The Richard S. Dinner Center for Jewish Studies — part of the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley — has been awarded a five-year grant of $500,000 from the Koret Foundation and a three-year grant of $75,000 from the Taube Foundation for Jewish Life and Culture, the GTU announced last week.
Both foundations are based in the Bay Area.
The Koret grant was awarded under the foundation’s Jewish Peoplehood Initiative. It will help expand the center’s educational and public program offerings while also underwriting faculty and staff positions, the GTU noted in a press release.
“With this generous, long-term grant, we can focus our attention on immersing ourselves in the texts of Jewish tradition,” Naomi Seidman, director of the Dinner center, said in the release. “We can also bring teachers to our campus, for our classes and for public programs. We can deliver on the promise to combine rigorous scholarship and a real engagement with the issues that face the Jewish community, and the world, today.”
The three-year grant from the Taube Foundation will provide operating support for the center in its continuing study of Jewish history, culture and literature, Seidman added.