Yosef Yerushalmi and the CIJS
Yosef Yerushalmi, December 10, 1979
- Collection
- Office of Public Affairs Photograph Collection, Series II: Negatives, Box 14, University Archives
Despite the renewed financial investment in Jewish Studies, Baron’s retirement in 1963 created an absence of leadership that took some time to be filled. That absence was resolved decisively with Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi’s arrival in 1980. Yerushalmi was a Harvard professor and student of Baron; he was appointed to the newly endowed Salo Wittmayer Baron Chair in Jewish History, Culture, and Society. Yerushalmi had been ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary and earned a doctorate under Baron’s supervision. His scholarship focused on late Medieval and Early Modern Sephardic Jewry, a then understudied topic area in the field.
Yerushalmi operated the CIJS largely out of his own office in Fayerweather Hall. Despite being offered a separate building (see Expansion of the Center), Yerushalmi considered it important to root Jewish Studies in the history department where he was located. Like Baron before him, he opposed the lachrymose conception of Jewish history, instead favoring narratives of Jewish agency and creativity.Â
Also like Baron, Yerushalmi engaged extensively with the Libraries. He curated an exhibition on Jewish Messianism in 1981, and donated manuscripts from his personal collection to the library’s collection for use by future scholars.
Exhibit pamphlet, Perspectives on Jewish Messianism, April 13-24, 1981, cover.
Some examples of manuscripts donated by Yosef Yerushalmi:
Sipure Be-reshit be-parsit-Yehudit [Stories of Genesis in Judeo-Persian]
- Collection
- MS General 151
- Date Created
- c. 18th century
Collection of Jewish legal, liturgical, and mystical texts
- Collection
- MS General 165
- Date Created
- Yemen, 1789
Liturgical collection from the Jewish community of Yemen
- Collection
- MS General 284
- Date Created
- c. 19th century
Yerushalmi’s tenure brought with it a decisive expansion of Jewish history at Columbia. He recruited numerous graduate students and helped grow the CIJS. Among his first students was Michael Stanislawski, who would become associate and then assistant director of the CIJS. In 1981, anonymous donors contributed $4.3 million to the Center, enabling the endowment of multiple chairs in Jewish history and literature. Stanislawski himself was appointed to the revived Miller Chair in Eastern European Jewish History; Dan Miron to the Kaye Chair in Modern Hebrew and Comparative Literature; and Arthur Goren to the Knapp Chair in American Jewish History. Yerushalmi’s students carry on his legacy, including Professor Elisheva Carlebach here at Columbia, who serves as the Salo Wittmayer Baron Professor of Jewish History, Culture, and Society, as well as the Co-Director of the IIJS.