"So what does introducing Jewish Studies do to the university culture?" Susannah Heschel, professor of Jewish Studies, asked her Jewish Studies 11 class, which focuses on the modern history and culture of Jews.
Assembled around a spacious seminar table in Reed Hall, the five students struggled to identify an answer. Does it change the nature of the curriculum? Undermine the basis of Western civilization? Add a new multiplicity to history? Change political realities?
"The aim of education used to make you a good Christian gentleman," Heschel told her students. Jewish Studies, she said, changes that.
The context was early 19th century Germany, when scholars began to develop a more concrete history of the Jewish people.
But the conversation might as well have been about a period two years ago. At that time, an alumni gave a large donation to create an academic center for Jewish culture, making Dartmouth the last Ivy League school to host a formal Jewish Studies program.
Since then, the program has experienced a growth unusual for special-focus departments at the College. Unlike the struggling Education and Speech programs that are scrambling with funding and College recognition, the Jewish Studies program is flourishing.
The program has two endowed chairs, remains well-financed and, as of 1998, offers a minor to interested students. Course enrollment, too, continues to grow. Some classes contain but a handful of students, others exceed 40 and most hover around 15.
"For our purposes now, we're doing very well," said professor of history Leo Spitzer, who served as former chair of the program. "We've been able to hire faculty and bring in visitors that we've wanted to. One can always say you want more, but I don't think we can be greedy at this point."
Why this sudden explosion of interest at Dartmouth?
For one, there are more Jewish students enrolled at the College now than ever before. And national trends -- with a growing emphasis on multiculturalism and a changing identity for American Jews -- are also at play.
"American Jews are now avidly searching for their heritage," professor of Hebrew Studies Lewis Glinert said.
"The generation who grew up before the second World War was concerned with establishing their right to religious freedom. The ones who grew up after the World War were more concerned with establishing themselves in their profession and in suburbia. But the children of those Jews who are now at college are more able to look for a sense of their heritage," he continued.
Despite the surge in interest, however, the program is still struggling to make itself known to more students.
"It needs better publicity," Heschel urged.
As the newest Jewish Studies department in the Ivy League, it is also among the smallest.
"We're still in the process of building, and we could be more successful and hope to be more successful," said Spitzer.
According to Glinert, the program's strengths in modern history and literature need to be complemented with more scholarship in classical and medieval Jewish history, Yiddish culture and Israeli society.
Back in Heschel's Jewish Studies 11 class, students spoke about their reasons for electing a Jewish Studies course.
"I've been looking to get more than a rabbinic perspective because I've been warped by it for 17 years," said Miriam Ingber '01.
Alexis Vagianos '01, who grew up with a Christian background, has different objectives for the course. "I guess I don't have a great grasp on Jewish origins, and what really intrigues me today is how people just came together and made a new nation, Israel, in such recent years," she said.
Gregory Frank '01 said he wanted to complement his knowledge of biblical and Holocaust history with a more comprehensive understanding of Jewish history in general.
After the students finished, Heschel continued her discussion on the history of Jewish Studies.
"In America [after WWII], Jewish Studies lost its radical impulse," she said. "Until the 1970s, there were only two university posts in the field, one at Harvard University and one at Columbia University.
"Then, in the 1970s, students began to agitate more," following the lead of other activist minority groups, she said. "And since the 1980s and 1990s, it's had increasing space in American universities."
