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YIVO Trains Professors of Jewish Studies
By ESTHER EISEN
(Copyright 1971, JTA, Inc.)
(Miss Eisen is a free-lance writer and
researcher in the Jewish field, current-
ly studying at the YIVO Center for Ad-
vanced Jewish Studies.)
A large Southwestern university
recently wrote an urgent letter to
the YIVO Institute for Jewish Re-
search in New York. They were
ready, they said, to start a full-
fledged Jewish studies program in
the fall. The funds are available.
The students were interested. The
administration was a g r e e a
There was, however, one main
problem: who would direct and
teach the courses?
The answer that went back to
the university was indicative of
both the problem and of YIVO's
role in working toward its solu-
tion.
There were, at present, YIVO
answered, no qualified professors
available in. the country to teach
a number of key courses in such a
program. The few persons with
suitable background and knowledge
were tea ching elsewhere. But
Ylvo. through its newly estab-
lished Center for Advanced Jew-
ish Studies, was deeply involved
in training scholars and teachers
to meet the growing demand in the
field and was prepared to accept
someone from the university fa-
culty as a scholarship student in
its program.
This was by no means an iso-
lated case; the opposite is true.
In the past few years YIVO-
the main institution in the world
involved in research and educa-
tion in the history, ethnography
and languages of East European
Jewry—has become a clearing-
house for such problems and a
kind of think-tank for working
out their solutions.
Y.IVO is the only North Ameri-
can institution doing this kind of
work. No other institution in
America is able to provide educa-
tional resources in the four main
areas YIVO emphasizes: the his-
tory of the Jews in Eastern and
Central Europe, the Holocaust, the
mass immigration and settlement
of Jews in America and Yiddish
language, literature and folklore.
The present problem can be
viewed on its most obvious level
as one of supply and demand:
there is a growing demand for
Jewish studies programs at many
universities. But, as Shmuel Lapin,
YIVO's executive director, said at
a recent meeting of YIVO staff
and students:
"I don't know if you could find
10 qualified people in America to
teach courses in modern Jewish
history on a genuine scholarly
level. There are no people in this
field—nobody, ever trained them.
There is virtually nobody to teach
such courses except those people
now being trained."
The people at YIVO, an institu-
tion deeply involved with Jewish
education since its founding in
Vilna in 1925, view the problem
as that of a vicious cycle: few
Jewish studies teachers exist,
therefore, few students learn
Jewish studies, fewer still enter
into the field, and thus fewer
teachers exist.
What has resulted is that the col-
lege campus has become what one
communal leader called a "disas-
ter area" for Jewishness. Jewish
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students were and are the main
victims of this vicious circle.
Over the past few years, the
YIVO staff carefully worked out a
plan to break the cycle by train-
ing a dedicated and committed
group of highly qualified teachers
who would be able, in turn, to
teach Jewish students and involve
some of them in this field so that
they, in turn, could devote them-
selves to teaching Jewish studies.
The plan came to fruition in 1969
with the setting up of the YIVO
Center for Advanced Jewish Stu-
dies bearing the name of the late
Dr. Max Weinreich, one of the
founders of YIVO, whose brain-
child the center was.
The center's work is in two
main areas: 1) holding advanced
seminars led by leading scholars
on the history and literature of
East European Jewry for young
scholars workng or planning to
work in the field at any recog-
nized graduate school, and 2) mak-
ing available a panel of consultants
to students doing graduate work
in the field in universities unable
to provide them with such expert
guidance.
The center held its first two
seminars in the academic year of
1969-1970 with several dozen stu-
dents attending. The seven semi-
nars offered this year have at-
tracted even more students, some
from as far away as St. Louis.
The courses offered are: Mod-
ernist Trends in Yiddish litera-
ture, the Holocaust, the Nazi Ghet-
to as a Means of Genocide, Jews
in Poland between the Two World
Wars, Soviet Jewry — Problems of
Group Identity, Integration and
Alienation in a Communist Multi-
Ethnic System; Comparative Lan-
guages and Dialects of the Jews
and Society and Culture of the
Lower East Side of New York.
In addition, 21 students from in-
stitutions across the country are
currently doing doctoral work with
the assistance of YIVO consultants.
YIVO also has assisted several
universities in setting up ._oinfabs-
in Jewish studies.
In most universities todak,:'"his-
tory departments do not think Jew-
ish history exists" and a similar
attitude prevails with regard to
Yiddish literature, several YIVO
students told me. But the new in-
terest in Jewish studies on the part
of students and even young faculty
people is creating pressure for
change.
Dr. Solon Beinfield, an associate
professor of modern European his-
tory at Washington University in
St. Louis, who studied at the YIVO
Center, said:
"Whenever I reach that point in
my course where the Dreyfus Case
comes up, all of a sudden my lec-
ture hall is filled. Word gets around
and many young Jewish students
show up. Anti-Semitism is an issue
they are beginning to confront and
they want to learn more about it.
Similarly with lectures on the Nazi
period."
Prof. Tom Bird, director of the
scholars program and a member
of the new Jewish Studies Commit-
tee at Queens College, New York,
and a YIVO student. talked re-
cently about the effect of the
course he gave at his school on
Soviet Jewry:
"Eleven of the 17 students tak-
ing the course were indifferent to
their Jewishness or on the road to
assimilation. But after the course
many of them were saying, 'Here
the Jews in the Soviet Union who
have been really deprived of any
option to study Jewish history,
Hebrew, Yiddish, have come in
the last few years to feel such a
zealous and such a proud identity,
and I, with all these opportunities,
what have I done?' "
YIVO will proceed to plan care-
fully for such work, guided by what
Dr. Max Weinreich said before he
died in 1969: "For one principle
we will fight tooth and nail: we
will not settle for second-rate work
or mediocrity. With all our strength
we will fight for quality."
36 — Friday, April 9, 1971
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