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Message: <br /><br /> If you are having trouble reading this email, you may view this article online at: http://www.jweekly.com/58800/full/58800/jewish-studies-program-gets-major-boost-at-santa-cruz/ <br /><br /> <b>Students can now major in Jewish studies at U.C. Santa Cruz</b> <br /> Thursday, July 29, 2010 | by dan pine <br /><br /><p>Starting this fall, some students at U.C. Santa Cruz will have a snappy new answer to the age-old question, “What’s your major?”</p> <p>Jewish studies has joined physics, sociology and computer science as an undergraduate discipline at the Santa Cruz campus.</p> <p>“We’re excited about the major,” says Nathaniel Deutsch, one of more than 20 principal and affiliated professors in the department. “The university gave us a vote of confidence at a time when there’s a financial crisis affecting the U.C. system, but they realize Jewish studies is a vibrant and growing program at Santa Cruz.”</p> <p> </p> <div class="capDivLeft" style="width: 126px;"><img alt="BAsanta cruz Deutsch, Nathaniel" class="left" height="166" src="/images/uploads/y_photos_2010/v07_30_10/BAsanta cruz Deutsch, Nathaniel.jpg" title="Nathaniel Deutsch" width="126" /> <div class="caption">Nathaniel Deutsch</div> </div> The program touches on a broad spectrum of Jewish topics, including literature, art, history, ethics and philosophy. Students may take courses in Yiddish language, Hebrew (modern and biblical), Israeli history, Holocaust and American Jewish history, as well as Deutsch’s seminars on the shtetl and the Bible. <p> </p> <p>There’s even a class on the history of sin.</p> <p>“The number of courses is substantial,” Deutsch says. “We have also put on lot of events, such as conferences and lectures, which have raised the profile of Jewish studies.”</p> <p>Elevating Jewish studies from a minor to a major did not happen overnight.</p> <p>The buildup took years, with Murray Baumgarten taking the lead. A longtime professor of English literature, Baumgarten is also a Jewish history scholar. Deutsch credits his efforts over the years with developing the program at Santa Cruz.</p> <p>It started with a Holocaust course Baumgarten taught in the 1980s. From there, various foundations and donors contributed to the cause, among them the Helen Diller Family Foundation, the Koret Foundation and the David B. Gold Foundation. U.C. trustee Anne Neufeld Levin, a Holocaust refugee, endowed a chair in Holocaust studies at the campus.</p> <p>How did the evergreen-lined hills of Santa Cruz end up a magnet for a program like this? Deutsch says his university has always had a surprisingly large Jewish population among the student body of 16,000.</p> <p>“I think it has the largest proportion of any in the U.C. system,” he says. “Santa Cruz is a campus that attracts young people interested in questions of identity and culture. They see Jewish studies as a way to explore that.”</p> <p>Deutsch notes that non-Jewish students also have signed up for the courses, with even the Yiddish classes overenrolled.</p> <p>Another factor may be the relative calm on campus regarding Israel. Whereas Israeli-Palestinian politics is a hot-button issue at U.C. Berkeley and San Francisco State University, all’s quiet in Santa Cruz.</p> <p>“Since I’ve been here it’s not turned into a major public issue,” Deutsch observes. “I think it’s in part because of the strength of the Jewish studies program. People often have a telescopic view —some become obsessed with the issue without seeing how it fits into very complex modern Jewish history and politics.”</p> <p>Deutsch, 42, earned his doctorate at the University of Chicago, but his love of Jewish history, religion and lore long predates that. His father came from a strictly Orthodox Hungarian family, while his mother grew up in a secular Labor Zionist household.</p> <p>“It gave me a sense of the riches of the world Jewish community,” he says, “and helped me interact and understand the perspectives of Jews from different backgrounds.”</p> <p>He tries to bring Jewish tradition into his Santa Cruz classroom, so a scholarly course on the Hebrew Bible shares something with classic midrash.</p> <p>“To me, that’s so fundamental,” he adds. “One of the contributions Judaism has made is in ways of reading and interacting with texts, making them come alive.”</p> <p>He also stresses to students that classic Jewish texts were not written by any one person, nor were they meant to be studied alone. He calls them “collective enterprises.”</p> <p>Nevertheless, should Deutsch ever find himself torn from his classroom, his university and all he holds dear, he knows what he would need to survive.</p> <p>“If I were on a desert island and I could have only one text,” he says, “it would be the Hebrew Bible.”</p> <p><br />For information about U.C. Santa Cruz’s <strong>Jewish studies program</strong>, visit JewishStudies.ucsc.edu.</p>

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