In the aftermath of World War II, the United States emerged as the largest, wealthiest, and most organized Jewish community in the world. Taking the premise that America is a Jewish center as its key organizing principle, this course introduces and challenges theories of diaspora and looks at American Jewry’s religious and institutional innovations. The course will proceed inductively, taking Denver-based resources and experiences as starting points for an expansive exploration of American Jewish life, culture, and religion. We will focus on mainstream narratives alongside religious and cultural expressions at the margins of American Jewish life. Cross-listed with ANTH 2070 and RLGS 2070.

JUST 2071 American Jewish Experience (4 Credits)

This course examines the history of the American Jewish immigrant experience from colonial times to the present as a means of trying to understand how newcomers navigate the processes of adaptation, acculturation, and integration into American life. We will pay careful attention to issues of race, gender, and class, and we will examine the impact of xenophobia and immigration laws on how Jewish immigrants were welcomed and treated.

JUST 2074 The Holocaust: Europe & Colonial Contexts (4 Credits)

This course presents the history of the Holocaust as perpetrated by Nazi allies Romania, Hungary (occupying Romania’s Transylvania), and Vichy France with its corresponding African colonies. With the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos Vol. 3 serving as the foundation, students will be required to read select entries and consider the primary sources that contributed to them, including memoirs and the rich oral history of the Shoah Archive. The most recent scholarship by experts in these fields of Holocaust history as well as relevant films will be studied. This course asks us to comprehend what the full extent of this genocide was during WWII, and challenges us to answer how it fits into the conventional teaching of the Holocaust.

JUST 2104 The Bible as Literature (4 Credits)

The Bible has been one of the most important works in all of Western society. In this course we read the Bible as a masterpiece of literature. Rather than focusing on theological questions about this work as inspired scripture, we instead focus on its rich literary qualities and explore some ways in which these stories have influenced modern society. Reading select passages, we discuss its literary genres, forms, symbols and motifs, many of which are important in literature today. Of the latter, we encounter stories of creation and hero tales, parables, apocalyptic literature, and themes of paradise and the loss of Eden, wilderness, covenant, and the promised land. This course counts toward the Analytical Inquiry: Society and Culture requirement. Cross listed with ENGL 2104 and RLGS 2104.

JUST 2202 New Testament (4 Credits)

This course takes a multifaceted approach (historical, literary, and critical) to the writings that comprise the Christian New Testament. The New Testament are read as a collection of primary documents that chronicle the primitive Church's slow and often painful process of self-definition. In these writings it is possible to discern the tension that arose because of the strong religious and cultural ties early Christianity maintained with Palestinian Judaism, from which it emerged as a sectarian or reform movement. The careful reader also finds evidence of the new religion's encounter with the Greco-Roman world from whose variegated ethos and culture it borrowed considerably on the way to becoming an important religious force in the first century. In exploring the New Testament, then, we attempt to recover something of the sense of what it meant to be a Christian in New Testament times. This course counts toward the Analytical Inquiry: Society and Culture requirement. Cross listed with RLGS 2202.

JUST 2260 Jewish Food: From the Bible to Bagels (4 Credits)

“We are what we eat,” the saying goes. But is that true? How do choices and practices connected to eating define us and our communities? Our study of Jewish food traditions from the Bible to the present will engage this and other important issues related to religion, consumption, and identity. The study of Jewish food practices is a study of dualities: kosher and trayf (non-kosher), meat and milk, modernity and tradition, insiders and outsiders, men and women, authentic and artificial, ethical and unethical, and more. Beginning with biblical laws about permitted and forbidden foods and ending with a study of the emergence of the modern kosher food industry in the United States, our course will examine how Jewish food and foodways have evolved over thousands of years in response to social, political, cultural, and economic change. We will explore the links between Jewish food practices and local cultures in order to understand how each one shapes the other, and to become familiar with the diversity of Jewish foodways across the Diaspora and within Israel and the Middle East. We will also explore the politics of authority and authenticity with regards to Jewish food — what makes a food "Jewish" or kosher, and who decides? This course counts toward the Analytical Inquiry: Society and Culture requirement.

JUST 2300 The Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1881-2001 (4 Credits)

This course examines the origins and developments of the Arab-Israeli conflict from the arrival of the first Jewish settlers in the early 1880s until the failure of the Oslo Accords in 2000. A central theme of this course will be nationalist myth-making and its impact on collective and individual social and political identities. This course will also pay special attention to how political developments in Europe, the United States, the Jewish world, and the broader Middle Eastern world have impacted the Arab-Israeli conflict. No prior knowledge of Middle Eastern or Arab-Israeli history is expected.

JUST 2320 US Foreign Policy in the Middle East (4 Credits)

This course aims to introduce students to both Middle Eastern history and American Foreign Policy by exploring the politics and culture of U.S. involvement in the Middle East in the post-WWII period. In doing so this course pays special attention to the impact of the Cold War in the Middle East, American policy towards the Arab-Israeli conflict, the role of oil in American foreign policy, American responses to the rise of Islamist movements, the impact of media and culture on the formulation of America’s Middle Eastern policies, and U.S. relations with dictatorial governments in the Middle East. This course counts toward the Analytical Inquiry: Society and Culture requirement. Cross listed with HIST 2320.

JUST 2360 Israeli Society Through Film: Narratives of the Holocaust, War and Terror in Israeli Life (4 Credits)

This course analyzes fundamental aspects of Israeli-Jewish collective identity through a consideration of the trauma of the Holocaust, and explores the representation of these issues in Israeli film from the 1960s to today. The course presents and analyzes narratives of human experience in traumatic times and their after-effects via cinematic perceptions of Holocaust survivors and their offspring, the relationship between the Israeli native Sabra and the Holocaust survivor, the impact of war on soldiers and their families, and the Israeli experience of terror. Screenings of Israeli film is a central part of the course. All films are in Hebrew with English subtitles. This course counts toward the Analytical Inquiry: Society and Culture requirement. No prerequisites.

JUST 2370 Multicultural Israel: Food, Film and Beyond (4 Credits)

In this course participants will examine Israeli culture and identity using a broad array of materials and topics, including popular music, film, sports, and food. Topics include Israel’s society, ethnic relations, and the Arab minorities in the Jewish state. Students also discuss whether there is a unique Israeli culture and the struggle for Israel’s identity. Emphasis is on interdisciplinary approaches to exploring how cultural processes and artifacts are produced, shaped, distributed, consumed, and responded to in diverse ways. Through discussion, research, writing and various media resources, class members investigate these varied dimensions of culture; learn to understand them in their broader social, aesthetic, ethical, and political contexts. This course counts toward the common curriculum requirement of Analytical Inquiry: Society & Culture.

JUST 2380 Multicultural Israel through Popular Music (4 Credits)

The music of Israel is a combination of Jewish and non-Jewish music traditions that have come together over the course of a century to create a distinctive musical culture. This course presents a brief cultural history of Israel through popular music. To examine the central and lively role that songs have played in the shaping of Israeli identity, this class examines a range of diverse lyrics, including selections from folk music, pop and rock music, Levant influenced music, and more. Topics covered include Shirei Eretz Israel (the songs of the land of Israel), military ensembles, song festivals and competitions, the rise of minorities, outstanding performers and songwriters, international influences, and media’s impact on audience preferences. This course counts toward the common curriculum requirement of Analytical Inquiry: Society & Culture.

JUST 2390 Music in Jewish Spiritual Life (4 Credits)

This course exposes students to the variety of music and musical practices encountered in contemporary Jewish worship spaces, broadly defined. In addition to standard academic modes of learning, the course has an extensive experiential component in which students sing, chant, and meditate together for long durations without inhibition. The “Jewish worship spaces” in question have diverse geographical origins, ranging from North America and Eastern Europe to communities with origins in North Africa and the Middle East, and students will learn of the musicians involved, the liturgy they sing, their historical lineages, approaches to pitch organization and meter, and relationship to past practices. Assessment is made through writing assignments (an essay on music and spirituality, an album review, and a listening journal), midterm and final exams, moderation of class discussions of reading and music, and participation in experiential components of the course. This course counts toward the Analytical Inquiry: Society and Culture requirement.

JUST 2400 Israel Unfiltered: Identity, Humor, and Culture (4 Credits)

In Israel Unfiltered, students will examine the rich and complex tapestry of Israeli culture and identity through interdisciplinary approaches. Topics in this course may include — but are not limited to — the concept of Israeli identity, humor, memes, innovations, startup culture, and the Israeli army, with attention to the diverse experiences of women, LGBTQ+ soldiers, Orthodox Jews, and the role of cellphones and social media in military life. This course counts toward the Analytical Inquiry: Society and Culture requirement.

JUST 2418 The Memory of Evil. Germany and the Holocaust since 1945 (4 Credits)

The Memory of Evil examines the long and difficult path Germans faced in their (ongoing) efforts to atone for the crimes of the Holocaust, that is, to preserve the memory of evil associated with their national past. Anti-Semitic incidents in Germany receive considerably more international press than such incidents elsewhere. Yet, what generally gathers less attention is the way Germany reacts. Our class will investigate what the Jewish moral philosopher Susan Neiman considers the success story of Germany’s decades-long process of “coming to terms with the past” – Vergangenheitsbewältigung or Vergangenheitsaufarbeitung – a process Neiman believes exemplary and worth replicating by other nations such as the US. We will start in the immediate aftermath of World War II, at a time when Germany lay in ruins, both physically and morally bankrupt. By means of written and visual sources, we will study examples of Germany’s sweeping engagements with its violent past, increasing our awareness of the challenges and rewards that have accompanied this historical reckoning from an initial period of repression after the war to the unsparing cultural revolution of the 1960s and 70s, from the time around Germany’s reunification in 1990 to the construction of the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe that opened in Berlin after much debate in 2005, all the way to the current rise of right-leaning and antisemitic party Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the ‘cancel culture’ that has accompanied the most recent conflict between Israel and Gaza.

JUST 2500 Migration and Diaspora Narratives (2 Credits)

This course examines the movement and resettlement of people from one locality to another, especially across borders. Focusing on different regions of the world – Africa, the African and the Jewish Diasporas, Europe and America – we will study the nature and consequences of migration from historical, socioeconomic, and literary/artistic perspectives. Because the movement of people includes the relocation of memories, we will closely study migration and diaspora narratives, which provide insights into a contemporary phenomenon that references the earliest history of humanity.

JUST 2700 Topics in Judaic Studies (1-5 Credits)

Topics vary reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of the department and studies of the faculty.

JUST 2701 Topics in Judaic Studies (1-5 Credits)

Topics vary reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of the department and studies of the faculty.

JUST 2702 Topics in Judaic Studies (1-5 Credits)

Topics vary reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of the department and studies of the faculty.

JUST 2704 Topics in Judaic Studies (4 Credits)

Topics vary, reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of the department and studies of the faculty.

JUST 2741 American Jewish Literature (4 Credits)

This course surveys over 100 years of American Jewish immigrant narratives beginning with the great exodus of Eastern European and Russian Jewry at the end of the 19th century and ending with recent arrivals from Israel and the former U.S.S.R. Canonical works by central authors reveal the great successes of Jewish immigrants alongside their spiritual failures. A selection of memoir, novels, short stories, and poetry in English and in translation from Hebrew and Yiddish demonstrate the multilingual character of the Jewish experience in America. While helpful, no knowledge of Jewish languages, religious tradition, or cultural practice is necessary to succeed in this course. This course counts toward the Analytical Inquiry: Society and Culture requirement. Cross listed with ENGL 2741.

JUST 2742 Modern Hebrew Literature (4 Credits)

This course offers a survey of some of the most significant works of modern Hebrew literature available in translation. Students consider how the development of Hebrew literature has contributed to the formation of contemporary Israeli identity, and how the conflicts that define the turbulent history of Israel are treated in works by canonical authors. The selection of diverse voices and literary materials exposes students to the soil political, and historically changes wrought by the rise of modern day Israel. This course counts toward the Analytical Inquiry: Society and Culture requirement. Cross listed with ENGL 2742.

JUST 2743 Jewish Humor: Origins and Meaning (4 Credits)

Writers, scholars, and comedians all claim to locate an identifiable strain of “Jewish humor” running from the Bible through to today’s literary humorists and provocative stand-up comics. This course takes humor seriously in an effort to reveal the development of “Jewish humor” in America from a comparative context. But is there such a thing as Jewish humor? And if so, what are its sources and characteristics? Does it exist across cultures and in different linguistic communities? Through lectures, discussion, exercises and papers, students gain a broad understanding of the history, psychology, and philosophy of humor as it relates to Jewish arts and letters in America. This course counts toward the Analytical Inquiry: Society and Culture requirement. This course is cross-listed with ENGL 2743.

JUST 2745 Israeli Television and Cinema: Representing Cultural Diversity in Israeli Life (4 Credits)

The course goals are three-fold: a) to facilitate students' communicative competence in Hebrew across the interpretive, interpersonal and presentational modes through constant immersion in Hebrew, b) to expand students' knowledge and understanding of Israeli society and culture while interacting solely in Hebrew, and c) to help students develop a lifelong interest in learning the Hebrew language and its culture. Screening of Israeli films is a central part of the course. All the films are in Hebrew. The course is not open to native speakers of Hebrew. Cross listed with HEBR 2745. Prerequisite: HEBR 2003 or equivalent.

JUST 2750 Italian Jewish Literature and Cinema (4 Credits)

This course is cross-listed with ITAL 2750. It offers an overview of Italian Jewish literature and cinema from the Middle Ages to the present. Students will read and discuss prose and poetry, essays and articles, as well as watch and discuss films that address issues such as religious and cultural identity, the right to difference, anti-Semitism and the Shoah. The course will also give students an overview of the formation and transformation of the Jewish community in Italian society. In addition to well-known Jewish Italian writers like Primo Levi and Giorgio Bassani, students will read pertinent works by non-Jewish writers like Rosetta Loy. This course counts toward the Analytical Inquiry: Society and Culture requirement.

JUST 2991 Independent Study (1-5 Credits)

JUST 3001 Judaism (4 Credits)

A literary and historical journey through Judaism. This course examines the "Jewish story" from its roots to its modern-day manifestations, focusing on select, classic Jewish texts in their historical contexts. From them, students explore Jewish tradition and practice and actively engage with and in the vivid interpretive imagination of the authors of Judaism throughout the ages. Cross listed with RLGS 3001.

JUST 3023 Great Thinkers: Maimonides-Politics, Prophecy and Providence (4 Credits)

Using "The Guide for the Perplexed" as our central text, we explore the complex philosophical ideas of Moses Maimonides (1135-1204), one of the central figures in medieval philosophy and Jewish thought. Our study includes analyses of his ideas on: principles of faith, human perfection, intellectual vs. "imaginational" approaches to truth, pedagogy and politics, reasons for the commandments, the nature of God and divine will, the limits of human knowledge, the mechanics of prophecy, and the parameters and implications of providence. Cross listed with PHIL 3023 and RLGS 3023. Prerequisite: junior standing or instructor's permission.

JUST 3102 Early Judaism (4 Credits)

This course traces the development of Judaism in history and literature from the Babylonian Exile and the end of the biblical period through the origins of Rabbinic Judaism and the completion of the Babylonian Talmud (c. 650 CE). However, special emphasis is placed on Jewish culture in the late Second Temple period (c. 200 BCE to 100 CE) and its impact on the early Christian movement, including Jewish literature from the time of Jesus, lost texts of the Bible, new evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the few surviving historical sources of the Second Temple Period. In addition, students analyze how the Bible came to be and understand how sacred texts and their interpretations eventually became the new center of both Judaism and Christianity. Cross listed with RLGS 3102.

JUST 3146 Great Thinkers: Levinas (4 Credits)

Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995), famous for his arresting and original idea of "ethics as first philosophy," is an important figure in the histories of phenomenology, metaphysics, and theology. In this course, we set out to explore Levinas’ insights on ethics, alterity, and infinity, including the connection of his ideas to Plato, Descartes, Kant, and Husserl, as well as his critical responses to Heidegger and his positive contributions to Derrida. In this course, we work through Levinas’ two major works, Ethics and Infinity and Otherwise Than Being or Beyond Essence, as well as a number of shorter writings—including material from his Talmudic commentaries. Themes to be covered include: Being, Goodness, Risk, Ethics, Alterity, Transcendence, Law, Judaism, Gift, Forgiveness, Politics, Theology, and Justice. This course is cross-listed with PHIL 3146.

JUST 3150 The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls (4 Credits)

This course includes an advanced study of the Dead Sea Scrolls with a particular focus on the Bible as it appears in the Qumran library. We will discuss the variant versions of the Bible, some of which were previously unknown before the discovery of the Scrolls, and how the findings of the Scrolls may question the very idea of "Bible" itself in the context of the late Second Temple Judaism. Further, we will place particular emphasis on studying the way biblical texts were engaged, interpreted and even written by the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls. In this way, we shall explore the origins of biblical interpretation and how the notion of the Bible came to be. Cross listed with RLGS 3150. Prerequisites: None. The Scrolls will be read in English translation, but those with Hebrew reading skills will have an opportunity to read/translate portions of the Scrolls in community.

JUST 3151 Dead Sea Scrolls (4 Credits)

The Dead Sea Scrolls represent one of the greatest manuscript finds of the twentieth century and have been said to be the most important discovery in biblical archaeology. These scrolls offer a rare window into early Judaism and Christianity and offer us the earliest and most important witnesses to the (Hebrew) Bible. This course covers the Dead Sea Scrolls in their historical, literary and religious context in English translation, together with relevant scholarly research. Cross listed with RLGS 3151.

JUST 3215 Modern Jewish Philosophy (4 Credits)

Covering a range of modern thinkers from the seventeenth to the late-twentieth century, topics include reason and revelation, human autonomy and responsibility, aesthetics, post-Holocaust theology, responses to Kant, responses to Heidegger, ethics, and the quest for authenticity. Cross listed with PHIL 3215. Prerequisite: junior standing or instructor permission.

JUST 3405 Postmodern Visions of Israel (4 Credits)

This course investigates how representations of Israel as a modernist utopia have been replaced in contemporary literature with images of Israel as a dystopia. The class discusses the historical context that gave rise to visions of an idealized Israel, and the role the Hebrew language played in consolidating and connecting narration to nation. Next the class considers how belles-lettres from recent decades have reimagined Israel as a series of multilingual “multiverses.” A selection of fiction translated from Hebrew forms the core of class reading. Theoretical exploration of postmodernism help us conceptualize the poetics of postmodern literature. No knowledge of Israeli history or Jewish culture is necessary to succeed in this course. This course is cross-listed with ENGL 3405.

JUST 3700 Topics in Judaic Studies (1-4 Credits)

Topics vary reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of the department and studies of the faculty.

JUST 3703 Topics in Judaic Studies (1-4 Credits)

Topics vary reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of the department and studies of the faculty.

JUST 3704 Topics in Judaic Studies (1-4 Credits)

Topics vary reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of the department and studies of the faculty.

JUST 3740 Bodies and Souls (4 Credits)

This course examines the unique place of the body in biblical religion. We ask how the Bible and its interpreters have shaped current views on sex and the gendered body in Western society. How has the Bible been (mis)used in relation to current understandings of the physical body? Is the saying that a "human" does not have a body, but is a body as true for the Hebrew Bible as the Christian New Testament? How has Judaism and Christianity (de)valued sexuality, procreation, and celibacy? How do the biblical traditions shape our modern opinions about the ideal physical body and body modifications? How can we understand "out-of-body" experiences and notions of death and afterlife in Western religion? Students are encouraged to interpret the Bible and their own beliefs from a uniquely embodied perspective. Cross listed with GWST 3740, RLGS 3740.

JUST 3742 Jesus in Jewish Literature (4 Credits)

This course surveys literary depictions of Jesus in Jewish literature. Readers are often surprised to learn that throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century, major Jewish writers have incorporated the figure of Jesus of Nazareth into their work. This class explores the historical, aesthetic, and spiritual reasons for the many Jewish literary representations of Jesus and of his literary foil, Judas. A selection of materials including short stories, poems, novels, scholarly essays and polemics in English and in translation from Hebrew and Yiddish demonstrate the depth of Jewish literary culture’s engagement with Jesus’ life and teachings. Among the many writers we will read are: S.Y. Agnon, Sholem Asch, Uri Zvi Greenberg, Haim Hazaz, Emma Lazarus, Amos Oz, Philip Roth, and L. Shapiro. Ultimately, this class will consider how literary representations of Jesus can destabilize perceived distinctions between Jews and Christians. While helpful, no knowledge of Jewish languages, religious tradition, or cultural practice is necessary to succeed in this course. This course is cross-listed as ENGL 3742.

JUST 3890 Religion and Diaspora (4 Credits)

When forced to leave a homeland, displaced communities frequently turn to religion to maintain identity and adapt to--or resist--new surrounding culture(s). This course examines the role of religion and identity in three Jewish and Christian communities living in diaspora and poses questions such as: What is the relationship between religion and (home)land? How have the biblical themes of exodus, diaspora, promise and restoration been applied to contemporary experiences? And how have our American stories been interpreted through the lens of the Bible? As part of the service learning component, students have the opportunity to work with religious and immigrant aid organizations in the Denver community. Cross listed with RLGS 3890.

JUST 3891 Justice: A Biblical Perspective (4 Credits)

This course explores the ways in which the Bible has been applied to questions of social justice in contemporary society. In addition to studying major theological and philosophical theories of justice, students read a variety of biblical texts related to major issues of social and economic justice such as world hunger, the poor, revolution, just war theory and pacifism, environmentalism, and the role of government. This course includes a service-learning component. Cross listed with RLGS 3891.

JUST 3991 Independent Study (1-5 Credits)

Prerequisites: HEBR 1003 or JUST 1003 or equivalent and instructor's permission.