The Justice

Yehuda Kurtzer, a Ph.D. candidate at Harvard University studying the concept of Jewish memory, won the competition for the first Charles R. Bronfman Visiting Chair in Jewish Communal Innovation at Brandeis, said Prof. Jonathan Sarna (NEJS), the contest's chairman, last week.

Jewish philanthropist Charles R. Bronfman donated $1.5 million to sponsor two competitions for the chairperson, who will serve a two-year visiting professorship at Brandeis. The job posting last fall asked applicants to submit a five-page proposal that "will transform how the Jewish community thinks about itself" to be reviewed by a search committee of Brandeis faculty. Kurtzer proposed that the "next great step for the Jewish future will be the reclamation of the Jewish past."

Sarna said that 231 individuals from all over the world applied, and the committee narrowed the pool to 20 before agreeing on five finalists. The foundation will pay for two years of an estimated $110,000 in salary, benefits and research assistance to Kurtzer, according to the program's press release. The next competition will be held in two years.

"The opportunity to come to Brandeis for two years … is just unbelievable," Kurtzer said. "I felt that it was a long shot at the outset, especially having heard how many applicants there were, … so I was very excited and delighted."

Kurtzer will teach one course per semester during his stay at Brandeis while writing a book based on his research. In his proposal, Kurtzer writes that he believes great numbers of young Jews are rediscovering old-fashioned texts and traditions.

Kurtzer describes Jewish memory as "deliberately constructed mythical nostalgia that binds one to a past even in radically reinterpreting that past." While he sees an important role for Jewish texts and tradition in this process, he writes that a feeling of authenticity is more important than the views of historians. As an example, he wrote that "the knowledge that klezmer [music] may not be the most heroic artifact of the shtetl cannot compete with packed concerts and CD sales." He followed by explaining that "new Jewish culture may not represent the Jewish past with historical accuracy, and its version of authenticity may be inauthentic to the past but the key to its success is in the channeling, constructing and transmitting that very authenticity." "Such an attitude would lead to a more timeless Jewish memorialization as opposed to the finite nature of a historic treatment of the Jewish past," he wrote.

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