The Midwest Jewish Studies Association: The First Decade

The inaugural meeting of the Midwest Jewish Studies Association took place on September 24, 1989 at Spertus College (now Spertus Institute of Learning and Leadership) in Chicago. The plenary address was delivered by Professor Byron Sherwin on the topic “The Agenda of Jewish Studies.” This agenda-setting thought piece was followed by the drafting of the organization’s by-laws, and two academic sessions: one on Jewish literature from 200 BCE to 200 CE, and one on “Teaching Introductory Courses in Jewish Studies at the University Level.” Participants included all of the founding members: Sam Greengus (HUC-JIR), Peter Haas (Vanderbilt), Joe Haberer (Purdue), Saul Lerner (Purdue), Gilead Morahg (University of Wisconsin), Alexander Ringer (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), Sam Shermis (Purdue), Byron Sherwin (Spertus), and Gordon Young (Purdue).

The brief description above reflects several aspects of the MJSA which became part of its very DNA, so to speak. First, is the date itself, 1989. This date marks the time when Jewish/Judaic Studies in North America had reached an important stage in its development. Jewish/Judaic Studies was available at literally hundreds of academic institutions across North America, from small liberal arts colleges to major state universities. Second, of course, are the midwestern roots of its organizers. As one can see from the affiliations listed above, the Jewish Studies program at the Purdue University in West Lafayette, IN was the epicenter of the idea that there was a need for such an organization. Along these lines, it is not coincidental that Spertus not only became a major locus for the foundation of the association, but remained the source of vital support throughout its history. This reflects the maturation of Jewish/Judaic Studies outside of the major Jewish centers of the Northeast. Third, it should be pointed out the fully one half of the conference programming was dedicated to pedagogy. This is significant because it points to one of the foundational values of the association, namely to address the teaching needs of small programs that had very little support structure in the institution or in the surrounding community.

Although the academic study of Judaism in North America goes back in some sense to colonial times, it was invariably situated in the context of biblical or theological studies. It was only in the late nineteenth century that the study of Judaism moved out of Protestant theological contexts and into modern academic institutions. But outside of specifically Jewish institutions like Hebrew Union College (founded in 1875), the Jewish Theological Seminary (founded in 1887), and Brandeis University (founded in 1948), there were only a handful of scholars before World War II explicitly doing Jewish Studies at American Universities (notably Salo Baron at Columbia and Harry Austryn Wolfson at Harvard). The expansion of Jewish Studies as part of regular academic programming at public and private secular universities in North America began in the wake of World War II but witnessed its most impressive expansion in the 1960s and 1970s, along with the proliferation of other ethnic and “area” studies including Women Studies and African American Studies. The new reality of Jewish Studies received institutional recognition with the founding of the Association for Jewish Studies in 1969.

The almost explosive expansion of the 1960s was remarkable on a number of levels. Two aspects in particular should be pointed out because these were significant for the founding of the MSJA. One was that the vast bulk of the scholars who took up positions in the 1960s and 1970s were American born and American trained. This means that their training was not in the traditional yeshivas, nor in the Wissenschaftlich European tradition, but in the established academic disciplines of the modern American research university. Young Judaic Studies scholars had degrees in disciplines like anthropology, comparative literature, history, philosophy, and religious studies, and then applied the methods they learned to Jewish data. They thus brought a very different mindset to the study of Judaism and its cultures than did their predecessors. The other notable aspect was that many of the positions that were being filled were outside the northeastern centers of Jewish life...