The critical uses of biblical and extrabiblical data in the reconstruction of the history of the biblical period.

Explores the history and culture of Jews in Eastern Europe.

Explores the key events and developments of Southeastern Europe, the region commonly referred to as the Balkans, in the twentieth century.

Introduction to the core of Spinoza's writings and the diverse reactions they have elicited. Examines Spinoza's refusal of mind-body dualism, as well as a transcendent god or ideal as a way of understanding Spinoza's concepts and ideas.

Examination of the complex relationship between the Western Church and Jews over two millenia.

Examines the war in Eastern Europe with a particular emphasis on occupation, collaboration, and resistance; the Holocaust; and the connection between ethnic cleansing, population transfer, and the establishment of communism in postwar Eastern Europe.

Study the socio-historical circumstances that gave shape to the first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Examine how these five books achieved the status of sacred literature.

Examine attempts to find a measure of justice after the Holocaust. Explore themes of human rights and international law.

Examine major thinkers and movements in both Jewish philosophy and Jewish mysticism since the Middle Ages, with a focus on the importance of modern Jewish thought in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Examine the historical, social, and political processes of change experienced by the Palestinian-Arab community in Israel, including the fundamental aspects pertaining to the founding of Israel as "a Jewish and democratic state" and the relations between the Arab minority and the Jewish majority.

Examine the elements of the Arab-Israeli conflict, including the main figures involved, events, and turning-points in its history.

Examine the history of the Levant, a region that includes Syria, Israel, Palestine, and Jordan.

Examine the Holocaust as part of Nazi Germany's quest to build a new racial order.

Examine the complex and dynamic legacies of World War II and questions of memory, identity, and politics from 1945 to the present.

Examine the early-modern networks established by the Sephardi Jews (Sephardim) across the Mediterranean and Atlantic, the rich Ladino Judeo-Spanish culture that thrived in the Ottoman Empire, and Sephardi encounters with the modern world.

Examine Jewish, Christian, and Muslim communities in the Ottoman Empire (fourteenth to twentieth centuries), with a focus on dynamics both within and between the communities.