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Jewish Studies

Jewish Studies

Contact

Jewish Studies Program
University of Houston
613 Agnes Arnold Hall
Houston, TX 77204-6000

Contact:
Caryn Tamber-Rosenau
713-743-9341
cmtamber@central.uh.edu

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Minor

The Jewish Studies program at UH offers a broad array of classes on Judaism as history, culture, and religion. Our students come from all religious and ethnic backgrounds. Many of our courses satisfy core curriculum requirements, and we offer a minor in Jewish Studies.

The minor in Jewish Studies consists of 18 credit hours

1. Six credit hours required: 

  • JWST 2380: Jewish Civilization, Ancient to Modern (formerly called Introduction to Jewish Studies) (Tamber-Rosenau)
  • JWST 3380: American Jewish Culture (Weiss)

2. Twelve credit hours taken from:

  • JWST 2372: Bible and Modern Pop Culture (Tamber-Rosenau)  Spring 2025—in-person M/W 1:30-3 
  • JWST 3371: Women in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament (Tamber-Rosenau) Spring 2025—in-person T/Th 10-11:30
  • JWST 3373: Jews in the Ancient World (Tamber-Rosenau)
  • JWST 3374: Jewish Film (Weiss)
  • JWST 3397: Jewish Law (Weiss)
  • JWST 3397: Comparative Elections (U.S./Israel) (Lubotzky) Spring 2025—in-person M/W 1-2:30
  • JWST 3397: History and Politics in the Hebrew Bible (Rainbow)
  • CLAS 3375: Roman, Jew, and Christian: The Politics and Sociology of Religion in the First Century A.D. (Armstrong)
  • GERM 3364: Writing Holocausts (Glass) 
  • GERM 3381: History of German Cinema (Kleinheider/Glass)  Spring 2025—asynchronous online
  • HIST 2349: Latina/o Jewish History (Goldberg) 
  • HIST 3317: Making of Ethnic America (Goldberg)
  • HIST 3341: History of Jewish Food (Goldberg)
  • HIST 4361: 20th Century Genocides and Human Rights (Guenther)
  • HON/RELS 3375: Law and Ethics (Rainbow)
  • RELS 2310: Introduction to the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament (formerly called Bible and Western Culture I) (Tamber-Rosenau/Dawson) 
  • RELS 2330: Judaism (Weiss)  Spring 2025—hybrid, M 1-2:30
  • RELS 2335: Rabbinic Biblical Interpretation (Weiss)
  • RELS 3323: Continuities: Jewish and Christian Texts and Traditions (Eberhart)
  • WCL 3376: Photography: Creating Visual Stories, Local and Global (Hernandez Ramirez) (if project pertains to Jewish community) 

For more information, please visit us online at www.uh.edu/class/mcl/jewish-studies. You can also like University of Houston Jewish Studies on Facebook and follow us on X (Twitter)!

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Big 12 Reasons to Take Jewish Studies Classes (and Declare the Minor!):

  1. Develop your critical-thinking skills by learning to analyze and discuss primary sources, and through hands-on experiential learning and community engagement.

  2. Learn more about one of the world's oldest continuously practiced religious traditions.

  3. Explore ancient Jewish religious texts, like the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud, and find out how they are used today.

  4. Learn about the Holocaust and what it can teach us about genocide and human rights.

  5. Promote interfaith relations by broadening your knowledge of a major world religion.

  6. Find out about Jewish communities all over the world, from East Asia to Sub-Saharan Africa to Latin America.

  7. Discover how the history of Jews in America intertwines with the history of other groups.

  8. Explore Jewish culture, including music, food, film, and humor.

  9. Learn about how Judaism influenced the other Abrahamic traditions, Christianity and Islam.
  10. Gain a better understanding of current events, particularly about the rise of antisemitism, damaging conspiracy theories, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
  11. Gain the knowledge and skills to enhance your future career in a variety of industries, including education, law, medicine, nonprofit management, business, and technology.

  12. Meet other students interested in learning more about Jewish history, religion, and culture!

Program Director Caryn Tamber-Rosenau, cmtamber@central.uh.edu