Happy 50th Birthday, NEJS! Brandeis' Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies (NEJS) will celebrate its golden anniversary with festivities spanning the entire semester. Clearly beloved, the department has come a long way from its humble beginnings back in September 1953 when the Administration included NEJS as one of the first four graduate departments established at the University. The oldest program of its kind in the United States, the Brandeis NEJS department today boasts the largest instructional staff of any secular university's Judaic studies program outside of Israel. On March 1, members of the Brandeis community gathered in Usdan's International Lounge for the "Fifty Years of NEJS" Opening Reception. Complete with cookies, cake, and birthday decorations, students and professors enjoyed a pleasant afternoon reminiscing about their favorite NEJS courses and recounting stories about past professors. After a brief introduction from current NEJS chair Mark Brettler, Prof. Benjamin Ravid began the reception's series of speakers with tales of life at the University during the 1950s, back when his father was a professor. On top of expressing great enthusiasm for the now-defunct Brandeis football team, Ravid related that having a NEJS department during the early years of the University helped elevate the quality of other courses and level of intellectual activity here. He also recounted how NEJS pupils studied at their professors' homes and how his mother even invited his father's students to celebrate Hanukkah one year.

Emeritus Prof. Leon Jick, who taught many of the current NEJS faculty, spoke next on the department's immeasurable gratitude for donor Phillip Lown. Although Golding was the original home to NEJS, Lown funded the building of a new facility for the department that now bears his name. Jick and Lown's persistent partnership also convinced the University to create the Contemporary Jewish Studies, which is today the Hornstein Program. As an aside, Jick also emphasized the Brandeis NEJS department's pioneering role during that time, as there were no opportunities to obtain a doctorate in Hebrew Literature and only a few universities around the country even offered a Judaic Studies course.

Among the other speakers at the reception, Prof. Art Green and former NEJS graduate student Fran Malino also spoke at the reception of the immense contributions of past NEJS faculty, such as Simon Rawidowicz and Nahum Glatzer, to the success of the department. Green felt honored inspired to be following in the footsteps of his own mentor in the NEJS department, former Prof. Alexander Altman, who taught the first course on Jewish Mysticism at an American university. Malino also fondly reminisced about debating women's roles in Judaism with her own favorite professor, Benjamin Halpburn.

Closing the reception, Brettler, who entered Brandeis as a prospective economics major, related how former Professor Nahum Sarna's classes inspired him to study NEJS.

The department also commemorates its history with the "NEJS at 50" exhibition on display at the Farber University Archives. The preeminence of Brandeis' NEJS department is immediately evident upon entering the exhibition where former Brandeis professors are pictured alongside renowned philosopher Martin Burber, author Louis Ginzberg and Israel's first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion. Perusing the interactive exhibition, students can look at the first University Bulletin in which the first five NEJS courses were offered back in 1953, listen to interviews or watch lectures by famous past Brandeis professors.

The exhibition mainly focuses on the preeminent careers of former members of Brandeis's renowned NEJS faculty. Everything from old letters written by Rawidowicz, the first NEJS department chair, to Ben-Gurion debating the name "Israel" for the new nation is on display along with old articles describing Ben-Gurion's pioneering efforts with the program. Another display case was dedicated to Rawidowicz's successor, Altman, who was unique in his lifetime as an ordained rabbi with a Ph.D.

While the exhibition is supported by a rich collection of books, photographs and articles detailing the history of the NEJS department, the bibliographical accounts of the professors were the most fascinating aspects of the exhibition. Glatzer, chair of the NEJS department from 1957 to 1969, wrote over 50 books during his lifetime on the great Jewish philosophers. Sarna, who succeeded Glatzer as the chair of NEJS, fought for the Jewish identity at Brandeis, including leading a protest against the university's decision to hold commencement on a Saturday. Marshal Sklore, who could not obtain a University faculty position in American Jewish Sociology, finally found a home at Brandeis in 1969. When Sklore became the Klutznick Family Professor of Contemporary Jewish Studies and Sociology, it marked not only the first instance in which sociological study and American Jewry achieved status as a university discipline, but the first time a sociologist of the Jewish people had been named an American university chair.

Other professors and names in NEJS history more recent and more familiar to students also appear in the exhibition. Professor Halpburn, author of the acclaimed book, The Ideas of the Jewish State, trained generations of Jewish historians at Brandeis, including current University President Jehuda Reinharz. The pair later co-wrote Zionism and the Creation of a New Society.

The "NEJS at 50" exhibition will be on display till the end of April. The department's celebration continues on March 28 with the 41st Annual Simon Rawidowicz Memorial Lecture. UCLA Professor of Jewish History David Myers will lecture on Rawidowicz's view on Jewish-Arab relations.