Brandeis University’s Near Eastern and Judaic Studies Department–the first comprehensive Judaic Studies Department in any American university–has been awarded a $250,000 grant by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The funds will strengthen specific areas of Judaic studies at Brandeis and develop a program of active relationships with the general humanities. The grant covers a three-year period.
“Brandeis NEJS officers the largest and most comprehensive program of its kind in American higher education,” said department chairman Marvin Fox, the Philip W. Lown Professor of Jewish Philosophy. “Now, with this grant, we will have resources for new faculty in the fields of Talmudic literature and Hellenistic Judaism, adding important new dimensions to the existing strong offerings,” he continued.
Fox explained that the department will now be “fully equipped” to give extensive instruction in Talmud and in the history of the Second Commonwealth and the Hellenistic period. These will be coupled to existing courses in Bible, Jewish history, Jewish philosophy and thought. Hebrew literature and the sociology of the American Jewish community. The new program will focus on bringing together general humanistic learning and Judaic scholarship.
The National Endowment for the Humanities grant will underwrite development of new courses to be taught jointly by Judaic studies faculty and their counterparts in the departments of Classics, History and Philosophy and History of Ideas. Each course will be designed to bring together scholars from the humanities and from parallel areas of Judaic studies.
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