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jdst@uoregon.edu
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Welcome to the web site of the Harold Schnitzer Family Program in Judaic Studies at the University of Oregon. The Program was established in 1998 as the result of a generous gift from the Harold and Arlene Schnitzer CARE Foundation of Portland.

The interdisciplinary Harold Schnitzer Family Program in Judaic Studies provides a comprehensive undergraduate curriculum in the history, religion, and civilization of the Jewish people, and offers two years of instruction in Hebrew language and literature. The program offers a Judaic Studies Major leading to a bachelor of arts (BA) degree and a Judaic Studies Minor. At this time there are no graduate programs offered through the Harold Schnitzer Family Program in Judaic Studies.

The Harold Schnitzer Family Program in Judaic Studies also offers public lectures, brown bag seminars, and other events of campus wide and community interest.

 

The Judaic Studies Program unequivocally condemns the recent spree of antisemitic attacks in the United States and Europe.

Any attack–rhetorical or violent–against Jews or Jewish institutions simply because they are Jewish is by definition antisemitic, regardless of the motives of the perpetrator.

In particular, any assumption that a Jewish person or institution represents the sovereign State of Israel simply because they are Jewish is antisemitic. This issue is totally distinct from the debate over how to achieve a just and lasting peace in Israel/Palestine.

As faculty at an academic institution that values freedom of speech, we absolutely affirm the right of anyone to protest peacefully. Antisemitism, however, has no place in any struggle for rights, freedom, and peace.

Antisemitism remains a source of discrimination, harassment, and violence, and it is a threat not only to Jews but to our society, and the values upon which it is built.

We condemn discrimination in all its forms, and call upon our larger institution to live up to its declared values of tolerance, diversity, and inclusion, and emphatically do the same, condemning all antisemitic acts.

Gina Herrmann


Activities

New Course! ENG 340/JDST 399: The Jewish Ghetto

The idea of the ghetto – as a destination, an origin, a physical boundary, an emotional trap, a labyrinth, a prison, a haven, and an inspiration for self-determination – has been a focal point of Jewish literary culture since the seventeenth century.

In this course we’ll study the way Jewish writers forced to live in ghettos have wrestled with their exclusion from mainstream society. This course will offer a timely focus on the emotional effects of social distancing, physical and emotional isolation, segregation, anti-Black racism, and antisemitism.

Professor Anne Kreps ACLS Fellowship Program 2020

ACLS Fellowship Program 2020 Assistant Professor Religious Studies University of Oregon The Dead Sea Scrolls in the American Religious Landscape

When the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1947, they were immediately recognized by scholars for how they might rewrite the history of ancient Judaism. An early press release published in the Times of London declared to the public that the DSS were a product of a “comparatively little-known sect, or monastic order, possibly the Essenes.” As the scrolls became available to the public, mild statements about the value of the scrolls for shedding

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