HAPPINESS (IN JEWISH TRADITION)

REL/JSP 200

Spring 2026

T/TH 12:30-1:50, Carnegie 119

Zachary Braiterman

office: HL 509

office hours: W 11:00-12:00 (or by appointment)

zbraiter@syr.edu

Happiness in Judaism explores the character and quality of happiness in Jewish religious tradition. We trace the theme in biblical Wisdom literature, and medieval rationalism and mysticism. Happiness in Judaism combines well-being (the sense of well being) and pleasure in a world constantly hedged by sad suffering and violent death, limit and loss. It does so on planes that are simultaneously physical and spiritual. Attention goes to care for the communal dimension of the body as a physical datum and as a site of religious illumination.

Readings:

1/13     Introduction to class (no assignment)

1/15     Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Books 1 (complete) and 10 (chapters 6-9) at Blackboard

BIBLE

[all readings in TANAKH]

1/20     Proverbs, esp. chapters 1-12, 14, 16, 20, 23,, 25, 30

1/22     Ecclesiastes

1/27     Job

1/29     Job

2/3       Song of Songs

PHILOSOPHY AS A WAY OF LIFE?

[all readings at Blackboard]

2/5       Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life, chapter 1 (method)

2/10     Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life, chapter 3 (spiritual exercises)

2/12     Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a  Way of Life chapters 9-11 (the world transformed)

SECOND TEMPLE + RABBINIC JUDAISM

[all readings at Blackboard]

2/17     Letter of Aristeas

2/19     Jacob Neusner, Ancient Israel After Catastrophe

2/24     Mishnah Shabbat

2/26     selection from Babylonian Talmud Shabbat (Oneg Shabbat) and selection from Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man  

3/3       selections from Babylonian Talmud Berachot (Martyrdom, Afflictions of Love and Sick Rabbis) and selection from Adin Steinsaltz, The Essential Talmud

3/5       ZOOM CLASS!!! Pirkei Avot (Torah as holy way of life)

3/17     Pirkei Avot (Torah as holy way of life)

MEDIEVAL RATIONALISM

[all readings at Blackboard]

3/19     Maimonides, Hilkhot Deot (health and good virtues)

3/24     Maimonides, Hilkhot Deot (health and good virtues) + selection from Hilkhot Shabbat and Hilkot Sukka

3/26     Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed (law)

3/31     ZOOM CLASS!!!!

Maimonides Guide of the Perplexed meditating on God’s beauty; kiss of God (death & contemplation)

4/2       NO CLASS: PASSOVER

KABBALAH

[all readings at Blackboard]

4/7       Zohar, (mystical ascent)

4/9       Zohar, (Shabbat)

4/14     Selections from Melila Hellner-Eshed, A River Flows from Eden: The Language of Mystical Experience in the Zohar

4/16     Zohar, (seeing the face of God)
             

CODA

4/21     Deena Aronoff, Mother’s Milk

4/23     Deena Aronoff, Mother’s Milk