Next spring, if all goes as planned, I will teach a course in the Jewish Studies Department at City College of New York. My rabbinical and graduate school classmate, Rabbi Roy Mittelman, chairs this extraordinary department, and he has offered me an opportunity to see what is going on there first hand.
City College of New York, founded in 1847, was the first free public institution of higher learning in the United States. Known as the “poor man’s Harvard,” at the height of its popularity among Jews, the school was over 75 % Jewish. Many of these Jews were the children of recent immigrants; City College was their ticket out of the proletariat.
Today, CCNY still draws the children of immigrants, but the Jewish population of the school is tiny. The immigrants now come from all over the world, creating an exciting multifaith mix.
Of the 500 students enrolled in Jewish studies classes each semester at City College, 95 percent are not Jewish. Even more remarkable, there are now 70 Jewish Studies majors at CCNY, only a small fraction of whom are Jews.
Why are non Jews not only enrolling in Jewish Studies classes but also majoring in the field? This article from the Times documents the phenomenon and suggests some reasons for it.
I hope to teach a course on Muslim-Jewish Relations in the United States.
