The Jews: History, Culture and Religion

The class introduces the students to Jewish Studies and to the different methodologies developed by scholars for attaining a religious-historical analysis of the themes and texts relevant to Judaism, thus examining Bible criticism, rabbinic philology, archaeology, art history, manuscript studies, lived religion, etc. After a first introductory lecture on the history and historiography of Judaism, the students will be presented with the most relevant events in Jewish history, as well as with its most important literary and artistic expressions. The approach will be chronological - from ancient Israel to the early modern era - but with attention also to analogous phenomena which developed diachronically in the different parts of the Jewish diaspora.

Lesson 1: Introduction
- Judaism/Judaism(s)
- Jewish Studies
- Biblical canon

Lesson 2: The religion of Israel before the exile
- Biblical archaeology/ Bible criticism
- Prophetism

Lesson 3-4: Second Temple Judaism
- The Babylonian exile
- First and second Sadocitism
- The encounter with Hellenism
- Jewish sectarianism (Philo, Flavius Josephus)
- Qumran

Lesson 5-8: Late antique Judaism
- The rise of the rabbis
- Mishnah
- Palestinian and Babylonian Talmud
- Midrash
- Halakhah and haggadah
- Elements of non-rabbinic Judaism
- Piyyut

Lesson 9-11: Medieval Judaism
- The Jews in Palestine and in the Islamic Countries
- The Cairo Genizah
- The Massorah and the Leningrad codex
- Religious poetry
- Religious philosophy: Maimonides
- The Jews in medieval Europe
- Rashi

Lesson 12-13: Early modern Judaism
- The blood libel and the case of Simon of Trent
- The age of ghettos
- Crypto-Judaism

Lesson 14-15: Major trends in Jewish mysticism
- From Hekhalot to Sefer Yeṣirah
- Mosheh de León
- Abraham Abulafia
- Isaac Luria and Ḥaiym Vital
- Shabbetay Zevi