From Hillel to Mendelssohn: The Changing of Rabbinic Thought
| Course Number: | LSHV-502 |
Course Description
What we generally think of as Judaism in the religious sense (as opposed to but not necessarily disconnected from concepts of Judaism as culture, ethnic or racial group or nationality) is in fact essentially rabbinic Judaism. What that means is that the foundational texts of the Jewish traditions—the Torah and the other parts (Prophets and Sacred Writings) of the Hebrew Bible—become, over the centuries, both subject to direct interpretive discussions and commentaries, and also the primary reference points for ongoing analyses of how effectively to live one’s life as a Jew. This issue yields diverse resonances in a diversely non-Jewish world, where Jews have been variously embraced, tolerated, oppressed or persecuted.
The point and purpose of this course is thus to trace the development of Judaism as a religion by focusing on a succession of key rabbinic figures largely responsible for the ongoing interpretive discussions that have shaped the Jewish faith in its relationship to its primary texts and to the world around it. We will begin by sketching the background—the pre-Jewish, Hebrew-Israelite-Judaean periods—against which rabbinic Judaism is ultimately formed. In then turning to a succession of figures over the course of eighteen centuries we will inevitably be engaged in a somewhat interdisciplinary process: we cannot understand these figures and the eras at the center of which they sit without understanding what, in comparative terms, is happening in the pagan, Zoroastrian, Christian and Muslim worlds around them and which form key bases for their thinking.