The Selling of Jewish Studies
Neusner, Jacob
Harvard asks for $15 million. Columbia asks for $7.5 million. And elsewhere, colleges and universities ask for millions more. Desperate for new sources of endowment, universities come to Jewish...
...First is educational achievement...
...As a result manuscripts, including carefully constructed dissertations and important monographs by mature scholars, do not easily find their way into print...
...In what ways has your faculty contributed in the past to the knowledge of Judaism, or the understanding of Jewish history, literature, or society today...
...Let me start with a visit I paid to a small college in Pennsylvania, Franklin and Marshall, about ten years ago...
...Jewish money might be laundered—made more American—in a few particularly liberal places...
...Once people reach the dissertation-stage, they are able to turn to the National Foundation for Jewish Culture...
...But as proud and self-respecting people we must also follow the example of the Federal Government and take seriously those intangible treasures of the spirit even now languishing in our midst...
...What achievements in the study of Judaism are you able to put forward as evidence that a major, endowed chair should now come forth in response to demonstrated competence and even excellence...
...How do they use this time...
...The National Foundation for Jewish Culture, created in part to deal with the academic agenda, has foundered, never receiving much support, rarely deserving more support than it received...
...Endowments are meant to make a lasting impact upon the formation of a field and upon the shape of learning in the academic community outside of one's own university and in other fields within one's own university—a tall order, but millions of dollars for endowment are also a tall order...
...It is another to neglect those solid achievements already in hand...
...They are not available...
...What for...
...JACOB NEUSNER So too with universities: Why you...
...Now that libraries' acquisitions-budgets are less ample, even purchases in academic collections tend to be limited...
...But one looks in vain for concrete facts to accompany these claims, facts about today, not about what a now retired or deceased professor accomplished, with remarkably little support or recognition from the university which now glories in his name...
...Meanwhile a sizable list of problems awaits attention, and money will not solve them until a policy exists to deal with them...
...Who would take such a position who also should have ifl Very few people of such distinction as to deserve endowed professorships were then (or are now) available...
...Why now...
...Right now, there is no communal source for fellowships in Jewish learning...
...It is reasonable to ask why we should invest money in a company, with its particular management, record of earnings, and prospects...
...But there is no S.E.C...
...Second is scholarly achievement...
...The latter are bypassed in silence, as if they were not at Harvard at all...
...Achievement comes in several distinct forms...
...Desperate for new sources of endowment, universities come to Jewish philanthropists and even to the organized Jewish community with proposals of grandiose programs, departments, professorships, of Jewish studies...
...We have yet to see important achievements in the field as a whole...
...Should the organized Jewish community or Jewish philanthropists as individuals respond to current and future drives...
...But in general, universities didn't want our children, our money, or our culture, in approximately that rising order of disdain...
...It is one thing to ask for signs of solid achievement...
...What place does this learning have in the student's growth to maturity in thinking and understanding...
...We need a cogent and thoughtful policy to help the organized community and individual philanthropists form opinions and make decisions on the needs of the hour and on the proper demands, laid before us even now, in behalf of the future...
...Is it possible that those same Jews who form the cadres of leadership in institutions of music, art, drama, and literature in North America are wholly closed to the requirements of Jewish culture, including its scholarly component...
...Since all of us believe that there is a viable and interesting future for Jews in North America, we have also to lay foundations for a viable and interesting intellectual and cultural life for those coming generations...
...Third is contribution to the academic community at large...
...Still, there are a few areas in which modest sums will do no harm: —It is time for the Jewish community to consider how it will support those young men and women who wish to devote their lives to the academic pursuit of Jewish learning in its diverse disciplines...
...Does your university now have a program in some aspect of the diverse fields of Jewish studies...
...But before that time, how they support themselves and secure opportunities to study abroad and at one or more universities at home, as is often needed, is their own problem...
...How are we to respond to the new situation...
...But that is how matters now appear...
...Let us savor the moment...
...The organized Jewish community has not fully worked out a policy and a program for universities and for Jewish scholarship...
...The great anthropologist Adolf E. Jensen remarks, "The spiritual creations of Western culture—religions, great works of art, the Geisteswis-senschaften for example—know of no such practical purposes...
...What educational goal stands behind the diverse courses you now offer...
...It is time for the Jewish community to decide whether or not it has a stake in on-going scholarly research...
...The most impressive items in the universities' vast demands for Jewish money are the grandiose claims and the inflated self-praise in the printed literature...
...At that time I was asked to "help plan" a program in the study of Judaism within the DeJacob Neusner, University Professor, Professor of Religious Studies and the Ungerleider Distinguished Scholar of Religious Studies at Brown University, is a contributing editor of moment...
...THE SELLING OF JEWISH STUDIES partment of Religion...
...And if so, on what basis and for what purpose...
...What does a student learn who completes your program of studies...
...I quickly discovered that my "help" was supposed to consist of advising the college's "development officer" (fund raiser) on how to approach Jewish donors and foundations...
...Granted, scholarly expression takes many forms...
...The field is young, and the people in it mainly beginning their time of creativity and generativity...
...My answer was that if I were asked whether or not a philanthropist with money to spend for Jewish studies should give it for an endowed chair at Franklin and Marshall, my advice would be: Whatever for...
...Not too many years ago the universities would not take our money when we tried to give it to them for Jewish studies...
...But surely there are significant ways to contribute to learning, if not in books, then in articles, if not in writing, then in important lectures at learned society meetings or in other universities, and above all, in the minds of students...
...If they teach two or three courses a term, as most do, then they have a sizable block of time reserved for reading, thinking, reflecting, and writing...
...What influence have you had, whether positive or negative, upon the definition of the subject, the way it is taught, and the manner in which scholarly projects are worked out...
...And the answers must include attention to solid achievement...
...Harvard's search for $15 million rests in its literature mainly upon the achievements of Harry Wolf-son...
...Columbia wants $7.5 million, but Columbia has yet to fill permanently the chair occupied with remarkable distinction for so many years by Salo Baron...
...If you do have a program, tell me about its courses and, of greater importance, the shape of its curriculum...
...If not, why not start one and show us what you can do before you ask us to bear the burden of its future...
...I simply do not believe that the leadership of the organized community is indifferent to anything which is not practical or which has no Israeli angle...
...These rarely are able to pay their own way, since, in the nature of things, the audience is small...
...Are we proud that the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts presently invest vast sums in Jewish scholarship and culture, while the Jewish communities starve the institutions of Jewish learning—seminaries, colleges of education, and the like—and treat with callous indifference the achievements of Jewish learning...
...I think that, as proud and self-respecting people, we have every right to expect universities to justify their gargantuan appetites for Jewish money and Jewish learning...
...In what ways has your program in Jewish learning had its impact (even if in negative ways, through experiments that have not worked) upon the formation of the larger field of Jewish learning...
...More important, if an endowed chair is to be created, why should it be at that particular college...
...Professors have the time to increase their knowledge and to contribute to what we know about their subjects...
...The college had in mind nothing short of an endowed professorship, which cost $500,000...
...It is time for the Jewish community to ask how the results of scholarly work are to be disseminated...
...This is what I would tell the Jewish community and Jewish philanthropists to ask those who come with vast and inflated claims on Jewish support...
...But its literature is remarkably reticent about its present resources in Judaic studies, as pursued both by Jewish professors of Jewish studies and by non-Jewish professors of Jewish studies...
...Is your university a center for scholarly achievement...
...No one would take seriously a stock-issue whose red herring excluded all reference to current problems awaiting attention and solution...
...Remarkably small sums can both solve this problem and provide for copies of scholarly books to be placed in Jewish community libraries...
...to supervise the business of learning, nor does a Pure Food and Drug Act, or a Truth in Advertising Act, govern the solicitations of universities...
Vol. 3 • March 1978 • No. 4
