AP/HUMA 4750 3.00

Gender and Sexuality in Jewish LIfe

This course offers an exploration of distinctive Jewish approaches to questions of gender, sexuality, and the body, as formulated in their historical, religious, ethical and social dimensions. While we begin our journey with Biblical and other traditional sources, we focus most of our attention on contemporary encounters between gender/sexuality and Jewish life and the gendered nature of religious practice and religious authority. The course explores normative constructions of women's and men's societal and sexual roles in law and custom, and compares these to social realities.

Our analysis is situated within wider theoretical frameworks which include discussions of feminism, queer theory and social constructionism. The objective of the course is to use the theoretical categories of gender and sexuality as analytical tools to help us enrich our understanding of Judaism and Jewish life.

Particular topics include:

-explorations around the inclusion/exclusion of women in Jewish religious life, both historically and in the contemporary period.
-Social and religious constructions of masculinity and femininity in a Jewish context
-the relationship of gay/lesbian identities to Judaism and Jewish life; we document the variety of Jewish approaches to gay and lesbian realities and the changing nature of these encounters (this includes LGBT participation in synagogue ritual, Jewish marriage and Jewish communal life)
-exploring the understudied area of transgender identities in Jewish life; we examine traditional Jewish sources which address this phenomenon and examine how transgender issues are playing out in contemporary Jewish life.