Master Jewish Studies

Set Your Own Priorities.

The MA in Jewish Studies offers you the ideal conditions for developing your own research interests and methodological skills autonomously. The special modularization and the broad choice of courses, and the option of taking seminars at the Freie Universität, Technische Universität and the Humboldt University zu Berlin mean that you can set your research priorities while you are still studying.

Take advantage of our Erasmus cooperation with renowned research institutes of Jewish Studies e.g. in Great Britain, the Netherlands and Poland. Furthermore, our university has its own cooperation and student exchange program with universities in Israel.

Contents

The research-oriented master degree course Jewish Studies at the University of Potsdam is designed to impart the 3000 years of history, religion and culture of the Jewish people in Orient and Occident.  Strong bonds and mutual influences of religion, philosophy, literature and culture characterize all epochs in the history of Jewry. Jewish religious and cultural history needs to be considered both on its own terms and through the interrelations between Judaism and the respective non-Jewish environment.

The basis for examining Jewish religious and cultural history is knowledge of its languages: Hebrew (biblical, rabbinical- and modern Hebrew, ivrit), Yiddish and Aramaic, but above all Hebrew.

The interdisciplinary oriented master degree course Jewish Studies aims at endowing students with broad cultural and medial competence. In research and teaching, the course should impart to students -- beyond a knowledge of Rabbinica --  the field of Jewish cultural history in its interrelations with European cultural history.

Structure and Build-Up

Jewish Studies are offered at University of Potsdam as a mono-master degree course. The standard period of study is four semesters including the time allotted for writing the master thesis. You will find a detailed list of the modules and the required credit points at the website of the University of Potsdam. Here, as well as in the study regulations.

If all required course assessments are completed, the University of Potsdam, through the Faculty of Philosophy, bestows the Master of Arts (MA) degree.