Community
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| the sense of community at Brandeis is broad and deep. |
Brandeis supports numerous forums for dealing with the complex challenges facing Jewish communities today. Public conferences and lectures and print and Internet publications inform and help define issues, shape opinions and educate the public on the most significant Jewish topics of the day.
Perhaps even more significant than faculty’s contributions to this communal discussion is Brandeis’ work training future generations of Jewish researchers, writers and leaders. This is done through a broad spectrum of programs, ranging from summer sessions for high school youth and a new institute for Russian-speakers, to schooling for academics who are nurturing the growth of Jewish studies at many of the nation’s finest universities and professional administrators who are running a wide variety of major Jewish communal organizations.
Nurtured by a rich, diverse and vibrant Jewish life on campus, Brandeis-based programs serve and create a commitment to communal concerns in college and in the world beyond.
OPPORTUNITY
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| Brandeis students learn from leading international scholars. |
Whether students have no previous background in Jewish studies or have been immersed in them during pre-collegiate years, in Brandeis classes students learn to approach the study of texts, historical materials, and traditional societal values and behaviors from a critical and dispassionate perspective. Layer upon layer of complexity emerges in this truly open academic environment.
Brandeis students from traditional Christian and Jewish backgrounds, some of whom might be initially uncomfortable engaging theories of Biblical authorship, for example, come to understand critical historical and literary approaches to the texts as academic methods, rather than as claims to ultimate truths. Similarly, students learn to use historical and sociological research to understand the development of diverse religious civilizations.
Instruction in Hebrew is top quality, with a plethora of lively classes, and can be enhanced at summer institutes.
Students often supplement their coursework with internships and research positions in Brandeis centers and institutes for the study of Jewish education, demographic and social trends, philanthropy, European Jewry, anti-Jewishness and women’s and gender issues. Brandeis also has two major research centers that focus on contemporary issues in the Middle East in general and Israel in particular.
JUSTICE
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| Anna Hutt Fredman ’10, seated with book, participates in a discussion with Honduran children during Hillel’s Alternate Spring Break trip to Central America. |
Reinforced by the well-known Judaic concept of tikkun olam — the idea that humankind is charged morally with repairing the world — Brandeis has from its founding embraced the struggle for social justice. This focus and emphasis on social justice has long been a magnet for incoming students.
Faculty research and teaching about anti-Semitism, discrimination and hate speech encourage students to engage the injustices of the day.
Study of the Holocaust and its aftermath made Brandeis students active early in the campaign against genocide in Darfur. Many in Jewish studies take their tikkun olam obligation into communities surrounding the campus, becoming deeply involved in the Waltham Group, the University’s 42-year-old volunteer group serving local residents. Student organizations also focus on the Israeli-Palestinian struggle.
A large, active Hillel chapter regularly arranges alternative school-break trips, on which Hillel members undertake social-service missions to Latin America, Israel and the area devastated by Hurricane Katrina.