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Program Highlights

Professor David Shneer

Welcome back students, staff, and faculty! The Program in Jewish Studies is excited to announce several new initiatives, classes, and programs aimed at turning CU into a top ten Jewish Studies program. We encourage students to register for the certificate, so they get access to special scholarships, events, and other programs only open to certificate students. We are proud to say that four students graduated in the first Jewish Studies graduation ceremony in Colorado history this past May.

1. The Program in Jewish Studies is offering five new courses in Fall 2009 including: Women, Gender, and Sexuality in Judaism; Biblical Hebrew; Modern History of Jews Under Islam; Jewish Law; Modern European Jewish History. We hope to add five new courses in Spring 2010 including Modern Jewish Thought, The Lives of Secret Jews, Modern Jewish Literature, and Arab-Israeli Conflict. Stay tuned for more details.

2. We have put in a proposal to add a second study abroad site for University of Colorado students at Tel Aviv University. We hope to gain approval for this initiative and have Tel Aviv as a partner for CU beginning Fall 2010.

3. The faculty have proposed making Jewish Studies a degree granting unit with a BA in Jewish Studies and minors in Jewish Studies and Hebrew Studies. We hope to gain approval for this initiative for Fall 2010. This is a long and difficult process, so we recommend students talking to the director before making plans to major in Jewish Studies.

4. Jewish Studies is spearheading a year-long series of talks, performances, lectures, and courses called MoVeRs: Jewish Mavericks, Visionaries, and Radicals, which will include visitors like Yuri Lane, Beatbox performer who recently performed at Davos, Daniel Itzkovitz, who studies the work of comedienne Sarah Silverman, and Anna Torres, a Harvard student, who worked in the Emma Goldman archives and spends her summers doing cityscape murals in inner city neighborhoods. We will also feature CU faculty Zilla Goodman and Robby Adler-Peckerar as part of the series.

As part of our commitment to raising awareness of environmental issues and of supporting our students, the Program in Jewish Studies is also sponsoring a team for the Buffalo Bicycle Classic and is offering to pay ½ the registration fee for the first ten students, who register to ride with Team Jewish Studies. All money raised goes directly to student scholarships, and in financial times like these, our faculty and staff wanted to everything we could to support our students and to highlight Jewish Studies’ commitment to get people on their bicycles.

Professor David Shneer

Director, Jewish Studies