Hampshire College

The academic study of Jewish history, literature, and culture goes back to the early years of Hampshire College. In 1973, a group of students helped to organize the nation’s first college course on the Holocaust, “Thinking the Unthinkable.”

One alumnus of that course, co-organizer Aaron Lansky, went on to found the National Yiddish Book Center, now the world’s largest collection of Yiddish books and located adjacent to the Hampshire campus. Students of Jewish Studies may focus on a specific aspect of Jewish culture, religion, or history, or explore the unique position of Jews within any number of academic interests including ethnic studies, urban studies, American studies, or art history.

Recent Hampshire students have investigated these links through academic research, creative writing, and photography.

Sample First-Year Course
The Rise of Secular Jewish Culture
Jewishness has always involved more than religion. Jewish identity, even in the pre-modern world, was expressed through language, work, music, food, and other cultural behaviors. Modernity brought with it even more possibilities, and a sense of radically different political, cultural, and artistic Jewish identities beyond religion began to emerge. This interdisciplinary course draws upon history, literature, political philosophy, and sociology in tracing the rise of a pluralistic, multifaceted modern Jewish culture in Europe and the U.S. between the seventeenth century and the Second World War. We begin with Spinoza, the most significant “heretical” Jewish thinker in the seventeenth century, and continue through the European Enlightenment, the rise of modern Jewish nationalist movements, and the emergence of secular Yiddish and Hebrew literature. Finally, we will address the crisis of Jewish modernity provoked by the Holocaust, and briefly survey secular Jewish identities today.

Facilities and Resources
In recent years, the pursuit of Jewish Studies at Hampshire has been made possible through the generosity of the Jeremiah Kaplan Family Foundation, which has funded undergraduate grants, a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Modern Jewish Studies and a Visiting Assistant Professorship in American Jewish Literature. In conjunction with the National Yiddish Book Center, the Kaplan Foundation has also provided support for on-campus conferences on “Rethinking the Holocaust” and “Contemporary Jewish Creativity.”

Beginning in the 2007-2008 academic year, Hampshire College has been awarded a grant from the Posen Foundation’s Center for Cultural Judaism for the development of courses and programs in the study of secular Jewish culture and history.

Located on Hampshire campus, the National Yiddish Book Center creates innovative programs to inspire readers and students who want to learn more about Jewish history and culture. The Center’s internship program has given dozens of students a valuable foundation for notable careers in the fields of Jewish Studies and education. Yiddish book scholarships have supported undergraduates, graduates, readers and teachers in their ongoing study of Yiddish literature. The Center also offers events and conferences for college students, focusing on Jewish literature and culture.
In the past few years, noted scholars and writers have visited Hampshire, including American literature scholar Eric Sundquist, Yiddish literature scholar Jeffrey Shandler, and novelist and essayist E.L. Doctorow, giving a lecture entitled “Religion and Literature.”

Jewish life at the Five Colleges is diverse. The Hillel Foundation operates on three campuses (Amherst College, Smith College, and the University of Massachusetts). At Hampshire, (as well as at Mount Holyoke), students have organized an independent Jewish Students Union. There is a Kosher apartment on campus that is organized and maintained by students who choose to keep Kosher, as well as Kosher facilities on other campuses.