THE BEGINNINGS OF JUDAIC STUDIES IN AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES

Abstract

Among notable developments in American higher education over past generation has been emergence ofJudaic studies programs and departments throughout country. This is part of nationwide trend that has also spawned programs in such areas as black and women's studies and that is obviously connected to civil rights and feminist movements, as well as rising ethnic consciousness, that have played a dramatic role in American society over past several decades. However, growth of Judaic studies cannot be fully accounted for by same forces responsible for others, inasmuch as initiative has not usually come from within university communities themselves. The initial funding for Judaic studies programs has typically been external, resulting in a high proportion of endowed chairs in Judaic studies.' Although this clearly demonstrates Jewish community's desire for such programs and has ensured their survival even when analogous programs are being discontinued, it also reflects a lack of commitment on part of universities where they are housed. One indicator of discipline's success has been growth of Association for Jewish Studies (AJS), which began in 1969 with fortyseven members and now numbers over fifteen hundred.2 Even that number may be conservative, although it likely includes most of those whose training and interests are specifically rooted in Judaic studies rather than in other fields, such as history or literature. Although flowering ofJudaic studies programs was very much a product of 1960s and '70s, those within field usually trace its origins back forty years earlier to two towering figures, Salo Baron and Harry Austryn Wolfson. Baron, who was trained in Vienna, came to United States to teach at New York's Jewish Institute of Religion (JIR) before receiving what started out as a part-time appointment at Columbia. Wolfson, a Lithuanian Jew, studied at what is now Yeshiva University's Rabbi Isaac Elhanan Theological Seminary (RIETS) and received his academic training at Harvard where he joined faculty in early 1920s having also taught at JIR.3 The importance commonly attached to these figures is easily illustrated. For example, Bernard Cooperman writes that the first regular