As a minority religion in the West, Judaism has always confronted intellectual, cultural, and social trends in the many contexts in which it has flourished. This confrontation became especially pronounced in the modern period when the upheavals of political emancipation and acculturation radically changed what Judaism could look like, even the streams that remained resolutely traditional. Modern Jewish thought can be characterized by the struggle to make Jewish ideas and modern philosophical ideas cohere, a struggle that many now consider unsuccessful. This course looks beyond the political and intellectual challenges of Jewish modernity and towards those of postmodernity. In the larger culture, postmodernity has been variously regarded as an historical era, a political movement, a set of literary and cultural practices, and/or a philosophical standpoint. The Jewish response to postmodernity still taking shape presents a fascinating vantage point from which to assess some of these strands. For many Jewish thinkers have claimed not only that postmodernity can provide a congenial atmosphere for the flourishing of Judaism and Jewish identities, but that there are many rich and suggestive ways in which traditional Jewish thought (understood to be grounded in rabbinic sources) and postmodern thought (understood in terms of notions of multivocality, indeterminacy, non-foundationalism) overlap or even mirror one another. Emphasis will be placed on the hermeneutical dimensions of this claim, but political and cultural questions will also be in play throughout. Reading list: Adler, Boyarin, Butler, Derrida, Greenstein, Irigaray, Jabes, Kepnes, Ochs, Ouaknin, Ricoeur, Stern, Wolfson, Wyschogrod. Format: discussion. Requirements: attendance and active participation, brief weekly writing on the reading, and a final paper (15 pages). Open to all students without prerequisites. Enrollment limit: 30 (expected: 10).