What does it mean to be a Jew? Is there a difference between Jewish culture and the religion of Judaism? How have Jewish cultural traditions—food, music, humor, and intellectual inquiry—influenced the city of New York, the country, and the world at large? Come to The New School and find out. The new Jewish Cultural Studies program explores Jewish cultural life, with a particular focus on secularism in Jewish communities and the contributions of Jewish thinkers to secular intellectual traditions. This program has been made possible by a generous grant from the Posen Foundation.
Jewish intellectual life has deep roots at The New School. Between the World Wars, many prominent Jewish scholars lectured at the university in the social sciences, humanities, and the arts. In 1933, The New School demonstrated its commitment to academic freedom by establishing the University in Exile to provide a safe haven for persecuted Jewish scholars including such luminaries as Hannah Arendt, Leo Strauss, and Max Wertheimer.
Among the seminal scholars who helped form the interdisciplinary outlines for a "New School education" today was Horace Kallen, philosopher and founding faculty member. Committed to a secular, cultural Judaism, Kallen coined the term "cultural pluralism" to describe the coexistence of cultural groups unified by a secular national culture as a crucial characteristic of democratic society. Students in the Jewish Cultural Studies program continue this line of inquiry, exploring the legacies of individuals who questioned, engaged, or adopted a secular stance.
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Curriculum
Ethics Without Religion: Secular Jewish Thought from Spinoza to Arendt
Terri Gordon-Zolov
Spring 2010
"If there is no God, then everything is permitted," as the intellectual son theorized in The Brothers Karamazov. This course takes up the question of ethics without religion in the context of modern Jewish history, culture, and politics. How have Jewish thinkers grappled with fundamental ethical questions in an increasingly secular world? We read Baruch Spinoza, Moses Mendelssohn, H.M. Bialik, Theodor Herzl, Ahad Ha'Am, Sigmund Freud, Franz Kafka, Hannah Arendt, Heinrich Heine, and Amos Oz.
The Origins of Secular Society: A Jewish Intellectual History
Gina Luria Walker
Fall 2009
This course offers an alternative intellectual history, examining the emergence of secular pluralism in the works of (religious) Jewish thinkers. We consider how in times of great oppression and persecution some Jewish thinkers advanced a contingent appreciation of religious as well as cultural difference as a matter of expedience and, in some cases, secular conviction. We read Maimonides, Menahem ben Solomon Ha-Me'iri, Jean Bodin, Glückel of Hameln, Solomon Maimon,Baruch Spinoza, and Hertha Ayrton, née Marks, in light of the history of toleration from the 12th century to the 20th century
The Literature of the Jewish-American Experience
Steven Milowitz
Fall 2009
How does one accept the American dream, while still retaining the historical, emotional connection to one's own disquieting past? How is the connection to Judaism maintained in a secular society? What are the costs of assimilation, and the consequences of prosperity? We examine the Jewish-American experience through the lens of great literature: fearless and inventive novels, essays, short-stories, poetry, and drama.
The Book of the World: Interpretation in Freud, Kafka, Benjamin, and Derrida
Carolyn Vellenga Berman
Spring 2010
According to rabbinic lore, the work of biblical interpretation is never done: "Deliberate over it again and again for everything is contained in it." This course surveys some of the founding works of modern literature, psychology, cultural studies, and literary criticism, with the aim of uncovering their remarkable debt to Jewish interpretive tradition. We read short works by Freud, Kafka, Benjamin, and Derrida, alongside biographical and critical essays exploring how they confronted their Jewishness.
Rabbis in the World: Midrash as Ancient Literature
Fran Snyder
Fall 2009
This course introduces an ancient literature called midrash, which was developed in the early centuries of the first millennium and through the Middle Ages as a means of formulating Jewish law and apprehending the world. We read midrashim as responses to diplomatic defeat, threats of religious destruction, and cultural incompatibilities and political collisions between the nascent and developing Jewish communities and the "others." We also read midrashim as literary documents that record remarkable rabbinic voices—their humor, their fascination with the human condition, their profound sense of self, and their commitment to a developing Jewish worldview.
Future Courses:
- Berlin-New York-Hollywood: A Cultural History of German Jewish Exile
- Philip Roth and Jewish Newark
- Psychoanalysis and the Secular Subject: The "Jewish Science" Revisited
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Current Offerings - Fall 2009
Courses may be taken for credit or non-credit. There is no application required. You may enroll directly in the course(s) of your choice, once you have checked the current course listings below and located the Course Master Number (e.g., NHUM 3502).
To register online, click on the course name or the "Register" button; on the following menu, click on "Humanities." You will find the Jewish Cultural Studies courses, along with our other Humanities course listings, by Course Master Number. Clicking on the Course Master Number will take you to a complete description of the course, including a "Non-Credit" or "General Credit" registration option.
To register by phone, please contact the New School Registrar by phone at 212.229.5620. If you would like to speak with an advisor, please contact the Department of Humanities at 212.229.5961 or humanities@newschool.edu.
The Origins of Secular Society: A Jewish Intellectual History
NHUM3502
Gina Luria Walker
Tuesdays, 6:00-7:50p.m., beginning September 1.
0 or 3 credits.
The Literature of the Jewish-American Experience
NLIT3380
Steven Milowitz
Tuesdays, 8:00-9:50p.m., beginning September 1.
0 or 3 credits.
Rabbis in the World: Midrash as Ancient Literature
NHUM3501 Fran Snyder
Thursdays, 4:00-5:50p.m., beginning September 3.
0 or 3 credits.
Related Course Offering:
Ethics and Literature: The Problem of Evil
NLIT3434
Terri Gordon-Zolov
Mondays, 4:00-5:50p.m., beginning August 31.
0 or 3 credits.
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Faculty
Carolyn Vellenga Berman, PhD, Brown University, Assistant Professor of Literature, is the author of Creole Crossings: Domestic Fiction and the Reform of Colonial Slavery and articles on nineteenth-century novels, ethnic performances, memoirs, and fairy tales.
Ernestine Schlant Bradley, PhD, Emory University, Visiting Professor, is the author of The Language of Silence: West German Literature and the Holocaust and of The Way Home: A German Childhood, An American Life. She is also coeditor of Legacies and Ambiguities: Postwar Fiction and Culture in West Germany and Japan.
Terri Gordon-Zolov, PhD, Columbia University, Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature, has published on the cabaret, post-war film, and performance art in the Third Reich, and is currently guest editing a Women's Studies Quarterly issue on "Citizenship" and working on a book-length study of restorative justice.
Noah Isenberg, PhD, UC-Berkeley, Associate Professor of German Literature, is the author of Edgar G. Ulmer: A Filmmaker in Transit and Between Redemption and Doom: The Strains of German-Jewish Modernism. He is also the editor of Weimar Cinema: An Essential Guide to Classic Films of the Era.
Steven Milowitz, PhD, New York University, is the author of Philip Roth Considered: The Concentrationary Universe of the American Writer.
Fran Snyder, PhD candidate at the Graduate School of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, is completing a dissertation on Midrash and scriptural interpretation.
Aleksandra Wagner, licensed psychoanalyst and PhD, City University of New York, is the editor of Considering Forgiveness and wrote her dissertation on American psychoanalysis in the 1950s.
Gina Luria Walker, PhD, New York University, Associate Professor of Women's Studies, is the author of Mary Hays (1759-1843): The Growth of a Woman's Mind (2006) and The Idea of Being Free: A Mary Hays Reader (2005).
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Public Programs
Throughout the academic year, a series of public programs will be organized in conjunction with the Jewish Cultural Studies program. Please check below for descriptions of current and upcoming Jewish Cultural Studies events.
2009
Jewish Cultural Pluralism
Monday, November 16
6:30 p.m. Free admission, but registration required; for information and registration, contact publicprograms@newschool.edu.
The New School, Parsons Kellen Auditorium, Sheila Johnson Design Center, 66 Fifth Avenue between 12th and 13th Streets, NYC.
Panelists include Michael Walzer, editor of Dissent and The Jewish Political Tradition; author of Pluralism and Democracy, On Toleration, and Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality; Yirmiyahu Yovel, editor, New Jewish Time: Jewish Culture in the Era of Secularization, and author of The Other Within: The Marranos, Split Identity and Emerging Modernityand Spinoza and Other Heretics; Oz Frankel, author of "What's in a Name? The Black Panthers in Israel," and States of Inquiry: Social Investigations and Print Culture in Nineteenth Century Britain and the United States.
Can there be cultural pluralism in a state where Jews are the majority? Are there plural Jewish cultures? This panel marks the launch of the New School's innovative Jewish Cultural Studies program in the fall of 2009 by reflecting on what is at stake in efforts to maintain autonomous cultural traditions within political states, and the ways in which Jewish thinkers have contemplated coexistence. Michael Walzer and Yirmiyahu Yovel will discuss cultural pluralism in the divergent contexts of contemporary Israel, Enlightenment Europe, and the early-twentieth-century U.S.A., and then engage in a discussion moderated by Oz Frankel, before opening up to questions from the audience. Sponsored by the Department of Humanities and co-sponsored by the Graduate Program in International Affairs.
