HEBR B000  HEBREW TA/DRILL/DISCUSSION  (0.0 Credits)

(Offered: Spring 2027)

HEBR B001  ELEMENTARY HEBREW  (1.0 Credit)

Nechama Sataty

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)

This year-long course is designed to teach beginners the skills of reading, writing, and conversing in Modern Hebrew. It will provide students with knowledge of the Hebrew writing system – its alphabet (Square letters for reading, cursive for writing) and vocalization – as well as core aspects of grammar and syntax. Diverse means will be utilized: Textbook, supplementary printed material, class conversations, presentations by students of dialogues or skits that they prepare in advance, and written compositions. This course, followed by Semesters 3 and 4 taken elsewhere, lays a foundation for reading of Modern Hebrew literary works.

(Offered: Fall 2026)

HEBR B002  ELEMENTARY HEBREW  (1.0 Credit)

Nechama Sataty

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)

This is a continuation of HEBR B001, the year-long course is designed to teach beginners the skills of reading, writing, and conversing in Modern Hebrew. It will provide students with knowledge of the Hebrew writing system – its alphabet (Square letters for reading, cursive for writing) and vocalization – as well as core aspects of grammar and syntax. Diverse means will be utilized: Textbook, supplementary printed material, class conversations, presentations by students of dialogues or skits that they prepare in advance, and written compositions. This course, followed by Semesters 3 and 4 taken elsewhere, lays a foundation for reading of Modern Hebrew literary works.

(Offered: Spring 2027)

HEBR B206  JEWISH LITERATURE, AGAIN AND AGAIN  (1.0 Credit)

Jewish Literature, Again and Again' fulfills various Approaches to Inquiry by combining close literary analysis with historical and cross-cultural study. Students engage in Critical Interpretation through close reading of texts ranging from biblical narratives and medieval poetry to modern novels, films, and contemporary critical essays. The course also advances Cross-Cultural Analysis by examining Jewish literary traditions across diverse Sephardi, Mizrahi, and Ashkenazi communities and across multiple linguistic and geographic contexts. Finally, through its chronological structure—from ancient sources to contemporary literature—the course encourages Inquiry into the Past, inviting students to trace how Jewish storytelling reflects and reshapes human experience across historical periods.

(Offered: Spring 2027)

HEBR B207  MOBILITY AND MODERNITY: A JEWISH HISTORY OF MIGRATION  (1.0 Credit)

Sasha Zborovsky

This upper-level seminar, Mobility and Modernity: A Jewish History of Modern Migration, immerses students in the vibrant history of not only Jewish migration, but how Jewish mobility became intertwined with vital trends in international migration, ranging from the rise of mercantilist trade networks in the early modern period to the codification of international migration law in the mid-to-late twentieth century. Over the semester, students will follow Sephardi merchants who traversed the Mediterranean, working-class Jewish immigrants on the Lower East Side, and Holocaust survivors who confronted their newfound statelessness. Like their historical subjects, students will travel the globe, from seventeenth century Surinam to the Soviet Union. This seminar encourages students to ask incisive questions, as they deliberate the legal, social, and cultural history of not only Jewish migration, but global migration. What circumstances compelled Jews to move? How did migration place Jews in new political systems, power dynamics, and cultural milieus? And finally, how do narratives of Jewish movement enhance our understanding of provocative themes at the center of the history of migration, such as open borders, free trade, forced deportation, and assimilation?

(Offered: Fall 2026)

HEBR B271  TOPICS IN JUDAIC STUDIES: HISTORIES OF JEWISH IDENTITY  (1.0 Credit)

Sasha Zborovsky

What makes one Jewish? Is it a matter of religion, ethnicity, race, nationality, culture, or kinship? Or, conversely, is being Jewish a symbolic, universal identity, associated with any person or collective that encounters persecution and dispossession? Must a Jew be religious? Must a Jew be a Zionist? Can a Jewish person be antisemitic? Can one choose to be Jewish, or not? In the modern world, with the emergence of both secularization and religious fundamentalism, internationalism and nation-states, capitalism and communism, the primary marker of Jew or Jewish as a member of a stateless, marginalized minority has undergone a fundamental revision. This course brings together historical and literary narratives that strive to answer these and related questions. We will engage myriad voices, Jewish and non-Jewish—including your own. Traversing three hundred years of Jewish history, we will encounter communities, individuals, and collectives across Europe, North America, the Middle East, North Africa, and Israel/Palestine. We aim to recognize not only the multiplicity of Jewish identities, but how such identities can be amalgamated, negotiated and reformed in different historical and cultural contexts.

HEBR B403  SUPERVISED WORK  (1.0 Credit)

Nechama Sataty

Division: Humanities

(Offered: Fall 2026)