Jewish studies minors and codirectors, in the Slavic/Eastern languages library: (seated) Dwayne Carpenter and Ariel Goldberg ’08; (standing) Lindsay Wilcox ’07, Maxim Shrayer, Christopher Agliano ’07. Photograph: Gary Wayne Gilbert

Boston College has launched a minor concentration in Jewish studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. The program, which joins 15 interdisciplinary minor programs in A&S, draws upon 17 faculty from nine departments and offers an inaugural selection of courses ranging from “Ten Commandments: A Jewish Perspective” to “Exile and Literature” to “The Middle East in the 20th Century.”

Codirected by Dwayne Carpenter and Maxim Shrayer, faculty in the Romance languages and literature and the Slavic and Eastern languages departments, respectively, the program is open to all students and will offer a broad perspective on Jewish history and culture. Six courses are required to complete the minor, from a selection of more than 24 offered. The minor’s required introductory course, “Mapping the Jewish Experience,” to be taught for the first time in fall 2006, will tap the diversity of Judaism, including its manifestation over the millennia in Ethiopia, in Spain and Northern Africa, and in northern Europe and the Americas.

Announcement of the program’s creation was widely noted in the press. “Roman Catholic college adds minor in Jewish studies,” ran the headline of an Associated Press report. The Boston Globe story was subtitled “Program a rarity at Catholic colleges” and noted that Jesuit Fairfield University has offered a Jewish studies minor since 1996 but that neither Notre Dame nor Georgetown, which are invariably linked with Boston College as the leading American Catholic universities, offered a similar program. Georgetown has since launched its own minor in Jewish civilization.

The work of creating the Jewish studies program began as a discussion between Shrayer—who teaches both Russian and American literature—and Carpenter, who studies medieval minorities, including the Jews of Spain prior to their expulsion in 1492. An organizational meeting attended by 30 faculty was held in April 2004, and following a four-month examination the program was approved by the College of Arts & Sciences last spring. Seven students enrolled in the minor during the fall semester, and the first was Ariel Goldberg ’08 of Newton, Massachusetts, an undeclared major, who says she looks forward to taking the program’s courses “with people who aren’t necessarily Jewish.” In a University where 1 percent of the student population self-identified as Jewish in an optional freshman survey, this will almost always be the case.

“All students, Jewish and non-Jewish, can examine this world in hopes of better understanding both the commonality and the diversity of the human condition,” says Carpenter. “The serious intellectual approach to Jewish studies” in the new program “will be in as broad a context as possible.”

Paul Voosen

Read more by Paul Voosen