Emory Celebrates a Half-Century of Jewish Studies

Emory University’s Schatten Gallery has opened an ambitious new exhibition celebrating the 50th anniversary of Jewish studies at the university. The exhibit, called “From Tablet to Tablet: Exploring Emory’s Jewish Studies Collections,” brings together a remarkable collection of Judaica and other treasures from the university’s collection.

The items on display form a timeline from the most ancient of times right up to the present day. A small Babylonian clay cuneiform tablet, from the collection of the university’s Michael C. Carlos Museum, is the oldest item in the exhibit. It dates back nearly 4,000 years to a time traditionally associated with the life of Abraham, the first Jew, who is said to have grown to manhood in the region where the tablet was found.

The long arc of Jewish learning that flowed from those earliest of times is traced in the Schatten’s three galleries. There is a rare volume of the Book of Isaiah printed in 1492 that bears the printer’s fingerprint. Also included are two volumes of the Talmud representing the Jerusalem and Babylonian schools of learning, a copy of the medieval Zohar, which explores Jewish mysticism, and a handmade High Holidays prayer book that is nearly 250 years old. There’s also a recent electronic iPad. According to the exhibit’s co-creator, Eric Goldstein, a noted Jewish studies scholar and longtime faculty member of the university’s Tam Institute of Jewish Studies, this survey of the range of Jewish scholarship was intentionally broad.

“These items represent a more scientific and critical approach to the study of Jewish life,” Goldstein said, “that emerged as Jews and Judaism became topics of research within the secular academy.”

The exhibit discusses four themes from the study of Jewish learning. There’s a section that deals with Jewish law and religious life that includes the writing of numerous rabbis down through history. From more recent times, there is a copy of Atlanta Rabbi Tobias Geffen’s ruling from the 1930s that officially recognized Coca-Cola as kosher for Passover. The company agreed to replace glycerin to satisfy Rabbi Geffin’s concerns. There are also sections on medicine, health, and technology, about history and the social sciences, and on the arts, literature, and culture.

In a specially created media space, there are videos of Jewish studies faculty members discussing various items that are on display that they have personally used. For a video he created for the exhibit, Goldstein chose to discuss “The Promised Land,” an autobiographical novel by Mary Antin who immigrated to America as a child in the late 19th century. It was one of the first books about Jewish life that Goldstein encountered as a child, and he says it shaped his lifelong interest in history.

“It’s one of the classic books of the Jewish immigrant experience in America, in praise of the American experience and the promise of America for immigrants.”

From more recent times, a letter is included that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote in 1965 to Rabbi Jacob Rothschild, then-senior rabbi at The Temple, who was a close friend. It formally thanked him for his effort in creating a successful banquet honoring Dr. King after he received his Nobel Peace Prize. Some community leaders had been initially resistant to honoring the civil rights leader.

There is also a personal copy of a book of Jewish mysticism that belonged to the great Jewish German scholar, Gershom Scholem. It includes his handwritten notes he made about the work.

The co-creator of the exhibit, Katalin Rac, who is a Jewish studies librarian at Emory, says Scholem’s notes have been included to illuminate the process of modern scholarship.

“It gives us a rare look at how scholarship actually happens,” Rac said. “This facsimile lets us see the scholar’s process, how he worked through the original text, with the printed text on one page and his handwritten notes on the other.”

Visitors to the exhibit are encouraged to make their own notes and post them in the exhibit space.

“We ask them what book or resource was influential to them, or what their favorite resources are and why,” Goldstein says. “We want people who attend, and students in particular, to write something about an item in the collections that’s been meaningful to them and post that on the board.”

The opening of the exhibit coincided with the arrival of a new executive director of the Tam Institute for Jewish Studies, Emily Danzig. She comes to Emory from Agnes Scott College, where she spent the past four years in the career center managing experiential programs, coaching students, supervising student staff, and building collaborative partnerships.

The exhibit in the Schatten Gallery, which is on the third level of the Woodruff Library, runs through Feb. 14, 2027.