ANN ARBOR

A gift
which
may total $3
million — will
give a needed
boost to U-M's
Judaic studies
program

The Judaic studies program's director, Professor Todd Endelman: "We'll be in the same league as Harvard and Yale."

Filling In The Middle

SUSAN LUDMER-GLIEBE

Special to The Jewish News

T

he University of Michigan is
completing negotiations for a
major bequest for the Program
in Judaic Studies. "It's a major, ma-
jor gift," says lbdd Endelman, direc-
tor of the program, who declined to
disclose the identity of the donor or
the amount of the gift until a formal
announcement is made.
The donation will be used by the
Judaic studies program to appoint
three full-time faculty positions over
the next three years. "It will allow us
to cover three areas we don't present-
ly have: rabbinic literature, medieval
Jewish history and classical Jewish
thought," Endelman says.
According to U-M's development
office, endowed chairs typically cost
around $1 million, so the gift could
total at least three times that.
The mystery gift is the latest in
a series of recent donations and gifts
that the program has received from
private sources. "This is a period in
which if you want to expand you have
to look outside the university,"
Endelman says.
For the past two years, the Judaic

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FRIDAY, OCTOBER 7, 1988

studies program has been actively but
quietly seeking such funding: from U-
M alumni all over the country, from
Jewish philanthropic organizations
and from other sources. And it has
paid off. The latest gift will allow the
program to continue to expand and
shore up its weakest points.
We've been strong in the modern
period and the biblical period, but the
middle has been missing," Endelman
explains.
The recent bequests mean that
the U-M program will grow quan-
titatively and qualitatively. "We'll be
in the same league as Harvard and
Yale," says Endelman, referring to two
institutions known for their Judaic
studies programs.
Although Hebrew and biblical
studies have been taught at the
University of Michigan since the late
19th century, it wasn't until the ear-
ly 1970s — with seed money from the
Jewish Welfare Federation of Detroit
and a lot of work by William Haber
— that the Program in Judaic Studies
was first introduced.
In 1976 it was granted indepen-
dent status, and today functions like
other interdepartmental inter-
disciplinary programs. "We pig-

gyback with other faculty and act as
the coordinating agency," says
Endleman, who is also a professor in
the department of history.
Course content and subject mat-
ter vary. Students can chose between
classes like "Jewish History of An-
cient Israel 1: From Abraham to the
Babylonian Exile," "Yiddish
Literature in Translation" and
"Israeli Society and Politics."
The University of Michigan is one
of about two dozen institutions across
the country that offer degree pro-
grams in Judaic studies. It is the on-
ly such school in Michigan, though
Michigan State and Wayne State
universities do offer some classes with
Jewish subject matter.
"The program has grown slowly
until recently," Edelman says.
In the past year or so, though,
there's been a noticeable increase in
interest. Anita Norich, who teaches
Yiddish, has filled classes and a
waiting list. "My classes are always
oversubscribed," says Joseph Weiler,
professor of international law at the
law school, who teaches a graduate
level class on the legal aspects of the
Arab-Israeli conflict.
Weiler and Norich's experiences

aren't unique. "Two years ago there
were 200 students in my class on the
history of the Holocaust," Endelman
says. "This year there are 380."
Class size isn't the only indication
of the growing attraction and status
of the program. "We don't compare to
Harvard which has a wonderful
Judaica library;" admits Barbara
Rosen, associate Judaica and
Hebraica librarian. "But we're
holding our own and growing."
According to Rosen, approximate-
ly 32,000 books in the Harlan Hat-
cher Graduate Library are in Yiddish
and Hebrew. Some 28,000 volumes of
related Judaic material fill out the
collection.
"We have a blanket order with an
Israeli book dealer," Rosen says. "We
get everything published in Israel in
certain areas like history, literature
and Jewish thought."
Rosen receives grants from foun-
dations, and from more intimate
sources as well. "I get a lot of gifts
from folks in Detroit and Ann Arbor
who don't know what to do with their
Yiddish books."
Though the program offers a con-
centration in Judaic studies, most of
the students attending its classes are

ea.