NEW COURSE
HDS 2424 – American Judaism
Semester: Spring
Offered: 2026
Instructor: Hasia Diner
Meeting Time: M 12:00-2:00pm
How have American Jews engaged with Judaism and indeed how have they defined it? How has Judaism, understood as a religious system shaped both the interactions between Jews and between Jews and other Americans? The course will examine these issues through a variety of lenses, including, but not limited to: ordinary Jewish women and men, the clergy, the infrastructure of religious institutions, the American state, and other Americans, organized as they were through their denominations and churches.
We will be looking at this over the long arc of historical time, going back to the mid-seventeenth century and moving into the present and the course will be framed chronologically. Throughout we will be asking how Jews defined religion and how they saw it and how it differed from other forms of Jewish identification and belonging. How did this change over time and what issues, particularly those involving religious authority and (or versus) the will of the laity, persisted, albeit in different form? It will become clear that not all Jews conceived of Judaism in the same ways and the course will explore the constant tug between inner Jewish diversity and quests for unity and conformity. We will in addition be concerned with how being defined as members of a religious, or faith, community shaped American Jews’ interactions with other Americans, predominantly Christian.
For more details please visit the Harvard Course Catalog.