Welcome to the Jean & Samuel Frankel Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan! Since our establishment as a center in 1988, we have become one of the world’s leading programs of teaching and research in Jewish Studies in an incredibly broad array of fields and disciplines. Our interdisciplinary center brings together faculty with expertise ranging from antiquity to the present, from Eastern Europe to the Mediterranean basin, and from the Americas to the Middle East and North Africa. We are also one of the few Jewish studies centers to offer both Yiddish and Ladino language and literature instruction. Research at the Frankel Center encompasses innovative approaches to scriptural and biblical studies, to religious law and interpretation, to ethnic and social relations, to Jewish history and culture, to genders and sexualities in Jewish life and ritual. With its expansive curriculum, students can approach Jewish Studies from the perspectives of law and religion, literature and culture, or history and the social sciences.
Ten years ago, I stepped down as Director of the Jean and Samuel Frankel Center for Judaic Studies. It had been a rich, rewarding, and tumultuous decade of growth, innovation, and accomplishment. The Frankel Institute, which welcomed its first cohort of scholars in 2007, was flourishing. The Center had attracted a diverse array of excellent scholars whose photographs adorned a bulletin board, one of Cheri Thompson’s cogent suggestions. The Center had even hired, in conjunction with an initiative on Mediterranean Studies, its first faculty member, Devi Mays, whose work in Sephardic history and culture added an important and exciting dimension to Judaic studies. Things were looking good at Michigan for
Judaic Studies. What more could be desired?
A lot, I learned.
Just viewing staff and faculty members’ photographs bursting the borders of the bulletin board brings home how much the Frankel Center has grown in these past ten years. A cluster of new young faces greets me at the entrance to the office—so many that the roster of distinguished emeriti faculty needed to move to an adjoining space to make room for all the newcomers. Rebecca Wollenberg and Bryan Roby, both associate professors, have joined Devi Mays as full-time faculty members of the Frankel Center. Rebecca’s scholarship focuses on the history of biblical reception, that is, the many ways that the Hebrew Bible has been used by religious practitioners since its canonization; Bryan’s scholarship explores Middle Eastern and North African Jewish history in the modern era. In 2019, Mostafa Hussein came as a Collegiate Fellow, subsequently becoming an assistant professor. Mostafa’s scholarship examines the intellectual and cultural intersections of Jews and Arabs in the modern Middle East. Then Yanay Israeli, with a joint appointment with the History department, returned to Michigan after teaching at the Hebrew University. His scholarship investigates petitions to the king in medieval Spain from Jews, Muslims, and Christians. Finally, just last year, assistant professor Cara Rock-Singer arrived, the first Lama Shetzer Professor of Contemporary Jewish Life, whose work interrogates American Judaism’s gendered interaction with science and technology.
As if these no-longer-new faculty members were not enough, the Frankel Center also includes Yiddish Lecturer Elena Luchina, New Testament scholar Deborah Forger, and Ladino lecturer Gabriel Mordoch, the Irving M. Hermelin Curator of Judaica.
This robust cohort of Frankel Center faculty will be augmented by the arrival of Andrea Gondos, the first Padnos Professor of Jewish Thought. Andrea’s research centers on health and well-being in early modern Jewish recipe books of magic, mysticism, and practical Kabbalah.
Wow. What enormous changes have occurred in just ten years. And I have not even begun to name the many new joint appointments, with History, Middle East Studies, English, Classical Studies, and Romance Languages. All these faculty members speak to the robust, complex presence of the teaching of Jewish history and culture throughout the university as well as to the generative impact of Judaic studies.
If looking backward can serve as a guide to looking forward, the Frankel Center faces the next decade filled with possibilities for creativity and continuing change. As the fields that comprise Jewish studies grow and shift, as new research areas develop alongside opportunities for teaching a mix of classical and cutting-edgecourses, the Frankel Center is clearly positioned to lead. I’m eager to see what the year will bring and happy temporarily to take over the helm of such a vibrant center for Judaic Studies.
Deborah Dash Moore
Jonathan Freedman Distinguished University Professor of History & Judaic Studies
Interim Director, Frankel Center for Judaic Studies
