The 36th Anniversary Celebration of the establishment of the Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life was held on Sunday, November 15, in the Konover Auditorium followed by a reception. A panel discussion featuring three of the program’s alumni as well as Professors Arnold Dashefsky and Stuart Miller was followed by an address from Professor David Ruderman, Joseph Meyerhoff Professor of Modern Jewish History at the University of Pennsylvania and former director of Penn’s Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies.
The festive event celebrated the accomplishments and milestones of the Center and was an opportunity to thank and highlight all those who made the success of the program possible. Former director and founder of the Center, Professor Arnold Dashefsky, shared the history of the Center and its accomplishments while Academic Director, Professor Stuart Miller, discussed the exciting future of the program. Three highly distinguished alumni students expressed their gratitude to the program and provided inspirational accounts of what they had learned and how the program had impacted their lives. Renowned Professor David Ruderman presented an overview of the development of the field of Judaic Studies over the past 40 years.
istics, this year with some surprising findings. Of note, Sergio DellaPergola, in reporting on his world Jewish population studies, argues that Israel’s Jewish population has outnumbered that of the United States, the largest Diaspora community. DellaPergola argues that Israel’s rapid Jewish population growth has overtaken the US’s more stable growth and estimates that Israel’s Jewish population has reached 6.2 million and the US population 5.7 million. However, as DellaPergola points out, “Israel’s Jewish population faces a significant demographic challenge with its gradually diminishing majority status vis-á-vis the Palestinian Arab population who live within the boundaries of the State of Israel as well as on the whole territory between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.” In fact, according to DellaPergola, the enlarged Jewish population represents a bare majority (52.1 %) of the total population living between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.
Samaritan High Priest. The Samaritans are very similar to the Jews but thousands of years of divergence shows. They have the menorah with 7 candles and they have the Torah, but their Torah is a bit different. Aside from the few hundred grammatical differences, it’s also written in a derivative close to ancient Hebrew. The Samaritans speak and pray in ancient Hebrew during holidays. Their day-to-day tongue is Arabic. Interesting fact about these guys, they don’t believe that Mount Moriah, the site of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Western Wall, is the correct mountain. They think it’s a hill right across from their village. Today, Jews do not perform the ritual sacrifice of animals because the ritual requires the Temple, which must be built on the site of the Temple Mount, where the Dome of the Rock sits. The Samaritans have their mountain, and they perform animal sacrifices on an annual basis every year on Passover. Another fun fact, the Samaritans are the only group to have citizenship from Israel, Palestine, and Jordan; and they were the only West Bank Palestinians who were allowed to retain their Jordanian Passports after Jordan lost control of the West Bank in 1967.
