The Jewish Theological Seminary of America has announced plans for an $18 million building and campus expansion and renovation program which will include the construction of a library to replace the one destroyed in 1966. The ground-breaking ceremony for the library complex will take place Nov. 2, and the completion of the building program is expected in 1983.
Dr. Gerson Cohen, Chancellor of the Semi-nary, recalled that the Seminary, which is the center of Conservative Judaism in the United States, was founded 94 years ago during the mass immigration to this country of Jews from Eastern Europe. The present three structures, dedicated in 1930. were originally designed to accommodate 30 rabbinical students and 20 undergraduates. There are presently more than 500 students and a faculty of 150.
In addition, Cohen said, the Seminary today is the headquarters for Romah, a national camping movement, the Eternal Light and other regular programs on radio and television, extensive intergroup activities, and many outreach programs serving the more than 800 congregations and 200,000 families affiliated with the Conservative Movement in American Judaism.
According to Cohen, the new library complex will rehouse the library and provide classrooms, studies and offices for the many national programs emanating from the Seminary. The library will provide space for the Seminary’s priceless collection of Judaica and the complex itself will almost double the space available on the Seminary’s Morning side Heights campus.
The new construction will add 108,000 gross feet of space to the existing 137,640 square feet and thus accommodate the five Seminary schools and those activities for which no provision was made in the original buildings which were designed primarily for the training of rabbis.
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PROGRAM
Discussing the significance of the present decision to build, Cohen said that in his view his colleagues on the administration and the board of the Seminary, in assuming this responsibility, were demonstrating courage and vision comparable to that of the Seminary’s founders. “Just as the Seminary founders served the needs of the immigrants a century ago,” Cohen explained, “our leadership today is responding to the different demands of the present generation.”
The new building, the Chancellor continued, will also enable the institution to continue and expand its contribution to scholarship. “One of the stated purposes of the Seminary founders was to establish Jewish studies as a significant component on the agenda of world scholarship, ” he said. “Today there are some 200 departments of Judaica in as many colleges and universities — striking testimony to their success.”
More than half of the faculty in these departments is comprised of Seminary graduates, Cohen noted. Modem library facilities on the campus, increasing the accessibility of the unique collections in this specialized field, will be a valuable service both to these professors and to their students, he added, “Indeed,” he concluded, “the destruction in this century of the Eastern European centers of Jewish learning has given special significance to the Seminary as the training ground for scholars in this tradition.”
The new library complex and the subsequent extensive renovation of the three existing buildings, have been designed by Gruzen and Partners, one of the architectural firms invited by the Seminary in 1975 to analyze its building needs and submit detailed designs. Gruzen and Partners’ winning scheme was chosen on the basis of its imaginative design, creating a new campus environment.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
