At Cal, a deep network of Jewish studies strengths
The significant expansion of Jewish studies programming and classes at U.C. Berkeley described in your article “Filling an ‘appetite for Jewish learning’” (April 12) is, indeed, a hugely important development for students on our campus.
At the same time, it should be made clear that this development has not arisen in a vacuum. Rather, it builds on and complements the university’s deep and ongoing strengths in the Jewish studies arena: notably, internationally preeminent and profoundly creative scholars and teachers in subjects including Hebrew literature and Bible (Robert Alter, Ron Hendel, Chana Kronfeld), rabbinics (Daniel Boyarin) and history (John Efron, Emily Gottreich, Erich Gruen, Martin Jay), among others, as well as longstanding leadership in training exceptional graduate students who themselves go on to teach new generations of Jewish studies students.
Thanks to the hard work over a number of years by the many faculty, students, and others involved in the university’s Jewish studies program (including its current chair, Jill Stoner), the Berkeley Institute for Jewish Law and Israeli Law, Economy and Society, and the Magnes Collection for Jewish Art and Life — as well as our neighbor and longstanding partner, the Center for Jewish Studies at the Graduate Theological Union — new networks are being built to share research, support students, bring speakers to campus and involve and support undergraduates in ways that make U.C. Berkeley a very exciting place to be.
Kenneth Bamberger
Professor of Law, U.C. Berkeley
Faculty Director, Berkeley Institute for Jewish Law and Israeli Law, Economy and Society
Yedidya Etzion
Graduate student, Near Eastern Religions
U.C. Berkeley
Poland is wrong location for Polish Jewish museum
I am writing about your April 26 cover story (“Building the dream: Poland’s new Museum of the History of Polish Jews”) and philanthropist Tad Taube’s April 19 op-ed (“This is our story: Museum of Polish Jewish history a symbol of renaissance”).
Who is going to visit this museum? Not Polish Jews. There are only 5,000 of them. Nor is it likely that the visitors will be Poles. A recent article in the Jerusalem Post indicated that 44 percent of Polish high school students polled would “not be happy to have a Jewish neighbor,” that 40 percent would not like to have a Jewish classmate, 60 percent would not like to have a Jewish partner and 45 percent would “not be happy” if they had a Jewish relative. (The poll also strongly suggested that even this generation of Poles refuses to acknowledge Poland’s anti-Semitic history.)
So the visitors to the museum, presumably, will be Jews like us. Earning foreign exchange for a country that has not actually grappled with, much less overcome, its terrible history of anti-Semitism does not strike me as a particularly good idea.
This museum belongs in Israel or the United States, where Polish Jews and their descendants live and, thankfully, flourish, not in Poland, which persecuted them.
Robert White | San Francisco