The “J Survey” between History and Religious Studies

Alan T. Levenson considers the fundamental issue of what one can and cannot achieve in a semester’s introduction to Jews and/or Judaism. He offers a minimalist, pedagogically driven compromise between coverage and concept, that is, a course that provides both historical development and Jewish concepts, practices, and doctrines. He discusses the assigments and organization of his survey course, which is divided into the four basic eras of Jewish history as defined by the first couple of generations of Wissenschaft des Judentums scholars. A syllabus is included.