Executive Ph.D. in Jewish Studies

Program Requirements (48 credits)

• 3 required Seminars (9 credits)
• 4 required Colloquia (12 credits)
• 5 Electives OR 4 Electives and an Externship (15 credits)
• Masterclass with defense (6 credits)
• Proposal (3 credits)
• Doctoral Project (3 credits)

In addition to core requirements and electives, students pursue a masterclass of guided readings with an expert in a subfield of their choice (e.g., Soviet Jewry; Pedagogy in Jewish Day Schools; Jews and Non-Jews in Modern Israel, etc.) concluding with an oral or written defense demonstrating their mastery of that field.

Electives may be chosen from approved coursework in the following Gratz College programs, including: Jewish Studies, Antisemitism Studies, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Interfaith Leadership, Nonprofit Management, and Education Leadership. An Externship is an unpaid placement outside of your regular workplace that has been approved by the program director for the purpose of honing applied Jewish Studies skills and building professional relationships with leaders in your field of interest. (Walder Fellows are required to use six elective credits for the Seminar in Orthodoxy, Gender and Leadership.)

After completing coursework, students collaborate with a dedicated team of advisors and faculty to apply the knowledge and skills they have attained to complete a doctoral project that offers a unique contribution to the field of Jewish Studies. Doctoral candidates are encouraged to be creative. Students’ projects can be molded in any modality that contributes to their professional advancement if it reflects doctoral-caliber work. Examples include a classical dissertation; two publishable articles; a podcast series; a series of video-essays; a historical fiction novel; a museum installation; etc.   

Language Requirements: All PhD students are required to have academic reading proficiency in Hebrew by the end of their first year of study, meaning they should be able to read an academic text in Hebrew with the aid of a dictionary.

CONCENTRATIONS

Students choose electives to fulfill their Concentration requirements.

The Public Scholarship Concentration fosters academic research training in pressing issues like Israel and the Near East, interfaith relations and American Jewish history. The curriculum utilizes Gratz’s extensive course offerings in antisemitism advocacy work and interfaith leadership to empower thought leaders seeking policy positions at thinktanks, non-profit advocacy organizations and educational institutions.

The Executive Leadership Concentration cultivates the application of students’ Jewish knowledge and wisdom to the everyday tasks of nonprofit leadership. The track leverages Gratz’s existing strengths in its nonprofit management program to provide instruction that enriches students’ administrative skills and deepens their Jewish literacy.

The Applied Scholarship and Education Concentration trains clergy, instructors and school administrators to communicate the knowledge they have attained in their core training to develop their roles as educators and speakers vested in strengthening the foundations of Jewish community. The track features courses from Gratz’s education program that cultivate skills for excellence in communal education leadership.

REQUIRED CORE COURSES

Seminars
Students take three seminars that expose them to the scope of Jewish wisdom, Jewish scholarly debates and the practical application of Jewish Studies knowledge. They also cultivate written and oral methods of sharing their knowledge with others.

• Seminar A: Seminal Works of Jewish Studies
  This seminar surveys field-defining academic and popular works in the fields of Jewish law, mysticism, philosophy, liturgy, theology, literature and social science. Each class focuses on a different book and its critical reception, providing a foundation for appreciating the breadth of Jewish Studies and exposing students to the variety of research opportunities they can pursue.
• Seminar B: Jewish Memory and Historiography
  This seminar explores the phenomenon of historical writing among Jews and asks how and why Jews wrote about their past from the books of the Hebrew Bible to the emergence of academic Jewish history as a "scientific" discipline in nineteenth-century Germany to the practice of history in our own day. Students interrogate how historical writers' contemporary politics and anxieties shaped the ways they narrated Jewish history in response to anti-Judaism, antisemitism, totalitarianism, Zionism and anti-Zionism.
• Seminar C: Public Scholarship and Education
  This seminar focuses on how scholars of Jewish Studies have applied their trade to write popular histories, religious works, policy papers and social-scientific analyses. Each class will take a different discipline and subject in turn, exploring issues like reforming Jewish day school education, responding to assimilation, delivering divrei torah (sermons), confronting antisemitism, explaining the US-Israel relationship, etc.

Colloquia
Students enroll in four colloquia taught by a rotating group of experts in essential areas of Jewish Studies, offering an introduction to each scholar’s field and a deep dive into the scholar’s area of expertise. For instance, a scholar of modern Russian Jewry might ground students in Eastern European Jewish thinkers conflicted responses to modernity before focusing on specific Jewish responses to the challenges raised by pogroms. Students may choose to take each colloquium (A, B, C and D) OR select one type, multiple times (e.g., 2x Colloquium A, 1x CB, 1x CD).

• Colloquium A: Foundational Texts and Figures (example topics below)
  Maimonides and his Mediterranean world; the Ba’al Shem Tov and the rise of Hasidism; (the biblical) Dinah and conceptions of Jewish womanhood; etc.  
• Colloquium B: The Lives of Premodern Jews
  Medieval Jewish gossip in the Cairo Geniza; Crypto-Jews at the courts of the Inquisition; Jewish motherhood in medieval responsa; etc. 
• Colloquium C: Judaism and Modernity
  Jews and Whiteness in America; Jewish responses to Marxism; Everyday Jewish life in the Shtetl; etc.
• Colloquium D: Contemporary Israel and the Near East
  Race in Israeli literature and film; Rav Kook and Religious Zionist thought; the Jew in Islamist Thought; etc.