Steinhardt/GSAS Awarded $4.96 Million Grant for Graduate Scholarships in Jewish Education

By Timothy Farrell

NYU will receive a grant of $4.96 million over six years for scholarships to support masters and doctoral students in Jewish education. The grant was awarded by the Jim Joseph Foundation, which invests in training the next generation of Jewish educational leaders in a wide range of settings—from Jewish day schools and yeshivas to foundations, universities, and cultural organizations. The first scholarships will be awarded in 2009.
    “The foundation’s generosity will allow us to recruit and train even more students, to further strengthen our programs, and to inspire a new generation of men and women to devote their lives to teaching and learning,” said Mary Brabeck, dean of the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development.
    Graduate students benefiting from the foundation’s grant support will be named Jim Joseph Foundation Fellows. The graduate students will be selected from Steinhardt’s doctoral program in education and Jewish studies as well as from a new double masters program in education and Jewish studies and Hebrew and Judaic studies, beginning next fall. The program will enable students to simultaneously earn an M.A. in education from Steinhardt and an M.A. in Judaic Studies from the Graduate School of Arts and Science. In addition, the foundation’s grant will include funding for program administration and will allow for the hiring of adjunct faculty members in both Steinhart and GSAS’s Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies.
    “Our graduate students in education and Jewish studies are geographically diverse and come from every sector of the highly diversified Jewish world—orthodox, conservative, reform, Zionist, cultural, and secular,” said Robert Chazan, co-director, with Professor Harold Wechsler, of the Education and Jewish Studies programs. “What’s common among them is the desire to assume leadership positions in Jewish educational enterprises. The excellent programs in education and Jewish studies and Hebrew and Judaic studies represent a real breakthrough in the training of the next generation of Jewish leaders.”