In this course, students will become acquainted with the historical development of Jewish philosophy and theology since the seventeenth century through the work of some of the most influential Jewish thinkers of the modern and contemporary eras. The course will begin by exploring the origins of Modern Jewish identity in the seventeenth century through the Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment, in the work of Baruch Spinoza and Moses Mendelssohn. We will then cover the period of German Jewish idealism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries through the writing of Hemann Cohen followed by the Jewish intellectual positions that emerged in reaction to German Idealism: the existentialism of Franz Rosenzweig and Martin Buber, the experientialism of Mordecai Kaplan and Abraham Joshua Heschel, the phenomenology of Emmanuel Levinas and the Jewish feminism of Judith Plaskow and Rachel Adler.

Thursdays beginning February 22 through March 28 from 6:30 PM - 7:20 PM
Cost: $90

Faculty: Dr. Marc Krell