The Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Foundation recently gave a $5.25 million gift to the University to fund an endowed chair and strengthen the programming of the Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education, according to a Nov. 4 BrandeisNOW article. The donation was first announced at a ceremony formally dedicating the Barbara Mandel Auditorium in the Mandel Center for the Humanities on Wednesday, according to BrandeisNOW.

Prof. Jon Levisohn (NEJS), the associate academic director of the Center, commented on the donation in an email to the Justice. "We are enormously grateful that the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Foundation has decided to deepen its partnership with the University and with the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education by creating this new chair, the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Professorship in Jewish Educational Research," he wrote.  

In an email to the Justice, Senior Vice President for Institutional Advancement Nancy Winship wrote that three million dollars of the $5.25 million donation funds the new endowed chair. The remaining $2.25 million will support the Center.

The new endowed chair is called the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Professorship in Jewish Education Research, according to BrandeisNOW. Levisohn wrote in an email to the Justice that "Dean [of Arts and Sciences Susan] Birren will be organizing and empowering a search for a new faculty member to fill this new chair in the very near future, with the expectation that the person will join the faculty next fall."

Levisohn also mentioned that his faculty position has been named for the Mandel brothers. "My faculty position, which has been supported by the Foundation, will now be named the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Professorship in Jewish Educational Thought," wrote Levisohn. Winship indicated that Levisohn's appointment to the chair is a "direct result" of the donation.

Winship explained in an email to the Justice that the donation was made as a pledge to be paid over time. "The chair portion of the pledge is payable over two years," she wrote. "[T]he remainder is part of the foundation's ongoing support of the [C]enter it founded in 2002."

The Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education was established in 2002, according to Winship. Prof. Sharon Feiman-Nemser (NEJS) serves as the director of the Center as well as the Mandel Professor of Jewish Education. Levisohn is the Center's other faculty member. In his email to the Justice, Levisohn affirmed the mission of the Center, writing that "[w]e take our scholarship seriously and we believe that we have a responsibility to use our scholarship and our public intellectual activities to contribute to a flourishing Jewish future."

The Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Foundation has made large donations to the University in the past, most notably the $22.5 million donation to construct the Mandel Center for the Humanities. Prof. Jehuda Reinharz (NEJS), president emeritus of the University, is the current president of the Mandel Foundation. Furthermore, Barbara Mandel, the treasurer of the University's Board of Trustees, is the wife of Morton Mandel, one of the namesakes of the Mandel Foundation.
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