Posen Project for Courses in Secular Judaism Expands to 11 U.S. Universities and Colleges

NEW YORK, NY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2005 — The Center for Cultural Judaism and the Posen Foundation are pleased to announce that an additional four institutions were selected as Posen Project grant recipients for the 2005-06 academic year. This brings to 11 the number of U.S. universities and colleges – large and small, public and private – that now offer courses as part of the Posen Project for the study of secular Judaism, a number expected to increase by 50% in the 2006-07 academic year.

Joining the program for this academic year are Bard College; Dickinson College; University of California, Los Angeles; and University of Virginia. Bard will introduce a new core course that will develop into one of the foundational courses in the Jewish Studies Program; Dickinson will develop an interdisciplinary, multifaceted approach to the study of Judaism and Jewish culture; UCLA plans to foster a new focus on secular Jewish culture; and Virginia will offer an undergraduate major in Jewish Studies that will introduce students to the history of the Jewish people and the enduring contributions of Jewish wisdom to human civilization.

The institutions currently offering courses in Secular Judaism are Temple University, the University at Albany, University of California – Davis, Denver University, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, University of Miami and University of Michigan.

The diverse courses in the new curricula include “The Spirit of Secularism: Jewish Cultures in a Secular Age,” “Jewish Civilization: The Encounter with Great World Cultures,” “Secular Jewish Culture,” “Rethinking Judaism: Jewish Identity in a Secular Age” and “Between Sectarianism and Secularism.”

The Posen Foundation also supports similar programs in Israel in three university programs and several teachers’ colleges, including Tel Aviv University, Haifa University and the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya.

In offering these grants, the Center for Cultural Judaism and the Posen Foundation seek to cultivate and support the interdisciplinary study of secular Judaism. The program requires a primary course that enables students to understand the meaning of the spontaneous phenomenon of Jewish secularism, the historical and philosophical processes that led to secularization, and literature by and about secular Jewish thinkers.

According to Myrna Baron, executive director of the Center for Cultural Judaism, “Professors in the program have shared with us comments from secular students who previously would never have taken a Jewish studies course, and who now say they ‘see themselves on the continuum of Jewish history.’ We are very excited by this feedback and the opportunity to support courses to engage students who otherwise had a very limited understanding of Jewish history, philosophy and literature.”

The Posen Project grants are awarded annually. The program is expected to double in size over the next two years.

The Center for Cultural Judaism was established in 2003 in response to emerging new insights into American Jewish demography, as cited in the American Jewish Identity Survey (AJIS 2001). Salient among them is the emergence of a very large population of Jews – and for many, their non-Jewish spouses as well – who do not find meaning in Judaism as a religion, but do find meaning in Judaism as a culture. The Center for Cultural Judaism is dedicated to supporting programs on behalf of this large, under-served population.

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