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Message from our Director,
Derek Penslar
William Lee Frost Professor of Jewish History
Department of History
Over the past year, Harvard has regained its pre-pandemic energy, and the Center for Jewish Studies has been a beehive of activity. The Center contributes to Harvard’s intellectual community and to Jewish Studies throughout the world in two distinct yet interrelated ways: first, there is the teaching and research carried out by our faculty, and second, there are our many visitors – lecturers, students, post-doctoral fellows, researchers, and professors. Taken together, the two groups make Harvard a global hub for the production and dissemination of scholarship, in Jewish Studies as in all fields. As we move towards the Center’s fiftieth anniversary in 2028, we look back on its achievements with pride, and we commit ourselves to meet the challenges of the moment in order to assure the Center’s future. With recent additions to our administrative staff and faculty Executive Committee, expanded Jewish Studies course offerings, and a bevy of public programs that are sponsored or co-sponsored by the Center, we have much to celebrate. But we also face challenges, and we hope in the years ahead to enhance our language programs in Hebrew and Yiddish and build on exciting initiatives like the recent introduction of Ladino into our curriculum.
The best advertisements for our Center are our students – their liveliness and creativity, their outstanding work, and the interpersonal bonds they form here that will endure throughout their lives. It is an honor and pleasure to direct this center towards its fiftieth anniversary and to raise it from its already enviable position to even higher ground.