Babette and Jay Tanenbaum have established a new distinguished professorship in Jewish Studies, providing an endowment that will support a tenure track faculty member who specializes in Jewish history and culture.

“We are very grateful to Babette and Jay Tanenbaum for their support of Jewish Studies at Carolina,” said Jonathan Hess, director. “Their support of our faculty will not only help us hire, or retain, an outstanding teacher and researcher, it will also have a lasting impact on Carolina’s future students.

Jay Tanenbaum, founder and president of Primus Capital LLC, a structured finance and investment company based in Atlanta, is former chair and current executive committee member of the The Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life (ISJL).

“My work with ISJL has fueled my interest in preserving the legacy and history of Jews in the American south and in developing programs and opportunities for Jewish communities throughout the south,” said Tanenbaum. “Having a strong Jewish Studies program at a leading public university, that just happens to be in the south, further strengthens this effort. It is my hope that our endowed chair helps Carolina continue to build its outstanding academic and community programs in Jewish Studies.”

Jay Tanenbaum’s great-grandfather immigrated from Sejny, Poland to Dumas, Arkansas in the 1890s, and three subsequent generations grew up in the small southern town. Babette’s family similarly made its way from Alsace to Mandeville, Louisiana. “My family’s story is repeated in countless other families throughout the south. I think it’s important that Jews settled across the country and became an important thread throughout the American tapestry,” added Tanenbaum. “We’re not alumni of Carolina, and we have no strong link to the campus, but when I learned of the Jewish Studies program, I thought it was doing vital work in contributing to this ongoing study of the Jewish experience in the American south.”

State funds provide basic faculty salaries for Carolina’s distinguished scholars while permanent endowed chair funds, created by philanthropic gifts, further support teaching and research. By creating a reliable source of annual support, endowed faculty chairs provide a powerful incentive to come to, and stay at, Carolina. This gift, in excess of $1 million, qualifies for a matching $500,000 grant from the State of North Carolina’s Distinguished Professors Endowment Trust Fund.

For more information on supporting the programs, faculty and students at the Carolina Center for Jewish Studies, please contact Margaret Costley at the Arts and Sciences Foundation: 919-843-0345 or margaret.costley@unc.edu.