Syllabus Template

This Syllabus Template is based on Syllabus Guidelines (Annex 3 to Policy on Degree Programs)

COURSE SYLLABUS

Asceticism, Mysticism, and Gender in Jewish Tradition

Instructor : Name, title Prof. Ada Rapoport Albert Department Jewish Studies Central European University Semester Winter 2016 Course level MA, PhD 4 Credits (8 ECTS Credits) Pre-requisites (if applicable) None Course e-learning site: Office hours: days

Course Description The absence of women from the extant record of the Jewish mystical tradition has been contrasted with the robust and well-attested presence of numerous women in the mystical traditions of both Christianity and Islam. The course endeavors to explain this peculiarity while at the same time re-examining the current definitions of Jewish mystical spirituality, considering the possibility of extending their scope so as to integrate in the tradition a variety of female visionary and spiritual experiences which may well belong in it. Special attention will be paid to the exceptional prominence of women in the 17 th century mystical-messianic heresy of Sabbateanism and its offshoots, as well as to the position of women in the revivalist movement of Hasidism, from its inception in 18 th century Poland to the present.

Learning Outcomes {Specific statements of what students will know and be able to do as they leave the course, achievable and measurable through course assignments. Courses would normally have 4-6 learning outcomes. Those should in turn relate to learning outcomes of the program (as stated in program specifications). Some examples from different courses/subjects are given below}

By the end of this course, students will be able to:

Undertake gender-sensitive analysis of historical documents
Critically discuss competing conceptualizations and reconstructions of tradition

1 Syllabus Template

Gain critical insight into the function of religion in pre-modern and modern societies
Consider religious norms from a comparative perspective

Course Requirements {In deciding on the number and kinds of assessment for the course the instructor should take care to make sure all the learning outcomes stated above can be adequately assessed through those methods. Additionally, the instructor should take care that formative assessment is in place – i.e. there is a mid-course assessment to make sure that the learning outcomes are being achieved by the students and to allow for mid-course corrections if necessary. There should thus be a minimum of two assessment methods in the course}. {Should I specify deadline dates for the submission of each of the assignments below?}

(1) Assessment type 1 (50% of the final grade). A 3000-word mid-term review of the prescribed scholarly literature on any of the topics covered up to that point in the course. The grade will be determined on the basis of scope of coverage, critical analysis, coherent structure and presentation. (2) Assessment type 2 (50% of the final grade). A 6000-word essay, on a topic to be selected in consultation with the course instructor, focusing on a particular aspect of any topic covered in the course, demonstrating the ability to synthesize diverse sources, to raise critical questions and deal with them analytically and to present a coherent argument. The grade will be determined on the basis of scope of coverage, critical analysis, originality of thought and coherent presentation.

COURSE SCHEDULE

Classes will be held twice a week, on Mondays, 15.30-17.10 and Thursdays, 17.20-19.00

Week 1 : The Jewish mystical tradition: magic, spirituality, piety and Kabbalah Reading: (Mandatory readings are bookmarked) • Gershom Scholem , Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism , pp. 1-39 • —, Kabbalah , pp. 8-86 • Moshe Idel, Kabbalah – New Perswpectives (esp. pp. 1-34) Joseph Dan, Kaabbalah: A Very Short Introduction

Week 2: Women in Jewish law and society Readings: • Rachel Biale, Women and Jewish Law , pp. 10-43, 147-174 Moshe Meiselman, Jewish Woman in Jewish Law • Avraham Grossman, Pious and Rebellious , pp. 8-32

2 Syllabus Template

• Judith R. Baskin (ed.), Jewish Women in Historical Perspective , pp. 73-168

Week 3: Jewish mysticism as a “masculine doctrine”? Readings: • Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism , pp. 37-8 • Sharon Faye Koren, Forsaken: The Menstruant in Medieval Jewish Mysticism, ‘Introduction, pp. 1-12, and any or all of the subsequent chapters • Elliot Wolfson, Circle in the Square , pp. 79-121 • —, Language, Eros, Being, pp. 46-110

Week 4: The construction of sexuality and gender in Rabbinic tradition Readings: • Michael L. Satlow, Tasting the Dish: Rabbinic Rhetorics of Sexuality , pp, 146-183, 243-244, 315-333 • Daniel Boyarin, Carnal Israel • David Biale, Eros and the Jews , pp. 33-100

Week 5: The construction of sexuality and gender in Kabbalah Readings: • Gershom Scholem, On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead, pp. 140-96 • Elliot Wolfson, ‘Woman – The Feminine as Other in Theosophic Kabbalah: Some Philosophical Observations on the Divine Androgyne’, in Laurence J. Silberstein and Robert L. Cohn (eds.), The Other in Jewish Thought and History , pp. 166-204 • ----, Circle in the Square: Studies in the Use of Gender in Kabbalistic Symbolis , pp. 1-78 • David Biale, Eros and the Jews , pp. 101-120 • Moshe Idel, ‘Androgyny and Equality in the Theosophico-Theurgical Kabbalah’, Diogenes 208 (2005), pp. 27-38 ----, Kabbalah and Eros , any or all of the five chapters, but see pp. 247- 250 • ----, ‘Sexual Metaphors and Praxis in the Kabbalah’, in David Kraemer (ed.), The Jewish Family: Metaphors and Memory , pp. 197-224 • The Holy Letter: A Study in Medieval Jewish Morality , edited and translated by Seymour J. Cohen Charles Mopsik, Sex and the Soul , pp. 5-52 Yoram Jacobson, ‘The Aspect of the “Feminine” in the Lurianic Kabbalah’, in Peter Schafer and Joseph Dan (eds.), Major trends in Jewish Mysticism 50 Years After , pp. 239-55 • Isaiah Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar , vol. 1, pp. 371-422; vol. 2, pp. 529-546; vol. 3, pp. 1355- 1406 • Lawrence Fine, ‘Purifying the Body in the Name of the Soul: The Problem of the Body in Sixteenth-Century Kabbalah’, in Howard Eilberg-Schwartz

3 Syllabus Template

(ed.), People of the Body: Jews and Judaism from an Embodied Perspective , pp. 117-142

Week 6: Ascetic piety and its implications for women Readings: • Steven D. Fraade, ‘Ascetical Aspects of Ancient Judaism’, in Arthur Green (ed.), Jewish Spirituality from the Bible Through the Middle Ages , pp. 253-88 Eliezer Diamond, Holy Men and Hunger Artists: Fasting and Asceticism in Rabbinic Culture • Daniel Boyarin, Carnal Israel , 134-66 • David Biale, Eros and the Jews , pp. 33-100 • Ephraim Kanarfogel, ‘A Monastic-like Setting for the Study of Torah’, in Lawrence Fine (ed.), Judaism in Practice (Princeton, N.J., 2001) pp. 191- 202 • ----, “Peering through the Lattices”: Mystical, Magical, and Pietistic Dimensions in the Tosafist Period , pp 19-130

Week 7: Female piety in medieval and early modern Ashkenaz Readings: • Avraham Grossman, Pious and Rebellious , pp. 198-211 • Shlomo Noble, ‘The Jewish Woman in Medieval Martyrology’, in Charles Berlin (ed.), Studies in Jewish Bibliography, History, and Literature , pp. 347-56 Monford Harris, ‘The Concept of Love in Sefer Hassidim ’, Jewish Quarterly Review 50 (1959-60), pp. 13-44 • Judith R. Baskin, ‘From Separation to Displacement: The Problem of Women in Sefer Hasidim ’, Association for Jewish Studies Review 19:1 (1994), pp. 1-18 • __, ‘Images of Women in Sefer Hasidim’, in Karl Erich Grozinger and Joseph Dan (eds.), Mysticism, Magic and Kabbalah in Ashkenazi Judaism (1995) • —, ‘Women and Ritual Immersion in Medieval Ashkenaz: The Sexual Politics of Piety’, in Lawrence Fine (ed.), Judaism inPractice , pp. 131-42 • —, ‘Dolce of Worms: The Lives and Deaths of an Exemplary Medieval Jewish Woman and Her Daughters’, ibid., pp. 429-37 • Robert Chazan, ‘The Earliest Hebrew First-Crusade Narrative’, ibid., pp. 438-52 • Paula E. Hyman, ‘The Life of Glikl of Hameln’, ibid., pp. 483-97 The Life of Glückel of Hameln 1646-1724 Written by Herself , translated from the original Yiddish and edited by Beth-Zion Abrahams • Chava Weissler, Voices of the Matriarchs , pp. 76-146

4 Syllabus Template

Week 8: Visionary women in early modern Jewish culture Readings:

• Renée Levine Melammed, ‘Visionary Experiences among Spanish Crypto-Jewish Women’, Judaism in Practice , pp. 348-52 • —, Heretics or Daughters of Israel , pp. 45-72 • Ada Rapoport-Albert, Women and the Messianic Heresy of Sabbatai Zevi, 1666-1816 , pp. 57-79 • Hayyim Vital, ‘Book of Visions’, in Morris M. Faierstein (tans.), JewishMystical Autobiographies , pp. 57-73 (or: J. H. Chajes, Between Worlds , pp. 164-77) • J. H. Chajes, Between Worlds , pp. 97-118 • ----, ‘He Said She Said: Hearing the Voices of Pneumatic Early Modern Jewish Women’, Nashim 10 (2005), pp. 99-125 • ----, ‘Women Leading Women (and Attentive Men). Early Modern Jewish Models of Pietistic Female Authority’, in J. Wertheimer (ed.), Jewish Religious Leadership: Image and Reality , pp. 237-62

Week 9: Virgins, wives, and the divine female in heretical messianism: the Sabbatean movement and its offshoots Readings: • Gershom Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism , pp. 78-141 • —, Sabbatai Şevi The Mystical Messiah, 1626-1676 , s.v. Şevi, Sarah; Women: status of, in SS’s messianism • —, Kabbalah , pp. 287-309 • Matt Goldish, The Sabbatean Prophets , s.v. women • Harris Lenowitz, The Jewish Messiahs , pp. 167-98 • Arthur Mandel, The Militant messiah , pp. 75-8, 155-70 • Ada Rapoport-Albert, ‘Sabbateanism’, in Paula E. Hyman and Dalia Ofer (eds.), Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia, CD-ROM • Ada Rapoport-Albert, Women and the Messianic Heresy of Sabbatai Zevi, 1666-1816 • Pawel Maciejko, ‘Coitus interruptus in And I Came This Day unto the Fountain , in R. Jonathan Eibeschütz: And I Came This Day unto the Fountain , Critically editedted and Introduced by Pawel Maciejko, pp. i-lii

Week 10: Women in Hasidism Readings: • Norman Lamb, The Religious Thought of Hasidism , pp. 585-603 • S. A. Horodezky, Leaders of Hasidism , pp. 111-17 • Harry M. Rabinowicz, A Guide to Hasidism , pp. 102-13 • Ada Rapoport-Albert, ‘On Women in Hasidism, S.A. Horodecky and

5 Syllabus Template

The Maid of Ludmir Tradtion’, in Ada Rapoport-Albert and Steven J. Zipperstein (eds.), Jewish History: Essays in Honour of Chimen Abramsky , pp. 495-525. • —, Women and the Messianic heresy of Sabbatai Zevi 1666-1816 , pp. 258-296 • Nehemia Polen, ‘Miriam’s Dance: Radical Egalitarianism in Hasidic Thought’, Modern Judaism , 12 (1992), 1–21 • —, ‘Rebbetzins, Wonder-Children, and the Emergence of the Dynastic Principle in Hasidism’, in Steven T. Katz (ed.), The Shtetle , pp. 53-84 • Nathaniel Deutsch, The Maiden of Ludmir , pp.125-239 Tamar El-Or, Educated and Ignorant. Ultra-orthodox Women and Their World • Jerome R. Mintz, Hasidic People: A Place in the New World , pp. 60-70, 176-88 • Israel Rubin, Satmar: Two Generations of an Urban Island (2 nd edition of Satmar: An Island in the City), s.v. Women • George Kranzler, Hasidic Williamsburg: A Contemporary American Hasidic Community, pp. 167-206 • Marcin Woszinski, ‘Women and Hasidism: A “Non-Sectarian” Perspective. Jewish History 27:2-4 (2013), pp. 399-434 • Benjamin Brown, ‘The Sexual Abstinence of Married men in Gur, Slonim and Toledot Aharon’. Ibid., pp. 475-522 • David Biale, Eros and the Jews , pp. 121-148 (or: id., ‘The Lust for Asceticism in the Hasidic Movement’, in Jonathan Magonet [ed.], Jewish Explorations of Sexuality , pp. 51-64)

Week 11: Women and gender in HaBaD-Lubavitch Readings: • Naftali Loewenthal, ‘Women and the Dialectic of Spirituality in Hasidism’, in Immanuel Etkes et. al. (eds.), Within Hasidic Circles: Studies in Hasidism in Memory of Mordecai Wilensky (Hebrew), English section, pp. 7-65 • —, ‘”Daughter/Wife of a Hasid” or “Hasidic Woman”?’, Jewish Studies: Journal of the World Union of Jewish Studies 40 (2000), pp. 21-8 • Ada Rapoport-Albert, ‘The Emergence of a Female Constituency in Twentieth-Century Habad’, in David Assaf and Ada Rapoport-Albert (eds.), Let the Old Make Way for the New (Jerusalem, 2009), vol. 1, English Section, pp. 7-69 • ----, ‘From Woman as Hasid to Woman as “Tsadik” in the Teachings of the Last Two Lubavitcher Rebbes’. Jewish History 27:2-4 (2013), pp. 435- 473. • Stephanie Wellen Levine, Mystics, Mavericks, and Merrymakers: An Intimate Journey Among Hasidic Girls , pp. 27-72, 191-230

6 Syllabus Template

• Bonnie Morris, Lubavitcher Women in America • Uri Kaploun (ed.), A Partner in the Dynamic of Creation: Womanhood in the Teachings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson • Jerome R. Nintz, Hasidic People: A Place in the New World , s.v. Chabad (=Habad; Lubavitcher movement); Lubavitcher Hasidim; Schneerson, Menachem Mendel • Elliot R. Wolfson, Open Secret (2009), pp. 200-223

Week 12: Concluding Discussion

{Other divisions within readings are possible depending on the subject, e.g. primary and secondary sources, theoretical and applied sources, remedial (e.g. read this if you have difficulties reading the mandatory sources), enrichment/option (e.g. read this if you have an in-depth interest in this specific area, etc.}

7