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Liberal Arts and Professional Studies (AP) – Jewish Studies

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Location: 210 Vanier College, Tel.: 416-736-5158
Website: http://www.yorku.ca/laps/huma/jsst
Program Coordinator: K. Weiser, Humanities
Affiliated Faculty: M. Brown, Humanities; J. Cohen, Fine Arts/Music; C. Ehrlich, Humanities; I. Hollander, Social Science; S. Horowitz, Humanities; B. Katz, Fine Arts/Music; E. Lawee, Humanities; M. Lockshin, Humanities; M. Maidman, History; R. Newman, Gender and Women’s Studies; S. Rahnema, Political Science; R. Schnoor, Social Science; J. Shapero, Languages, Linguistics and Literature; A. Shulman, Languages, Linguistics and Literature; K. Weiser, Humanities; C. Zemel, Fine Arts/Visual Arts

The Program in Jewish Studies is an interdisciplinary program housed in the Department of Humanities that brings together courses and members of York’s faculties whose focus is the exceptionally diverse subject areas that Jewish studies, as an academic discipline, encompasses.

In addition to Judaism as a religion, Jewish studies explores the texts, histories, cultures, sociologies, languages and fine arts of the Jewish people from biblical times to the present, locating these within the context of the many western and non-western civilizations in which Jews have lived. It also examines Jewish interactions with non-Jews over the ages, both cooperative and conflictual, elements of cultural symbiosis, evolving attitudes towards and images of Jews within various non-Jewish cultures, and the history of anti-semitism, including the Holocaust.

All the while, Jewish studies explores the Jewish experience with a view to understanding the human situation in its diversity and complexity.