Twenty-Five Years,
& What Came Before

For decades before a formal Program existed, Jewish history, Hebrew Bible, modern Hebrew, and Jewish thought appeared in courses across Religion, History, Hispanic Studies, English, and Anthropology. Hebrew was taught episodically; Yiddish was taught informally. A Jewish Alumni Weekend in the late 1990s helped catalyze the conversation about a formal program.

Jewish Studies in development at the student initiative of the Multicultural Coalition For Jewish Studies, which petitioned for and succeeded in securing the appointment of Marc Michael Epstein on a tenure-track line.

Vassar approves an interdisciplinary major and correlate sequence in Jewish Studies. Andrew Bush (Hispanic Studies) is appointed founding Director.

Suzanne Rubenstein Fishman, Class of 1955, and Dr. Lawrence Fishman, of blessed memory, make the gift that establishes the Program and endows the Fishman Family Visiting Scholar in Jewish Studies — an annual visiting appointment that includes a faculty seminar and a public lecture.

The historian of American Jewry Deborah Dash Moore, then on the Vassar faculty, succeeds Bush as Director. Her tenure deepens the Program's offerings in modern Jewish history and consolidates its administrative footing.

Anita Norich (University of Michigan) serves as the Fishman Family Visiting Scholar with a three-day faculty seminar and a public lecture. The Fishman Seminar establishes a pattern that continues today: a major scholar joins Vassar for an intensive period of teaching and a public address.

The directorship rotates through Jannay Morrow (Psychology), Joshua Schreier (History), and Peter Antelyes (English), with the Program's faculty roster broadening and its travel seminar program expanding to Vienna, Berlin, Prague, Paris, Budapest, Florence, and Venice. Marc Michael Epstein continues to teach and to serve in advisory roles, including as Direttore of Beit Venezia, the Home for Jewish Studies in Venice, Italy.

A semester-long course with a ten-day field experience in Venice, Padua, and Florence. Students study under Marc Michael Epstein, the Venetian scholar Shaul Bassi, and others, in synagogues, museums, and the streets of the world's first ghetto.

In a period of heightened public attention to antisemitism on American campuses, the Program responds in the way an academic program is meant to: by deepening the curriculum. New iterations of From Anti-Judaism to Anti-Semitism, Eretz Yisrael Before the State of Israel, and JudaismS are taught, and a series of public lectures bring varied perspectives to campus.

After three decades at Vassar, Marc Michael Epstein becomes Director of Jewish Studies. Among the year's signal events: a public conversation with the Israeli historian J. H. (Yossi) Chajes; the Sitomer Lecture by Deborah Dash Moore; and the Fishman Lecture by David Shyovitz of Northwestern.

Judith and Edward Grinspan, both Class of 1974, make a major gift to underwrite student travel on the Program's faculty-led trips to Europe — a transformative commitment that, in the wake of October 7, 2023, ensured no student would be unable to participate in a travel seminar for financial reasons.

Twenty students travel through Burgos, León, Madrid, Toledo, Córdoba, Sevilla, Granada, Barcelona, Girona, and Besalú. Co-led by Marc Michael Epstein, Julie Harris (a specialist in medieval Iberian art), Ágnes Vetö, Victoria Atlas, and Alex Spector Kobzev.

A gift from the Polanyes family underwrites the launch of the Sacred Scripts Intensive — a credit-bearing course in which students work under master scribes and faculty to restore a late 18th–early 19th century Bavarian Torah scroll. See Projects → Sacred Scripts.

The Colonial Harmonies Project and The Griffins' Head Megillah join the Program's research portfolio.