About Us

The Department of Jewish History offers its students an exciting and enriching encounter with many layers in the development of human culture, an introduction to the different historical eras and their reflection and impact on one single nation - the Jews.

Courses offered by the Department begin with the biblical era, three thousand years ago, when Jewish nationality and culture were created in the world of the ancient Near East. They continue with a study of the period of the Second Temple and the Talmudic period, when the Jewish people lived in the Land of Israel, while at the same time new and influential centers of Jewish life took shape in the Diaspora.

From this point Jewish life developed across a broad geographical orbit. Jews lived in the Land of Israel under rulers that changed frequently, while at the same time there emerged a Jewish Diaspora that reached all corners of the known world, molding the historical image of the Jewish people until our own day.

The journey into the past begins in the Land of Israel and the neighboring region, continues through Babylon, Egypt and Yemen, the Moslem lands of the Mediterranean basin and Christian Europe, from east to west, through North and South America and elsewhere.

In addition to the study of history, the Department provides its students with the critical tools and the intellectual perspective necessary to understand events and historical processes, ideological movements and spiritual achievements that characterize Jewish life from its formation to the present day. Students will also be introduced to major works of Jewish literature and creativity from ancient to modern times.

Old and new, tradition and crisis, continuity and change, center and periphery, distinctiveness and similarity, influencing and being influenced - these are some of the terms with which historians characterize Jewish history across the generations and throughout the Diaspora. From the Babylonian exile to the Return to Zion, the Moslem occupation and the Christian Crusades, family life and education, emancipation and assimilation, Zionism and the Holocaust, the creation of the State of Israel, and the Arab-Israeli conflict - all these are focal points in the history of the Jewish people which are being taught in the department. In addition to studying the social transformation of Jewish life in response to these developments, students will also acquire a closer understanding of the cultural wellsprings that have influenced the Jewish experience. The religious canons - Bible, Mishna and Talmud - as well as the varied contributions of the medieval rabbis and sages of central Europe and of Spain are all part of a large mosaic that includes the messianic movements, Hasidism, the Jewish Enlightenment and modern Jewish literature which is still in the process of creation.

This is a saga of disappointments and failure, of great hope and remarkable achievements; this is the story of the Jews and their experience.