From the Director's Desk
Thanks for Making
the Goal a Reality
From the beginning, we’ve harbored the
grandest of ambitions for the Carolina Center for
Jewish Studies. Our goal was not only to create a
Jewish Studies program but to make Carolina
both a regional and national leader in the study of
Jewish history and culture. The announcement
of our major in this issue of 
News from the Center
is a historic milestone. Carolina is now the only
institution in the state of North Carolina where
students can pursue a comprehensive undergraduate
major in Jewish Studies—and one of just a
handful of institutions in the southeast where
students can make the study of Jewish history and
culture the centerpiece of their undergraduate
experience.
The administration of the university has
consistently supported the development of Jewish
Studies at all levels, and in less than a decade,
Jewish Studies has become an integral part of the
College of Arts and Sciences. Carolina alumni
and friends have also come out to support Jewish
Studies in ways we never could have dreamed of
10 years ago. Indeed, without the generosity of
our donors, we would never have been able to
build up the vibrant interdisciplinary program
we can all call our own today. Endowment gifts
to support new faculty positions, to sustain our
outreach program, and to support our teaching,
outreach and research missions have all been
instrumental in enabling us to create the type of
permanent foundation in Jewish Studies that
made the major possible. Annual giving has been
equally crucial in supporting our basic operations
and in securing broad-based support for Jewish
Studies among alumni and friends. Every gift
has made a difference. Please know how much
we appreciate your continued investment in the
future of Jewish Studies at Carolina!
With the major, we’ve clearly reached a landmark.
But for us here in Chapel Hill, the major in
Jewish Studies represents only the beginning, and
we couldn’t be more excited about our ambitious
plans for the future. Our new capstone course for
majors represents an important opportunity to
take undergraduate research in Jewish history
and culture to the next level, inside and outside
of the classroom. This course will rotate among
Jewish Studies faculty, many of whom are already
lining up to teach this seminar. As we continue to
bring in new Jewish Studies faculty, we attract
more and more graduate students interested in
making Jewish Studies an integral part of their
Ph.D. work. We look forward to the day when
Carolina will be known across the country for
both its distinguished undergraduate major and
its record of turning out the faculty members in
Jewish Studies that colleges and universities
across the country recruit for new positions.
At the most basic level, our mission involves not
just training students who specialize but making
Jewish Studies central to the undergraduate
experience at Carolina more generally, and we
look forward to continuing to expand our course
offerings and reaching more students every year—
even those who might take just one course or two.
Our outreach program is thriving, and we are
exploring the use of new media to share what
goes on in Chapel Hill with the rest of the state
and the world at large.
We have wonderful community lectures
planned for the fall. Adam Mendelsohn will be
giving the Margolis lecture, on Jews and the
Civil War, on September 19, and on November 14,
James Young will be giving the Eli Evans lecture
exploring the commemoration of the Holocaust in
Germany and the plans for the 9/11 memorial in
New York. If you’re in town, please come join us
and come celebrate all that we’ve accomplished
and hope to accomplish. Without your support,
it would never have been possible!
