The Jewish Image in American Cinema. American cinema was invented through the pure ambition and creativity of Jewish immigrants. As these new arrivals found success, many of them shed their ethnic identities as Jews. This cinema class will explore through film the core issue of ethnic identity vs. assimilation. We will discuss both positive and negative media images of the American Jew, how Jewish humor was blended into popular culture, and the impact of anti-Semitism on American cinema and the Hollywood black list. Exploring humor, melodrama, political history, and coming-of-age stories, this class will reveal the evolving landscape of American Jewish identity from the Marx Brothers to Adam Sandler.

For the past 130 years, the encounter between the Israeli and Palestinian people has been one of strife and war, but also filled with many expressions of friendship and hope. Beyond the statements of the guns, there exists a rich tradition of artists and writers, on both sides, looking at the “other” and their relations with each other. Film and literature often reflect dominant values in their society as well as help to shape new ways of seeing and acting. This class will examine artistic expressions of the complex and tangled relationship between the two nations. Prerequisite: Course RST 23 or consent of instructor.

The relationship between Jews and non-Jews has often been marred by feelings of antipathy for Jews, both latent and explicit. These feelings are all too often expressed as violent outbursts against individual Jews and entire Jewish populations. We most commonly refer to such expressions as “anti-Semitism.” This class will explore the historical, social, and theological roots of anti-Semitism and its development over time, with an emphasis on Jewish/Christian interactions within a European context. The class will combine lecture and discussion in an effort to advance an open dialogue between students of different faiths on this sensitive and central issue of Jewish/Christian relations.

This seminar will focus on Jewish families in various cultural and historical settings. These settings will include the US, the kibbutz in Israel, and Europe, including during the Holocaust. Drawing on multiple sources, including novels and popular films as well as scholarly literature, we will analyze both images and practices in order to understand Jewish family dynamics. This course will depend upon considerable student participation. It is suggested, but not required, that students have taken Sociology 131 or some basic courses on Judaism. For students who are not Sociology majors, contact the instructor at dlwolf@ucdavis.edu for consent. Upper-division students only.

What has it meant to be Jewish in a country that has defined race relations primarily in terms of black and white? This course explores how American Jews have negotiated their racial identity and relations with other racial and ethnic groups. The first part of the course considers the process by which American Jews, as one scholar has put it, "became white folks," and what this history reveals about the construction of race in the US. Readings then consider the complicated history of black-Jewish relations in America from the cooperative efforts of the New Deal coalition and civil rights movement to the conflicts that emerged between Zionists and black nationalists. The class concludes with an examination of the implications of multiculturalism for American Jewish identity.

Readings
  • Eric L. Goldstein, The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race, and American Identity
  • Hettie Jones, How I Became Hettie Jones
  • Debra L. Schultz, Going South: Jewish Women in the Civil Rights Movement
  • Course Reader

How did the Jews of the non-Western world engage with modernity, the rise of a global capitalist economy, and the political upheavals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries? How did ideologies such as Zionism, Fascism, and Arab Nationalism transform their collective world views? What were the consequences of displacement and the formation of new Diasporas? This course will follow the trajectory of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews in the modern era, tracing and problematizing their responses to wider historical changes.

Selected Readings
  •Ammiel Alcalay, After Jews and Arabs: Remaking Levantine Culture
  •Mark Mazower, Salonica, City of Ghosts
  •Albert Memmi, Pillar of Salt
  •Sasson Somekh, Baghdad Yesterday
  •Sarah A. Stein, Plumes: Ostrich Feathers, Jews, and a Lost World of Global Commerce

Israeli society is still struggling to define its borders and boundaries and the tensions between its commitments to a Jewish and a Democratic state. It is divided across national, religious, ideological, and ethnic lines that display not only an internal dynamism, but also a dynamic relation between them. This course will introduce students to the history of the Zionist movement and the state of Israel through different perspectives. The first part of the course will follow the rise of Zionism and the different interpretations of Zionism and the Jewish-Arab struggle until the formation of the Israeli state. The second part of the course will focus on the borders of the state through the different wars related to the Israeli-Arab and Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Finally, the third part of the course will engage with Israel's institutions and internal boundaries and examine whether its social and political institutions are able to sustain the various pressures and demands. This part of the course will examine the historical evolution of Israel's central schisms - Jewish-Arab, Religious-secular, Hawks and Doves, ethnicity and class – from pre and early statehood to contemporary globalization.

Speaking, listening comprehension, reading, and writing fundamentals of Modern Hebrew.

Advanced topics in Hebrew grammar and syntax, selected literary texts, and advanced work in modern spoken Hebrew.

RST 23 Introduction to Judaism. Using Jewish religious texts, philosophical treatises, and other works of cultural production, we will trace the evolution and transformation of a single set of Jewish rituals, those surrounding the Sabbath, as a lens through which to explore Jewish thought and practice in general. Throughout the course, we will examine the effects and limits of studying Judaism as a "religion." Reader responses, research paper.

Known by many names and in various guises, God and Satan are among the most central figures in many cultures. This class will explore some of their manifestations and actions by using the lens of film. While the focus will be on Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, we will also note their importance in other religions. Films will include works by Bresson, Polanski and Kissleski, and works from Mexico, the USA, and Russia. Texts will include biblical books, Bulgakov's Master and Margarite, and scholarly studies. Gusts speakers will also present their interpretations and share their knowledge.

The twentieth century has been described as the "century of genocides." This course will explore how the concept of genocide emerged in the twentieth century and will then examine the histories of genocides in Armenia, the Holocaust of the European Jews, ethnic cleansing after World War II, Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda and, finally, Darfur. We will ask the question: how can one explain the perpetrators of such mass crimes? The course will also take up issues of justice, reconciliation and memory after genocidal events. Readings will include first-hand accounts (diaries, memoirs) as well as historical accounts.

The Mediterranean world stretching from Spain and Italy through North Africa, Egypt, the Levant Turkey and Greece forms a cohesive historical and cultural unit distinguished by a Greek and Roman heritage blended with Christian, Muslim, Arab, Berber, Balkan and Turkish influences. It is also the setting for a far-flung Jewish Diaspora, which is the subject of this course. Beginning with late antiquity and ending in the mid-eighteenth century, we shall follow the path of Jewish settlement around the Mediterranean, studying the literature and social values, the political conflicts and continuities, the economic shifts, the religious debates and the changes in language, customs, and cuisine that contributed to making a distinctive Mediterranean Jewish culture.

Is it possible to be Jewish without believing in Judaism? Since the dawn of the modern age, secular Jewish thinkers have sought to construct identities beyond Judaism, that is, beyond the bounds of religion. After examining the European process of secularization starting in the seventeenth century, this course will trace the history of secular Jewish thought from the seventeenth-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza to the twentieth century. Some of the thinkers who will be considered, such as Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud, rejected religion altogether, while others, including Spinoza, Franz Kafka, and Gershom Scholem, redefined religion and theology in new, often radically subversive ways. Finally, we will examine secular redefinitions of Judaism, such as those of certain Zionist thinkers and writers such as Ahad Ha'am, Micha Yosef Berdichevsky, Hayim Nahman Bialik and Saul Tchernikhovsky. This is a course not only for those interested in modern Jewish thought, but in modernity itself.

This course explores the causes, course, and implications of the Arab-Israeli conflict from World War I to the present. It examines the history of the conflict, comparing the conflicting narratives of the Palestinians, the Arab States, and Israel. It explores the politics of force over the course of the conflict, as well as the diplomacy of the conflict. It examines the relationships among Arabs and Israelis, as well as inter-Arab relations and the relations between the rivals and external powers. The course offers a window into the interrelations between domestic forces-political, economic, social-and the international relations of Israel and the Arabs. Finally, it examines the ramifications of the conflict for the rivals and for the international system writ large.

Speaking, listening comprehension, reading and writing fundamentals of Modern Hebrew.

Advanced topics in Hebrew grammar and syntax, selected literary texts, and advanced work in modern spoken Hebrew.

In a century of genocides, the Holocaust of the European Jews remains perhaps the most systematic attempt to destroy a whole people. In this course, we will attempt to understand how one nation committed genocide against another. The course will consider the history of the Holocaust against the background of Jewish and German history in modern times. We will also take up the question of the uniqueness of the Holocaust and compare with other instances of mass death, both by the Nazis (against the disabled and mentally retarded, the Sinti/Roma, homosexuals, Poles and Russian prisoners of war) and by others in the twentieth century. Students should be aware that this is an emotionally and intellectually challenging subject, and they should treat it with the seriousness it deserves.

There is, perhaps, no other ethnic group in America with as complex a relationship with the media as American Jews. Classic antisemitic tracts espouse the view that Jews control the media. Simultaneously, a number of Jewish authors have taken a certain amount of pride in Jewish over-representation in the media and politics. The core of this course lies in exploring the tension between both of those inaccurate but popular views, and asking, ultimately: why do they remain so deeply embedded in our understanding of the relationship between American Jews and the media? Beginning with newspapers in the 19th century, we will trace the complex and often vexing life of this relationship as it manifests in Hollywood cinema, popular music, television, and onto the internet. Placing media theory in conversation with American Jewish history will reveal the myths, images, and realities of the relationship between American Jews and the media.

Over the last 3000 years, the Jewish people have developed a wide variety of different cultures, combining both secular and religious elements. Working within a chronological framework, this course will trace the development of Jewish cultures from ancient to modern times, and across different regions. Taking into account inter-cultural contact and historical events, we will explore developments in Jewish literature, culture, and philosophy. Readings for the course will include essays by contemporary Jewish Studies scholars. Students will also have the opportunity to critically engage with primary texts from the Bible, Talmud, and medieval and modern Jewish textual traditions.

Selected texts from the Hebrew Scriptures (Genesis - II Chronicles) and review of modern scholarship on the texts from a variety of perspectives (historical, literary, sociological, psychological). Course work is based on English translation and no knowledge of Hebrew is required.

The international politics of the Middle East are a microcosm of world politics. This course focuses on key aspects of politics among nations in the region and on the structure of, and the processes undergoing in, the Middle East regional system as a whole. Topics include the formation of the Middle East regional system, state formation processes, war and peace in the Middle East, the relationships between domestic politics and international processes, alliances and regional organizations, the superpowers and the regional system, and the political economy of the Middle East.

Speaking, listening comprehension, reading and writing fundamentals of Modern Hebrew.

Advanced topics in Hebrew grammar and syntax, selected literary texts, and advanced work in modern spoken Hebrew.