Asking the Big Questions: The Talmud and the Good Life

How should I live? No one can answer that question for you — but you are not the first to ask it. This course mines Talmudic texts as a record of people arguing in public about what a human life is for. Through close reading, classroom dialogue, and small-group conversation, students will grapple with questions at the heart of the examined life: To whom am I answerable? What may I hope for? How should a good life feel? What do I do when I fail? What am I to make of suffering, and of death? Beginning each topic with the rabbis, we will also set them against voices they never met: Greek and Stoic philosophy, Christian, Muslim and Buddhist sources, and modern literary, autobiographical and cultural texts.  The course asks you not only to analyze positions but to develop them: through short reflective writings and a final essay, you will articulate your own working vision of a life worth living, together with a plan for continuing to refine it long after the semester ends. No prior background in Talmud is required.