Our foundation is complete, and we have finished the complex mechanical and plumbing work needed in the “bunker” (in photo, at left)—a low, pre-existing building next to Brush that houses fire and water pumps and our main electrical panel. Work has begun on building the concrete pillars in the bunker that will help support the residence hall. Once these are complete, we should see the superstructure, or concrete frame, of the residence hall start to rise this spring.
Rabbi Mychal Springer, director of JTS’s Center for Pastoral Education, discusses “The New American Chaplaincy Boom,” in the Steinhardt Foundation’s Contact magazine.
Shira Epstein, assistant professor of Jewish Education at the William Davidson School, writes in the Jewish Week about the value of using the #MeToo campaign in education.
David Fishman, professor of Jewish History, won the 2017 National Jewish Book Award in the Holocaust category for The Book Smugglers: Partisans, Poets, and the Race to Save Jewish Treasures from the Nazis. Marjorie Lehman, associate professor of Talmud and Rabbinics, and Alan Mintz (z”l), the former Chana Kekst Professor of Jewish Literature, were named finalists in three other categories.
Dr. Fishman’s acclaimed book tells the story of the brave men and women of the Vilna ghetto who, while working under Nazi surveillance, risked their lives to smuggle and hide rare books, manuscripts, paintings, Torah scrolls, and other Jewish treasures. The book was also named as a finalist in the History category.
Associate Professor Marjorie Lehman was a finalist for two books, Mothers in the Jewish Cultural Imagination (with Jane L. Kanarek and Simon J. Bronner) and Learning to Read Talmud: What It Looks Like and How it Happens (with Jane L. Kanarek). The late Professor Alan Mintz (z”l) was a finalist for Ancestral Tales: Reading the Buczacz Stories of S.Y. Agnon. Professor Mintz, a longtime JTS scholar, died suddenly last year.
On the evening ofMay 23, we’ll honor the extraordinary architects of our 21st Century Campus, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, and the talented real estate professionals, Ira Schuman and David Carlos, who helped make the project possible. Please save the date for this special evening of “Celebrating Community and the JTS 21st Century Campus.” Invitations are coming soon.
The new dean of Columbia’s School of General Studies will be List College alumna Dr. Lisa Rosen-Metsch, who will partner with JTS in overseeing our Joint Program. As an alumna of the Joint Program between General Studies and JTS, Dr. Rosen-Metsch is uniquely prepared for this role.
Dr. Rosen-Metsch is currently the Stephen Smith Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health. She is an internationally recognized scholar in the prevention of HIV among populations with substance use disorders, and her research has helped to reshape national policy for the care and treatment of HIV.
Dr. Rosen-Metsch has had a deep love, knowledge, and commitment to the Joint Program—she met her husband, Ben Metsch (LC ’90), in the program—and she has supported List College in numerous ways over the years, through scholarship support, career advice, and as a mentor to one of our fellows in Jewish Social Entrepreneurship. Her dedication to our dual-degree mission and the overall mission of Columbia’s School of General Studies will ensure its future flourishing and will undoubtedly further enhance our students’ experience. We are excited to continue our relationship with her and look forward to collaborating with her as both List College and the School of General Studies go from strength to strength.
A Hanukkah email campaign targeting recent Rabbinical School alumni raised $16,000, thanks in part to a generous matching grant from several rabbis. The campaign reflects the development department’s ongoing efforts to boost alumni giving. We ran this special appeal alongside our overall Hanukkah outreach to alumni and donors.
The appeal to rabbis specifically targeted those who were eight years out of school—coinciding with the eight days of Hanukkah. We focused on this group because once we can convince younger alumni to make their first donation, they’re likely to do so again.
To jumpstart the process, we contacted several rabbinical alumni further on in their careers, asking if they’d contribute to a matching fund and put their names on the appeal. That way, we could tell younger alums that their older colleagues were “challenging” them to donate and would match their gifts. We received a wonderful response from these veteran rabbis, who agreed to match up to $8,000 from their colleagues.
We sent three appeals during Hanukkah, each with a slightly different focus but all ending with the tagline: “Become a rabbi who supports rabbis. Become a donor to JTS.” The approach worked. We raised a total of $16,000, we acquired new donors, and perhaps most important, we strengthened our engagement with both the rabbis who funded the challenge and the many we contacted personally to encourage participation.
A few statistics:
70 percent of the alumni matchers increased their gifts this year to be a part of the match
31 percent of those who graduated from 2010 to 2017 participated in the challenge
80 percent of the alumni either gave a new gift this year or increased their gift from last year, solely because of the challenge
As part of JTS’s commitment to bring Jewish learning to people everywhere, the department of Community Engagement has created live, online “mini-courses”— usually three hour-long sessions—during which a JTS professor teaches and interacts with students online. This fall, in response to the popularity of this kind of learning, we expanded the number of courses offered to a total of seven during the 2017-18 academic year. In addition, rather than limit some courses to rabbis, we opened all courses to anyone interested, while maintaining certain offerings for learners with a higher level of Jewish education. Among the courses this academic year, Professor Eitan Fishbane has taught about Kaballah, while Rabbi Judith Hauptman explored women in the Talmud. Next up: Rabbi Daniel Nevins, dean of the Rabbinical School, will teach “Halakhah in a Changing World: An Insider’s Guide to the Law Committee. “
Rabbinical and cantorial students spent part of their winter break exploring skills and approaches that will help them lead an American Jewish community growing increasingly divided on Israel. The Israel “mini-mester,” held jointly with students from HUC-JIR, exposed students to a variety of rabbinic voices on Israel and introduced them to a range of approaches they might take in teaching and leading on Israel in our communities.
Speakers included a roster of accomplished Jewish professionals: a college Hillel director, congregational rabbis, leading day school Israel educators, outreach leaders in the Israeli-American community, Chancellor Eisen of JTS, and Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the URJ. Rabbi Mychal Springer, director of JTS’s Center for Pastoral Education, facilitated an open dialogue about Israel among students.
The voices from the field gave students hands-on advice—on leading a congregation with divided views, on planning an Israel trip, on the value of holding nuanced conversations with day school students, and more. Speakers shared their personal “Israel stories” as well, offering insight into the ways successful leaders balance their personal views with their public roles.
Dr. Hillel Gruenberg, director of Israel Engagement at JTS and HUC-JIR, said students embraced the opportunity to reflect deeply and speak openly about the widely varying opinions they themselves hold and that exist within the North American Jewish community. “Ultimately, mini-mester showed them a variety of ways they can engage with Israel as American Jewish leaders,” said Gruenberg, who led the mini-mester with Rabbi Stephanie Ruskay, associate dean of the Rabbinical School. “It also illuminated ways students can draw on Israel engagement to strengthen and empower their communities here in America.”
