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The Jewish Studies Program at the University of Maryland
encourages research and provides instruction about the rich
history and culture of the Jewish people from earliest times
to the present day. Dedicated to the highest standards of
scholarship, the program offers a wide array of courses
in Hebrew Language and Literature, Jewish History, Bible,
Rabbinics, Jewish Philosophy, and Yiddish Language and Literature.
These courses, offered by a faculty renowned for its scholarly
and teaching excellence, form one of the largest undergraduate
Jewish Studies programs in North America. Every semester
between 500 and 600 students enroll in Jewish Studies courses.
In addition, the Jewish Studies program supports faculty
research projects and organizes frequent academic conferences
and lectures in order to bring the fruits of scholarship
to a wider public.
 A History
The University of Maryland has offered Hebrew language instruction
since the late 1940s, but a formal Jewish Studies program
was instituted only in 1974 when philanthropist Joseph Meyerhoff
and the Associated Jewish Charities of Baltimore endowed
the Louis L. Kaplan Chair in Jewish History. Responding
to increased student interest, the University created several
faculty positions in Jewish Studies. In 1980, a challenge
grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and
a gift from Harvey M. Meyerhoff created the Harvey M. Meyerhoff
Chair in Jewish History as well as the Joseph and Rebecca
Meyerhoff Center for Jewish Studies. The following year,
Robert H. Smith, a Jewish philanthropist in the Washington
area, endowed a third chair in Jewish Studies. With three
endowed professorships and several state-supported faculty
lines, the Jewish Studies program was in an excellent position
to offer a full complement of courses.
Originally, the faculty organized Jewish Studies as an
interdisciplinary program rather than a separate department.
Faculty received appointments in the academic departments
that most closely matched their disciplines and taught courses
in those departments, particularly in the departments of
History, Hebrew and East Asian Languages and Literatures,
Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures, Women's Studies,
and English. Such an arrangement allowed faculty the opportunity
for intellectual community with people in their own disciplines
as well as with other scholars in Jewish Studies.
In the early 1990s, the Jewish Studies program underwent
reorganization. The program was still committed to the interdisciplinary
nature of Jewish Studies and to the need of faculty to find
an intellectual home in a university department. At the
same time, the faculty decided to make Jewish Studies more
visible. Several positions were reconfigured as joint appointments
between Jewish Studies and another department. Jewish Studies
obtained its own rubric—JWST—in the University’s
Catalogue of Courses and Schedule of Classes. As a result,
all Jewish Studies courses offered by the departments of
History, Philosophy, English, Women’s Studies, Germanic
Studies, and Asian and East European Languages and Literatures
are now cross-listed as Jewish Studies courses, and Jewish
Studies offers its own courses as well.
In addition to building and expanding the curriculum, the
Jewish Studies faculty also work together under the aegis
of the Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Center for Jewish Studies
to create an intellectual community both on campus and in
the Baltimore-Washington area. The Center sponsors regular
conferences, seminars, and lectures, which bring scholars
from all over the world to engage in scholarly debate. These
conferences and symposia have made the University of Maryland
a center for intellectual inquiry about Jews and Judaism.
The Center also has enlarged the community of Jewish scholarship
on campus by arranging for visiting scholars, faculty, and
fellows, and by appointing as affiliate members regular
university faculty who sometimes do research on the Jews
and Jewish culture.
The Meyerhoff Center has been able to fulfill its scholarly
mission because of the gracious bequests of prominent local
philanthropists, many of whom have provided funds for faculty
research and travel to scholarly conferences. Others have
provided scholarships for students to study in Israel. Still
others have provided funds to build a substantial Judaica
collection in the library to meet teaching and research
needs. In particular, the Joseph Meyerhoff Family Charitable
Funds in Baltimore has generously supported all of the programs
of the Center, providing it with another large endowment
in 1992.
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