Gifts mark "rebirth" for Jewish Studies

DANIEL McCABE | "About a year and a half ago, we felt we were in serious danger," recalls Jewish studies professor Gershon Hundert. "Our department had gone from eight full-time professors to four. We found out that we would have to leave our building to make way for the new student services building. We felt quite exposed. I believed that we were on the path to oblivion."

Today the future looks considerably brighter for McGill's Department of Jewish Studies as it approaches its 30th anniversary, thanks to a pair of $1 million endowments.

Recent cutbacks and staff departures at McGill have been particularly rough on smaller departments like Jewish studies. Hundert and his colleagues, fearing for their department's fate, started soliciting support from members of Montreal's Jewish community.

The fruits of that effort were made public on Tuesday, when the department announced its two new endowments -- the Leanor and Alvin Segal Endowment for Jewish Studies and the Jack Cummings Memorial Endowment for Jewish Studies.

Both endowments are unrestricted, but Hundert knows exactly where much of the money is headed. "Certainly we'll use these endowments to build up our teaching staff -- that's urgently required."

The department received more good news recently. A bequest from the estate of the late Florenz Steinberg will be used to create a $150,000 library fund. The money will be used to purchase books and electronic materials for Jewish studies.

"This is almost the rebirth of a program," says Dean of Arts Carman Miller. "These gifts help to ensure that we'll always have a vibrant Jewish studies department in Montreal."

The department is the only one of its kind in Canada, and despite its weakened state, it still boasts an excellent reputation for teaching and research in a variety of areas such as Yiddish and Hebrew language and literature, Jewish history, Bible studies, Holocaust studies and Jewish thought. The department also runs a teacher training program for Jewish schools in collaboration with the Faculty of Education.

The influence of this small department has been profound. Ruth Wisse, a co-founder of the department, now at Harvard, is one of North America's most influential commentators on Judaism. Aaron Lansky, a graduate of the department, founded the National Yiddish Book Centre in the U.S., which boasts the largest collection of Yiddish books in the world. More recently, Lisa Grushcow, who minored in Jewish studies, won a Rhodes Scholarship.

Hundert says that one of the strengths of Jewish Studies has been its increasing commitment to an interdisciplinary approach to scholarship. For instance, a popular recent course on Jerusalem touched on a number of different themes, involving teachers from other departments such as art history and architecture.

Asked to describe a typical Jewish studies student, Hundert responds, "I don't think our students have any common characteristics -- including Jewishness." One former student, a franco-phone, went on to Columbia University and now teaches Yiddish in New York. Another non-Jewish student "became a Yiddish poet," says Hundert.

When asked why she and her husband Alvin made their contribution to Jewish studies, Leanor Segal recounted a tale about a recent meeting between the Dalai Lama and a group of rabbis.

"The Dalai Lama wanted to know the secret of how Jews had existed in exile so long and retained their culture. There is no secret, no mystery. When we see that something important appears to be dying, we go about the business of reviving it.

"When professors from the department came knocking on my door and told me how the department was dwindling, the red alert went on. I believe that the department is vital to McGill and it's vital to the Jewish community at large. Knowledge is enpowering," says Segal. "It sustains a culture and keeps it vibrant."

Steven Cummings heads a real estate and investment firm. Together with his mother Norma, his brother Richard and his sister Nancy Cummings Gold, he established an endowment to honour the memory of his father Jack, a McGill graduate. "The department looked vulnerable with all the cutbacks taking place," says Cummings. "It's a unique department, and we felt it was a jewel that should be nourished."

Hundert says the department plans to build more links to the Montreal Jewish community and that a department-sponsored conference, tentatively titled, "The academy reports to the community," is being organized to give people a sense of the research being done by top Jewish studies scholars.

"These gifts are dramatic statements of faith in the future, not only of the department and McGill, but of the [Jewish] community in Montreal," says Hundert.