2009-2010 Religion Courses
First-Year Studies: The Hebrew Bible
Level: FYS
Semester: FYS
The Hebrew Bible stands at the foundation of Western culture. Its stories permeate our literature, our art, indeed our sense of identity. Its ideas inform to our laws, have given birth to our revolutions and social movements, and have thereby made most of our social institutions possible (and the movements to remove them). What is this book? How was it written? Who wrote it? Who preserved it for us? Why has all or part of this body of literature been considered holy to the practitioners of Judaism and Christianity? Four thousand years ago, various groups from small tribe-wandering nomads would get together and tell stories. These stories were not preserved on stone tombs but in the hearts and memories of the people to whom they belonged. We will read this collection of traditions in a book called Genesis and compare these stories with other texts (written in mud and stone) such as The Epic of Gilgamesh and The Babylonian Creation Epic, which were contemporary with biblical traditions. We will read the great biblical epic of liberation, Exodus, and the oracles of the great Hebrew Prophets of Israel—those reformers, judges, priests, mystics, and poets to whom modern culture owes its grasp of justice. We will trace the social intellectual and political history of the people formed by these traditions until the Roman age.
First-Year Studies: Jewish Spirituality and Culture
Level: FYS
Semester: FYS
Judaism since the biblical age has defied easy categorization, oscillating between religion and ethnicity. This course provides an introduction to Judaism in light of a seemingly triumphant non-Jewish society. We read the Bible as history and as literature, examining questions of authorship and message. We then delve into formative texts such as the Talmud, Midrash, Medieval Bible commentaries, and philosophy. We then encounter texts produced by movements that challenged and, in many ways, displaced normative Jewish practice, including Kabbalah, Messianism, poetry, folk religion, and Hasidism. Next, we encounter the modern age. We follow attempts to create a modern Jewish synthesis through Enlightenment (Haskalah), Zionism, Jewish Socialism, modern literature and philosophy, and feminism. We then explore modern religious transformations such as Reform, Conservative, Neo-Orthodoxy, and Ultra-Orthodoxy. Finally, we explore Jewish responses to the Holocaust and chart the course of Judaism in 20th-century America and Israel. Throughout, we will attempt to gauge the interplay between texts and daily Jewish life and discern the Jewish response to the masculine values of heroism and chivalry promoted by the dominant non-Jewish societies. The desired outcome is to become aware of the way in which Jewish conceptions such as chosenness, exile, sin, redemption, gender, sexuality, and death evolved over time to meet the twin challenges of anti-Semitism and assimilation.
The Buddhist Tradition
Level: Open,Lecture
Semester: Year
This course is an in-depth exposure to the religious tradition known in the West as “Buddhism,” in all of its incredible historical and cultural diversity. In the first semester, the course focuses on the evolution of Buddhist doctrines, practices, and institutions in India, from the origins of the religion as a group of “world-renouncing» ascetics through the development of large, state-supported monastic communities and the emergence of the major reform movements known as Mahayana and Tantra. It also treats the Buddhism of two regions of the world—Southeast Asia and the Tibetan plateau—where the respective traditions have been most self-consciously concerned with maintaining precedents inherited from India. The second semester of the course focuses on the Buddhism of East Asia (China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam), where new branches of the tradition such as Zen and Pure Land developed and flourished. It also deals with the issues of Buddhism in the modern world and the contemporary spread of various branches of the tradition from Asia to the West. The course is open to all students; no background knowledge is required or expected. Because the first semester is a self-contained unit, students may consider taking only that part of the course. The approach taken in the second semester, however, presumes knowledge of the material covered in the first; so students will only be allowed to join the course in January if they have consulted with and received permission from the instructor.
Readings in Early Christianity: The Writings of Paul and John
Level: Intermediate
Semester: Year
The Christian Apostle Paul has left a profound legacy to the history of Western thought. His theology is preserved for us in a handful of letters that are included in the canon of the New Testament. We will study Paul in the context of the Hellenistic culture, of which he was a part, in order to better understand his ideas and appreciate their place in the emerging world of Christianity. In this course, we will learn to read ancient texts closely, practice exegesis, and exercise the hermeneutical art. How can a modern reader access the world of a writer separated by nearly two millennia, a writer whose thoughts have been continually reinterpreted and sown into the fabric of Western culture to such a degree that any reading necessarily embodies this complex interpretive tradition—blurring the world of the Apostle with the interests and agendas of the succeeding centuries? In the second semester, we will study the writings of the Johannine community. The Fourth Gospel and the epistles associated with its authors, 1-3 John, has been particularly significant for the development of Christian thought. In this course, we will study The Gospel of John closely. Again, we will be engaging the hermeneutical arts with an eye to the development of Christian theology, as well as uncovering the history and growth of the early Christian community responsible for its unique prose style and its views regarding Jesus of Nazareth and the role of Christian discipleship. In doing so, we will examine the roots of Christian anti-Semitism, the development Gnosticism, and Christian docetism.
Jewish Mysticism, From Antiquity to the Present
Level: Intermediate
Semester: Year
This course traces Jewish mysticism, a counter-trend within Judaism, from late antiquity through modernity. We begin with the ancient “Chariot Mysticism,” proceed to the mystical-based asceticism of medieval German pietists, and dwell on the flowering of the erotically charged “Kabbalah” in medieval Spain and Southern France, covering its conceptions of God, evil, demonology, sin, death, sexuality, prayer, and magic—especially through the preeminent kabbalistic text, The Zohar, which one was forbidden to study until the age of 40.We then study the complex and esoteric Kabbalah of 16th-century Safed (Land of Israel), read mystical autobiographies, and follow the mass eruption of the kabbalistically inspired Messianic movement of Shabbetai Zvi. We will then turn to the most popular and enduring Jewish mystical movement, Hasidism. Founded on the teachings of the Ba’al Shem Tov (The Besht) in 18th-century Eastern Europe, Hasidism was forged into a mass movement by charismatic miracle-workers called “Zaddikim.” We approach Hasidism through its texts, oral tales, and the polemics of its adversaries. We will follow the creation of Hasidic dynasties, Hasidic responses to Zionism and the Holocaust, and the movement’s continued flourishing in tight-knit communities from Brooklyn to Jerusalem. Finally, we will examine the revival of Kabbalah and neo-Hasidism by secularized Jews and non-Jews. We will strive to appreciate the theoretical and experiential aspects of Jewish mysticism within changing historical contexts.
Sophomores and above.
Buddhist Meditation
Level: Advanced
Semester: Year
Most branches of the Buddhist tradition throughout history have embraced the idea that a deluded apprehension of one’s “self” and the “things” that make up one’s world is the root cause of all suffering experienced by humans and other living beings in the round of rebirth (samsara). On a more mundane level, Buddhists have generally held that regulating the “mind”—the deep-seated nexus of habitual responses, proclivities, and beliefs that filters our perceptions and directs our actions—is the key to achieving individual satisfaction and social harmony. Thus, whether the aim is ultimate salvation, happiness in this life, or simply the attainment of material benefits, Buddhists have often prescribed some program of sustained mental discipline—some kind of “meditation” practice—as the best means of working toward the goal. But “Buddhist meditation” is only a loose rubric that covers a wide range of different practices as, for example: techniques for calming the mind and entering into trance; procedures for the systematic philosophical analysis of ultimate reality; mental exercises meant to suppress negative emotions (e.g., anger) and foster positive ones (e.g., loving kindness); the cultivation of “mindfullness,” in which one strives to maintain a constant, detached awareness of one’s own physical and mental states, whatever they may be; mental exercises for recalling and repenting bad deeds done in the past; the visualization of deities, performed in conjunction with devotional prayer; “investigating the words” of Zen masters, also known as koan practice; and so on. In this course, we examine a selection of texts deriving from the Indian, Southeast Asian, East Asian, and Tibetan Buddhist traditions that treat these different types of meditation. Readings are in English translation. Enrollment is limited to students with some previous academic study of the Buddhist tradition (e.g., a course taken at Sarah Lawrence or some other college or university), or firsthand experience of some Buddhist meditation technique, gained through active participation in a religious community. Prospective students must interview the instructor to see if they qualify.