Graduate Courses Spring '26

Caroline Kahlenberg | Independent Study (3)

Elizabeth Alexander | TR 12:30–1:45 PM | Gibson Hall 241 | Seminar (3)

This course introduces students to the role that law plays in Jewish religious life and thought.  Law has provided a primary framework through which Jews have related to God from biblical to modern times.  We will attempt to understand how law serves a religious function by examining both the values embodied by the content of the laws and critical reflections on the role of law by medieval and modern Jewish thinkers.

Martien Halvorson-Taylor | M 2:00–4:30 PM | Nau 242 | Seminar (3)

A seminar on the biblical Song of Songs (with attention to its literary artistry and compositional history) and its subsequent interpretation.

Asher Biemann | Independent Study (3)

This tutorial, the third in a sequence on theopolitical thought in Modern Judaism, will focus on 20th-century Jewish philosophers, especially Hermann Cohen, Martin Buber, Leo Baeck, and Franz Rosenzweig. Their distinct views on the state, the nation, and the theocratic community, as well as how modern Christian thought grappled with similar questions, will be analyzed in the context of a crisis of politics during the interwar period.

Elizabeth Alexander | Seminar (3)

Students learn to analyze and interpret ancient rabbinic texts (c. 200-600 CE) in order to discern theological commitments and ethical instructions. The task is complicated by the fact that rabbinic texts are neither theological treatises nor ethical manuals. They are composed as biblical commentary and as codes, commentary and argumentation on legal topics.