Robert S. Schine
Curt & Else Silberman Professor of Jewish Studies
- Office
- Munroe Hall 211
- Tel
- (802) 443-5151
- schine@middlebury.edu
- Office Hours
- Spring 2025: by appointment (use email).
Professor Schine teaches Jewish Studies, with courses encompassing the history of Jewish thought, in particular from the Enlightenment on, the history of Zionism, and also Hebrew Bible and Classical Hebrew.
In his scholarship Professor Schine focuses on German-Jewish thought and culture. He is the author of Jewish Thought Adrift: Max Wiener 1882-1950 (Scholars Press, 1992; 2nd ed. 2020) and of Hermann Cohen, Spinoza on State and Religion, Judaism and Christianity, an annotated translation, with introduction, of Cohen’s 1915 monograph (Shalem Press, Jerusalem, 2014). He is also the main translator and, with Samuel Moyn, co-editor of an anthology of Cohen’s writings: Hermann Cohen: Judaism and Neo-Kantian Philosophy (Brandeis Library of Modern Jewish Thought, Brandeis University Press, 2021). In addition, he has written on the early history of Jewish life in Vermont: ” ‘Members of this Book’: The Pinkas of Vermont’s First Jewish Congregation,” in The American Jewish Archives Journal (2008) and on Franz Rosenzweig: “ ‘My Cohen is a legend’: Franz Rosenzweig’s Introduction to Hermann Cohen’s Jewish Writings.” In Modern Jewish Theology (working title), edited by George Y. Kohler and Samuel Kessler, The Hague: Brill, 2025 (forthcoming, 42 pp.).
Professor Schine has been teaching at Middlebury since 1985 and is the first holder of the college’s endowed chair in Jewish Studies, the Curt C. and Else Silberman Chair in Jewish Studies. From 1997 to 2004, he served in the academic administration, first as Dean of Faculty and then as Vice Provost. From 2005 to 2011 he was Head of Brainerd Commons, one of the College’s five residential Commons in a twenty-five year long educational experiment, now defunct, in integrating academic and residential life. He has also served as chair of the Classics Department, Director of Middle East Studies and Director of Jewish Studies.
Courses Taught
HEBR 0500
Independent Study
Course Description
Independent Study
Approval required.
Terms Taught
JWST 1056
Confronting the Jewish Past
Course Description
Confronting the Jewish Past: A Tale of Two Cities
In this course we explore Jewish life in Berlin and Warsaw, its flourishing between the World Wars, its destruction in the Holocaust, and its revival in our times, focusing first on the history of Berlin and Warsaw Jewry: were Polish-Jewish immigrants to Berlin welcomed warmly as brothers or warily as strangers? Among German Jews, was their purported symbiosis with other Germans real or merely wishful thinking? Under Nazi rule how did the fate of the Jews of Berlin and Warsaw differ?
In a two-week study tour of Berlin and Warsaw, we will focus on history and memory. How do these two cities commemorate the annihilation of the Jews and reckon with their distinct share of responsibility? We will seek to understand the “memory-work” reflected in monuments and museums, and in the cityscape itself. Back in Vermont for the last week, we will reflect on contested memory and apply what we have learned to contemporary issues: how does the memory of the Jewish past in central Europe figure in the current politics of these two societies? How can it help us understand other societies struggling to cope with shameful histories of oppression, exploitation, and genocide?
By instructor approval only. Students who applied during the admissions process in October and were accepted to take this course may register.
Terms Taught
Requirements
PHIL 1073
Spinoza’s Critique of Religion
Course Description
Spinoza's Critique of Religion
What is the role of religion in a modern state? When religious freedoms collide with state interests, which should prevail? Spinoza rejected the authority of religion and the divine origin of Scripture, laying the groundwork for modern Biblical criticism and championing the separation of religion and state. A contemporary denounced the Treatise as “a book forged in hell.” We begin with a close reading of the Treatise, followed by selections from his Ethics and correspondence, and consider Spinoza’s long legacy: the rise of secularism, the origins of Biblical criticism, and the reasons why Spinoza has been called “the first modern Jew.”
Terms Taught
Requirements
RELI 0100
Introduction to Religion
Course Description
Introduction to Religion
Why is religion a significant element in human life and affairs? What roles does religion play in the lives of individuals and communities? And what is religion anyway? Drawing on Western and Asian traditions, we will take a comparative approach to these questions, examining how religious traditions can differ and converge. Throughout the course, we will introduce the basic vocabulary and analytical tools of the academic study of religion. We will also consider how both scholars and practitioners make sense of religion and debate its role in societies past and present. 3 hrs. lect./disc
Terms Taught
Requirements
RELI 0160
Jewish Traditions
Course Description
Jewish Traditions
“Traditions” are not static, but a constant interplay between continuity and creativity. What do classical Jewish texts (Bible, Rabbinic literature) tell us about Judaism’s origins? How have the core concepts and practices of Judaism morphed into a cluster of traditions that has endured over two millennia? With these questions in mind, we will study central ideas in Jewish thought, rituals, and their transformations, culminating in individual projects involving the investigation a contemporary movement, congregation or trend in contemporary Jewish life, e.g. Reform, Reconstructionism, mystical (neo-Kabbalistic) revivals, or “secular” Judaism. 3 hrs. lect./disc.
Terms Taught
Requirements
RELI 0261
Judaism in the Modern Era
Course Description
Jewish Thought and Culture: The Modern Era
Contemporary Jewish life poses many questions: why do many Jews say they are “Jewish, but not religious”? What is distinct about Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, and Ultra-Orthodox Judaism? What do the terms “Zionist” and “anti-Zionist Jew” mean? What is the place of the State of Israel in Jewish life? To answer these questions we will study the history of Jewish culture in the modern era: the Enlightenment critique of religion, Jewish-Christian relations, changes in Jewish practice, the revival of Hebrew, concepts of nationalism, assimilation and the problem of “Jewish politics.” Sources will include classical and modern texts, literature and art. 3 hrs. lect.
Terms Taught
Requirements
RELI 0264
Jews and Christians
Course Description
Jews and Christians: Conflict and Identity
“Urging a Jew to convert to Christianity is like advising a person to move upstairs while demolishing the ground floor.” This quip by Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786) epitomizes Christianity’s conflicted attitude to its Jewish origin, affirming it while rejecting it. Yet the relationship is not symmetrical, for the very reason that Judaism precedes Christianity. In this course we examine the fraught relationship between Christians and Jews from antiquity to the present. Readings include Church Fathers, rabbinic texts, polemics, theologians, as well as the Catholic declarations of Vatican II and modern interfaith dialogue. 3 hrs. lect./disc.
Terms Taught
Requirements
RELI 0388
Reading the Book of Job
Course Description
Reading the Book of Job
Why evil? Why do the innocent suffer? Why would God allow it? The Book of Job asked these questions millennia ago, giving not an answer, but at least a response. Framed by a prose tale on the patient Job, the book is mainly a debate between an impatient Job and his “friends” that has continued to our day, in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic thought. We will study the debate on the meaning of the book of Job in philosophy and religion, reading ancient, medieval and modern commentary (e.g. Maimonides, Kant, Voltaire) and literary responses to Job (e.g. Kafka, Robert Frost), Some familiarity with Biblical studies or philosophy of religion is helpful, but not required. 3 hrs. sem.
Terms Taught
Requirements
RELI 0389
"In the beginning": Genesis
Course Description
"In the beginning: Reading Genesis"
The book of Genesis is about origins: of humans, nature, family conflict and reconciliation, of war and moral confusion. It poses questions: why, having created the world (“and it was good”), does God seek to destroy it? Why does he command Abraham to kill his only son (Isaac)? We trace these and other questions from their biblical foundations through the Western tradition, examining their expression in religion, philosophy, literature and art. We probe the origins of Western ideas of human rights, of nature and the environment and of God. Readings range from the Bible and early Jewish and Christian texts to modern philosophical, psychological and feminist interpretations.
Terms Taught
Requirements
RELI 0500
Independent Research
Course Description
Independent Research
(Approval Required)
Terms Taught
RELI 0700
Senior Project in Religion
Course Description
Senior Project
(Approval Required)
Terms Taught
RELI 0701
Senior Thesis in Religion
Course Description
Senior Research for Honors Candidates
Approval required
Terms Taught
RELI 1043
Prophets and Politics
Course Description
Prophets and Politics
The prophets of ancient Israel cared less about predicting the future than about shaping it. Political pests, radicals, pacifists and protesters, they were diverse, agitating against the abuse of power, against poverty, economic inequality, and war crimes, long before these abuses were the rallying cries of modern political movements. We will read selections from the prophetic books (Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, I-II Samuel), as well as the writings of activists whom the prophets inspired: Martin Luther King, Abraham Joshua Heschel and Dorothy Day. Students will be challenged to write on the meaning of prophetic ethics for our own times.
Terms Taught
Requirements
RELI 1050
Martin Buber's World
Course Description
Martin Buber's World
Martin Buber (1878-1965) wrote in periods of political upheaval: in Europe at the turn of the century and after the trauma of WW I, during the Nazi dictatorship, and later in Palestine. Buber—a Zionist leader—was a proponent of a Jewish-Arab bi-national state. Settled in Jerusalem, he never ceased to work toward Arab-Jewish rapprochement. In Europe, Buber had sketched a vision of a “new society,” with a romantic suspicion of “institutions.” In his celebrated book I and Thou (1923), he argues that all “real life” is “relation,” dialogue with the “other.” In his Zionist politics, he abandoned his earlier utopianism for a politics of the possible. He also undertook a new translation of the Bible, concerned to preserve its Hebrew feel and cadence. Readings will include selections from his writings on philosophy, education, Bible translation, Hasidism, and politics.
Terms Taught
Requirements
RELI 1073
Spinoza’s Critique of Religion
Course Description
Spinoza's Critique of Religion
What is the role of religion in a modern state? When religious freedoms collide with state interests, which should prevail? Spinoza rejected the authority of religion and the divine origin of Scripture, laying the groundwork for modern Biblical criticism and championing the separation of religion and state. A contemporary denounced the Theological-Political Treatise as “a book forged in hell.” We begin with a close reading of the Treatise, followed by selections from his Ethics and correspondence, and consider Spinoza’s long legacy: the rise of secularism, the origins of Biblical criticism, and the reasons why Spinoza has been called “the first modern Jew.”
Terms Taught
Requirements
Academic Degrees
Kenyon College (BA, Religious Studies)
Universität Freiburg (MA, Major in Philosophy, Minor in Classics)
Graduate School of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (PhD, Jewish Philosophy).