A Vibrant Jewish Identity

Posen Grant supports the secular dimension of Judaic culture.

by Michelle Simmons

December 30, 2008

Andrea Lieber

Judaism—the faith, laws, rituals and practices—generally is considered to be the foundation for Jewish identity, yet most Jews today consider themselves secular. According to Andrea Lieber, associate professor of religion and the Sophia Ava Asbell Chair in Judaic Studies, that’s not a problem at all—in fact, Jewish secularism is deeply connected to the tradition. “The binary distinction between secular and religious is a false dichotomy,” she says. “Judaism permeates every aspect of life.”

At the forefront of efforts to expand what it means to be Jewish and reclaim a vibrant Jewish identity is the Center for Cultural Judaism, which oversees the Posen Foundation Program for the Study of Secular Jewish History and Culture.

Created in 2000, the program has partnered with 40 colleges and universities in the United States, Israel, Canada and Europe to teach the history of Jewish thought and culture, with an emphasis on the haskalah—a period of secularization that began in the 18th century known as the Jewish Enlightenment.

Because of its long history with the Judaic studies program, Dickinson was one of the first liberal-arts colleges in the United States to receive a grant from the Posen Foundation. In 2004, the college was awarded $150,000 over three years for the project, Jewish Secular Studies: Enriching the Jewish Studies Program at Dickinson College. Posen recently renewed the grant with an additional $150,000.

“The grant is about studying this really dramatic shift in Jewish thought post-Enlightenment,” says Myrna Baron, Posen Foundation executive director. “The majority of Jews in the world identify as secular, and not to study that would be to really miss the understanding of the largest majority of Jews.”

The grant, administered by Lieber, has helped support a highly successful series of faculty seminars, develop a core course in Jewish intellectual and cultural history and, since 2005, sponsor several events and speakers, including Daniel Mendelsohn, author of The Lost, a memoir about family members missing during the Holocaust.

The seminars drew interest from the German, Spanish, English, history, art history, music and American studies departments, leading to the incorporation of Jewish themes and issues into existing courses or the creation of new courses, such as Jewish Women Writers of Latin America by Rebecca Marquis, assistant professor of Spanish and Portuguese, and Critical Traditions in 20th-Century America: From the Frankfurt School to Cultural Studies by Cotten Seiler, associate professor of American studies.

“This grant has been really good for us; it’s made our Judaic studies program vibrant,” says Ted Merwin, assistant professor of religion and director of the Milton B. Asbell Center for Jewish Life, who developed and teaches the core course.

Assistant Professor of Political Science Ed Webb, who attended the faculty seminars, is especially interested in how secularism manifests itself at the nation/state level—from Turkey to Israel to Mexico—and is working on a new course, Comparative Secularisms. He notes that most people “conceive of secularism in narrow terms—as an absence of religion. If you conceive secularism as an absence you’re missing a lot. Most secularism has a content. It doesn’t look the same from one society to another.”

Citing Webb’s work as an example, Lieber notes that the grant “gives incentives—it allows other faculty to try something new, to include aspects of Judaism in their courses. The faculty seminars have served the important function of integrating Judaic studies into the broader liberal-arts curriculum.”

At the center of the grant is the 200-level core course taught by Merwin. The focus of the course is on Jewish philosophy and cultural identity, a companion to the standard Introduction to Judaism, a course generally about Judaism as a religion. According to Merwin, the two courses complement each other.

“Jewish students want to know—even if they’re not observant—about Judaism,” he says. The courses are not aimed solely at Jewish students, though.

According to Baron, the Dickinson project as envisioned by Lieber has been a model for other colleges and universities. “The advisory committee has been thrilled with how Dr. Lieber implemented programming through the original grant, to the point that we’ve even used her model to share with other institutions in the program—to direct other institutions to look at what Dr. Lieber has implemented.”

As a result, not only was Lieber recently invited to join the Posen advisory committee, the members of the committee overwhelmingly approved her renewal proposal, The Posen Project at Dickinson: Next Steps, for another three years, from 2009 to 2012.

The renewal grant will continue to support faculty seminars and development of new courses, as well as underwrite the redesign of the core course to a 100-level one. Merwin is retooling and renaming the course as Jewish Identity in a Secular Age: The Genesis of Cultural Judaism to more closely align it with the Introduction to Judaism course.

Plans also are in place to globalize the program by offering for-credit study-abroad possibilities, bringing a full-time visiting scholar from an Israeli university here and expanding Dickinson’s already close ties with Latin America through a study trip focusing on secular Jewish culture there.

Campus events and initiatives also are included as part of the grant renewal. Lieber will launch a series of programs—from brown-bag lunchtime conversations to large-scale public lectures—that address contemporary concerns as well as pre-modern roots of Jewish secularism.

According to Lieber, one especially exciting aspect of the grant renewal will connect a growing interest in Jewish environmentalism with the college’s sustainability initiative. “There’s a hip Jewish movement, a blend of the religious with environmentalism. Much of the Jewish sustainability movement hinges on a secularization of core religious principles,” she says.

Lieber would like to connect with the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies in Israel and bring a visiting scholar to teach and organize programming that would bring together faculty from Judaic and Middle East studies with those in environmental studies and sciences.

In the meantime, Lieber is busy with the final components of the original grant and has on tap two significant events this winter and spring. On Feb. 5, performance artist Dan Fishback will bring his “playless reading,” The Last Chanukah, to Dickinson; April 5 will see Two Men Talking, an improv piece by Afrikaners Murray Nossel and Paul Browne that has been performed in South Africa, England, Scotland, Canada and Australia. Both performances grapple with the interplay of multiple identities, with Jewishness as one integral thread.

Lieber is pleased with how the program has come together at Dickinson and anticipates continuing the conversation. “This grant shows that a secular identity is part of the Jewish tradition. A lot of students are seeking some form of spirituality in their classes, and this gives them a safe environment for learning,” she says. “The intellectual tradition is a source for secular spirituality—their engagement is a spiritual act.”