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Meet The New Directors

William B. Helmreich		Mark W. Rosenblum
Director of the Center for Jewish Studies William B. Helmreich is Professor of Sociology and Judaic Studies at the City University Graduate Center and CCNY. He has also taught at Yale, Yeshiva, and Hebrew Universities. A former Woodrow Wilson Fellow, he is the author of 11 books, including Against All Odds: Holocaust Survivors and the Successful Lives They Made in America, winner of the 1992 National Jewish Book Award. His areas of interest include Jewish education, Holocaust, the Middle East, religion, history, and the study of prejudice. Professor Helmreich has written for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Newsday, as well as for scholarly journals. He has appeared frequently on radio and TV, including “Larry King Live,” “Oprah,” “The CBS Morning News,” and“Sally Jesse Raphael.” Most recently, he was a guest anchor on NBC TV. Currently, he is working on a book about the sociology of risk behavior, or, to put it another way, why people do stupid things.		Director of the Jewish Studies Program at Queens College Mark W. Rosenblum is Associate Professor of History and Director of the Michael Harrington Center, Queens College. The author of numerous scholarly and popular articles on his field of expertise, the Middle East, Professor Rosenblum has appeared as a Middle East analyst on CNN, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, and National Public Radio. He has met with virtually all the major players in the region, including Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, King Abdullah II, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. His project, “The Middle East and America: Clash of Civilizations or Meeting of Minds,” seeks modes of reconciliation for all interested in the Middle East, and recently won a major Ford Foundation grant. He was also one of two winners of an award in the field of Religion, Conflict, and Reconciliation by the Clinton Global Initiative. In 1999 the Forward newspaper named Professor Rosenblum as one of the 50 most influential American Jews, and in 2003 he received the Queens College President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Prospective As we prepare to build on the solid foundation that Professor Benny Kraut—with his boundless energy, imaginative programming, and bold leadership—has left us, we want to share a few of our ideas and potential new initiatives for the future. In the works is a possible Conference on the State of World Jewry. Suggested participants include Thomas Friedman, Bernard Lewis, Malcolm Hoenlein, John Ruskay, Norman Podhoretz, and Yossi Klein Halevi. Preliminary discussions have already been held with Tel Aviv University about a student exchange program. A chief component of the program would be to have Israeli students spend a year of study at Queens College, and, through courses, internships, and conferences, to have them learn about the American political system and how significant aspects of it might be usefully appropriated by Israel. Israel has had 32 governments in 58 years and there are growing calls among its leaders, led by President Moshe Katsav, for genuine reform and change. Also under consideration is the creation of a major center for the study of Bukharan and Persian Jewish history and culture. There are hundreds of students from these communities at Queens College, and its leaders have already been approached about the idea. Contacts have been initiated with scholars in Hispanic studies to explore the possibility study the relationships between the Jewish and Hispanic communities. Jews have had a long history of contacts with both Spain and Latin American countries and there are unique aspects of that experience worthy of further study. One example is that of Jews who found shelter during the Holocaust in the Dominican Republic, Cuba, and elsewhere. Another is the political ties forged between the communities in this coutry. The academic program in Jewish studies is also in the process of enriching its curriculum in Jewish ethics with the presence of renowned Jewish scholars, including Moshe Halbertal of Hebrew University. As the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel approaches, we have begun planning a special mini-course and series of lectures with some of Israel’s most distinguished statesmen and scholars, who will share their insights on the founding of their nation and the challenges it currently confronts. Potential participants include former President of Israel Yitzhak Navon and the former Defense Minister and Ambassador to the United States, Moshe Arens. If we can implement most or even some of these ideas, Jewish Studies on campus will have been substantially enriched. We very much look forward to addressing the challenges ahead, and to have our engaging and stimulating programs sustain or ignite your interest in Jewish Studies on this campus. We hope to greet you at Jewish Studies events in the future. Professor William B. Helmreich Director, Center for Jewish Studies Professor Mark W. Rosenblum Director, Jewish Studies Program

Retrospective Serving in these positions has been exciting, exhilarating, and, ultimately, exhausting. It has also been enormously fulfilling, and I will remain forever grateful to Queens College for having afforded me the opportunity to serve and lead the Jewish Studies endeavor on campus. As I reflect back on the numerous initiatives of the Center these last years, I take great pride in its accomplishments. (See pp. 25–28 for a complete list.) These resulted from the pursuit of a single vision: to embrace all the potential stakeholders— and staff, the broader community off campus, and the world of Judaica scholars nationally and internationally—in a common enterprise, and to provide each of these groups with points of access through which they could participate in our activities. I wanted Jewish Studies to be and to be perceived as a thriving academic and cultural center, one that is vibrant, dynamic, interesting, engaging, worthwhile, and open to all. All of my efforts these last years have focused on translating this vision into reality, and were animated by a single goal: to secure Jewish Studies at QC as a preeminent Jewish intellectual and cultural resource in the Queens/Long Island region, and beyond. I believe we have succeeded in that mission. That Jewish Studies has achieved what it has, that it has gained enormous credibility and visibility on and off campus, is due to the synergistic efforts of whole cadres of people. No one person can take full credit. I thank my superb faculty colleagues, nationally and internationally recognized scholars and award-winning teachers, without whose participation our interdisciplinary program and sense of intellectual community would flounder. I offer special thanks to those who more recently served as my informal advisory kitchen cabinet: Professors Thomas Bird, Elisheva Carlebach, Stuart Liebman, and Evan Zimroth. I thank our excellent students, without whom Jewish Studies on campus would be dull and uninspiring. I thank the QC administration and the college’s numerous academic and non-academic units without whose support every Center initiative would have been stillborn. I thank the voluntary lay Advisory Board of the Center, chaired so wonderfully by Arthur Anderman, without whose wisdom, work, and wealth the Center could not be sustained. I thank as well the public elected officials who help underwrite, and hence make possible, so many Center programs: State Assemblywoman Nettie Mayersohn, State Senators Frank Padavan and Toby Ann Stavisky, and City Council Representatives James Gennaro, Melinda Katz, and David Weprin. And I thank so very much all of you who attend our diverse programs and those of you who annually join our Friends of the Center group. The Center could simply not function without your participation and support. Finally, I express my deep gratitude to my two secretaries, Rita Shliselberg of the Center for Jewish Studies, and Pat Tortorici of the Jewish Studies Program. They are exceptional people who perform their jobs above and beyond the call of duty, with great love, dedication, and unwavering commitment to Jewish Studies at this college. In very large measure, the success of Jewish Studies at Queens College is their success. I will miss very much our sense of eamwork, our working, joking, and sharing good To my successors, Professors William Helmreich and Mark Rosenblum, all I can say is that I hope and trust that they will build on the existing foundation of Jewish Studies, without, however, feeling unduly constrained by what has been done in the past. I encourage them to stamp their own imprint on the Center and its academic program, to provide both units with their creative energy and acknowledged great talent, and to implement their own visions and dreams for the future of Jewish Studies on this campus. I wish them only the very best of luck and success. Judging by some of their ambitious plans noted in their Prospective (p. 5), the Center is in very good hands indeed. Enjoy this Culture & Arts Guide, which outlines many of the wonderful events already planned for the coming academic year, and which highlights some very special programs of the past year. I extend my very best wishes to all. Professor Benny Kraut Former Director Center for Jewish Studies and Jewish Studies Program