NEW COURSE
RELIGION 24 – Sovereignty, Messianism, and Exile in Jewish Political Thought
Semester: Spring
Offered: 2026
Instructor: Ido Ben Harush
Meeting Time: TBA
What does it mean to be a Jewish political actor in the modern world? Is there a distinct Jewish politics? How can the same religious tradition give rise to opposing positions on power, statehood, or violence?
This course explores how Jewish thinkers from around the world confronted these questions, as they sought to find their place in a rapidly changing reality. Reading texts by thinkers from the last three centuries, the course is structured around four thematic units: authority, sovereignty, messianism, and exile. We’ll start by studying how Enlightenment promises of emancipation and citizenship challenged traditional religious authority. We then turn to the idea of sovereignty, comparing religious and non-religious approaches to this issue and different political visions for a Jewish state. Following this, we will focus on the political significance of messianism, showing how it has led to the development of both a politics of non-violence and peace and a justification of territorial expansion and militant action. We will conclude by exploring contemporary debates on Exile and Diaspora, reevaluating the significance of religious terminologies for political imagination today.
Readings include texts by Baruch Spinoza, Moses Mendelssohn, Theodor Herzl, Hannah Arendt, Judith Butler, and others.
For more details please visit the Harvard Course Catalog.