The Greenberg Center for Jewish Studies is the hub for the University of Chicago's interdisciplinary scholarship and education in Jewish Studies. At the Greenberg Center, Jewish Studies includes Jewish history in its full geographical and temporal sweep, Jewish thought and literature in all its forms, Judaism in all its expressions, and Jewish political, cultural, social, and intellectual life around the world.
Our faculty and students work across the University, in departments such as Comparative Literature, Germanics, History, Music, Middle Eastern Studies, Philosophy, Political Science, Psychology, Slavic Languages and Literatures, the Committee on Social Thought, and in the Divinity School. Research areas of strength include:
- Hebrew Bible and the history of scriptural interpretation
- Medieval Jewish religious thought and philosophical inquiry
- The modern history of Jewish politics, culture, and society in Eastern Europe and the Middle East
- Modern and contemporary Hebrew, Yiddish, Arab-Jewish, and German-Jewish literature and culture
- 20th century Jewish religious thought, philosophy, and critical theory
- American Jewish culture and thought
- Israeli society, culture, and politics and the Israel-Palestine conflict
Explore the Greenberg Center...
The Greenberg Center serves the needs of University of Chicago students and faculty in a variety of ways:
- Jewish Civilization Sequence — this core sequence allows undergraduates to fulfill their Civilization Studies requirement through intensive study of the texts, debates, conflicts, and questions that have defined Judaism, Jewish communal life, and Jews’ relations with their neighbors, with their tradition, and with themselves.
- Major or Minor in Jewish Studies — a contextual, comparative, and interdisciplinary program that introduces students to the breadth and depth of the Jewish experience over three millennia.
- Events — annual program of seminars, book talks, lectures, and workshops deriving from ongoing research interests of Greenberg Center faculty members.
- Visiting Scholars — visiting distinguished faculty supported by the June and Harold Patinkin Visiting Professorship in Modern Israeli Studies and the Joyce Zeger Greenberg Visiting Professorship in Jewish Studies.
- Grants — research, conference, and language funding for undergraduate and PhD students.
- Prizes — annual undergraduate prizes for best course essay and best B.A. thesis.