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JUDAIC 394 Major Issues in Contemporary Jewish Life 4 Credits Integrative Experience Course for Judaic Studies Majors Fall 2012

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JUDAIC 394 Major Issues in Contemporary Jewish Life 4 Credits Integrative Experience Course for Judaic Studies Majors Fall 2012 JUDAIC 394 Major Issues in Contemporary Jewish Life 4 credits Integrative Experience course for Judaic Studies majors Fall 2012 Prof. Jay Berkovitz 413-545-5868 Off. hrs. Tu Th 10:00 am and by appt. [email protected] Course Description: Major Issues in Contemporary Jewish Life will examine several of the central questions facing contemporary Jewry by reflecting on the role of history, text, and memory in the shaping of Jewish identity and politics. Topics will include Judaism’s role in civilization; contested Jewish Identities; political and religious debate concerning Israel; the Holocaust as icon of Jewish identity; pluralism and the paradoxes of unity; bioethical dilemmas, including how Jewish law has responded to advances in reproductive technology, surrogacy, and stem cell research. Attention will be given to the broad spectrum ideas and debate within the Jewish world. By carefully considering these issues, this course aims to bring the major challenges in contemporary Jewish life into sharper focus. Required Texts or Readings: • Jack Wertheimer, A People Divided: Judaism in Contemporary America (Hanover, 1993). • Readings posted on SPARK, as noted below. Course Requirements: Assignments and Grading: 50% of your grade will be determined by: A 15-page research-based and documented paper or project to be determined in consultation with the instructor. 20% of your grade will be based on An oral presentation prepared and presented in pairs or small groups, to be determined in consultation with the instructor. This oral report will ask you to gather from among your classmates and other peers popular understandings of Jews and Jewish history, and knowledge about Jews learned in previous classes, and then to place this information within the context of the assigned readings and class discussions. 20% of your grade will be based on A Museum report: You will take an actual or virtual field trip to a museum that has an exhibit or artifacts/paintings related to Jewish civilization (e.g., Boston Museum of Fine Arts; The Jewish Museum in NYC, also at http://www.thejewishmuseum.org/OnlineExhibitions) and write a 4-5 page response paper on the exhibit. Specifically, you will focus on how this exhibit confirms your previous learning on the topic, how it may contradict it, how it destroys stereotypes, and how it might reinforce stereotypes or received wisdom. 10% of your grade will be determined by your preparedness and participation in course discussions and activities including attendance; speaking up in full-group discussions; taking the lead in small-group activities; providing helpful follow-up questions to presenters; eliciting comments from other classmates; and contributing to the learning of your fellow students. The Integrative Experience: This class fulfills the General Education Integrative Experience requirements. As such, the course not only explores salient issues in Jewish history and in contemporary Jewish communities, but also explores questions relating specifically to your education at UMass Amherst. Much of this exploration will be done in the group discussion part of the course. Some of these self-reflective questions are: How has your understanding of major social and ethical issues, such as diversity and political or social conflict, been shaped by the specific courses you have taken in Judaic and Near Eastern Studies? Is there any way in which your work in Judaic Studies has been affected by your other General Education courses? If you have not yet thought specifically about how your other Gen Ed courses (specifically, other than HS or AL) might relate to your major, how might you go about making those connections? Are there, for example, aspects of violence, tolerance, or bio-ethics that your other Gen Eds might apply to? Or are there ways of thinking, of paying attention to certain types of detail, that have been useful to your major? Among other things, you will explore how Jewish civilization interfaces with other fields such as Psychology (e.g. the study of inter-group tensions, anti-Semitism, or racism), Anthropology (cultural diversity of Jewish civilization) or even Astronomy (the latter in terms of the Jewish role in developing medieval navigation, for example). The Humanities in general are often not considered “practical” or “career-track” majors. But can you find ways to relate your Judaic courses to your intended professional goals? In addition, the course will present a number of self-reflective and integrative questions more specific to this course and its comparative approach, with the intention of shedding light more fully and accurately on a historical subject. For example: Are there any ways in which your learning from other Gen Ed or from courses in your major relates to Jewish civilization and salient social, ethical, or political issues in contemporary Jewish life? How does what you are learning in this course expand upon or at times even contradict your previous learning? How do widespread, modern-day stereotypes represent distortions of the historical record? (For example, the idea that Jews are homogenous and their self- and ascriptive-identity clearly defined.) The course overall will expose you to real-world problems including culture conflicts— issues that continue today and are arguably universal. Specific learning objectives: As a General Education course, this class aims to help you use, develop, and integrate specific types of skills that will be useful in your future professions (and in life in general), including: Critical thinking: This is the ability to question and analyze various materials including your readings, the lectures, and even discussions with your peers. Rather than simply accepting all materials at face value, can you ask new and challenging questions about what you are learning? You will learn to think critically about primary and secondary sources and to place the Jews in the comparative context of other contemporaneous civilizations or groups. Collaboration: Teamwork is an essential skill in nearly any profession. The group discussions and, most importantly, the group projects, will allow you to work in small teams to make decisions about what material to cover and how to present it effectively. Oral communication: Various aspects of this course, including discussion, group work, and the group presentations, are intended to help you develop oral communication skills. This includes the ability to speak clearly and effectively on topic. Written communication: A number of assignments in this course, particularly the term paper, aim to help you develop effective writing skills. This includes not only the ability to use correct grammar and syntax but to organize your thoughts logically and construct a convincing argument. Making connections: Over the course of the semester you will learn to integrate apparently unrelated subjects and ideas, such as your major and your other Gen Ed courses; the study of the past and how it related to present-day conflicts; your academic education overall and how it relates to your practical career goals. ATTENDANCE POLICY Absentee Policy and Extenuating circumstances (illness, death in the family, etc.) for which students must miss a class meeting While attendance is crucial to participation in the Honors Seminar Series and therefore a significant factor in calculating your final grade in this course, extenuating circumstances may require you to miss a class meeting. Whether an absence is “excused” or counted in calculating participation grades is largely at the discretion of the instructor. Any student absent—whether the absence is “excused” or not—should contact the instructor as soon as possible to discuss assignments missed, class discussion, etc. Student athletes, members of the band, and on occasion, students who are members of other groups will be allowed to miss class for games and other special events and make up work will be assigned. PLAGIARISM POLICY Documenting the Writing, Speaking, and Thinking of Others In all your writing, and in oral presentations too, it is essential that you acknowledge the ideas of others upon whom your own thinking depends, including ideas obtained from such non- written sources as lectures, interviews, class discussions, and even casual conversations with colleagues and friends. Give credit for ideas that are not your own as well as for passages of text that you summarize, paraphrase, or quote. If material possessions are the property of our community at large, thoughts and ideas—expressed in speech or writing—constitute the “intellectual property” of our academic community. To take another’s words or ideas and present them as your own is to commit plagiarism, an act of academic theft, and the punishments can be severe (UMass Amherst Academic Regulations, “Academic Honesty”). UMass’s Academic Honesty Policy Since the integrity of the academic enterprise of any institution of higher education requires honesty in scholarship and research, academic honesty is required of all students at UMass Amherst. Academic dishonesty is prohibited in all programs of the University. Academic dishonesty includes but is not limited to: cheating, fabrication, plagiarism, and facilitating dishonesty. Appropriate sanctions may be imposed on any student who has committed an act of academic dishonesty. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________ CLASS MEETINGS & WORK SCHEDULE Two weeks will be spent on each unit. 1. Contested
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