About the Program

The Judaic studies minor presents an interdisciplinary focus for studies of Jews and Judaism, including but not limited to historical, literary, linguistic, and philosophical perspectives and approaches.

The primary educational goal of this minor is to provide students with a clear idea of how different approaches to the framing and answering of questions of systematic learning deal with the same social entity over a long period of history. From this minor, the student should learn at least three things:

• some of the facts of the subject; that is, some knowledge of the history, philosophy, literature, and languages of the Jews;
• some clear knowledge of how a historian, philosopher, literary critic, or scholar of language frames humanistic questions and proceeds to answer them; and
• some ideas of what it means to look at the same subject from different perspectives.