Melton & More
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THURSDAYS, 7:00-8:30pm (EST) August 3, 10, 17, 24
The story of Censorship is often murky and laden with ambiguous villains . However, the trek into the world of the forbidden can be fascinating and one you will find well worth exploring.
Course Description :
As long as there has been Jewish works, calls for censorship have existed.
For many years books were the only Jewish works that were redacted, rewritten, or ultimately banned. In modern times, however, these calls have extended into other art forms including representative works of art, literature, film, music, and theater.
In this four week course we will explore censorship from within Judaism as well as from the outside world -that was often imposed on Jewish creativity.
We're going to analyze the choices of books that make up the canon of the Bible, the so-called lost works of the Apocrypha, the Siddur, censorship of the Talmud and the works of Maimonides, and Spinoza.
We will look at the messy history of Church sanctioned censorship of Jewish works, including the Spanish and French disputations.
We will also look at modern day censorship by studying selections of literature and film clips that have evoked calls for internal Jewish censorship or revisionism. This includes the works of Philip Roth, Noam Chomsky, and the various generational iterations of the story of Anne Frank.
We will ultimately grapple with the quandary of a Jewish position on the calls for censorship today. In a Jewish ideology that promotes and celebrates questioning- should anything be off limits?
THURSDAYS, 7:00-8:30pm (EST)
Dates: Aug. 3, 10, 17, 24
