Welcome

The Berman Center for Jewish Studies at Lehigh University is a place for conversations. These happen in the Jewish Studies classroom with our faculty and students, at public events with the scholars we bring to the Lehigh Valley, and at our international seminars with experts from around the globe. Whether you are from the Lehigh campus, the greater Lehigh Valley community, or the international scholarly field of Jewish studies—we welcome you to these intellectual exchanges.

 

Since 1984, the Philip and Muriel Berman Center has been the home of Jewish Studies at Lehigh. We serve as both an interdisciplinary curricular program and a research institute. As a program, we house the Jewish studies minor, which is open to all Lehigh students, and offer a robust selection of courses. As a research institute, we support and promote the research of our affiliated faculty. We also sponsor lectures, colloquia, seminars, and conferences, both at Lehigh and in locations as far afield as Groningen, Netherlands and Oxford, England. Our work bridges many academic fields, including the arts, history, international relations, languages, literature, and religious studies.

Students interesting in declaring the Jewish Studies minor can do so by filling out this Minor Declaration Form Questions? Please reach out to Dr. Jodi Eichler-Levine, Berman Center Director, or Maria Ioannidou, who coordinates the minor. 

Questions about the Berman Center, its programming, or its future events? Please reach out to Dr. Jodi Eichler-Levine, Berman Center Director, or Alexandra Farkas, coordinator in the College of Arts and Sciences, at alf523@lehigh.edu.

As Jewish Studies faculty at Lehigh University, we would like to state our trust in tolerance, inclusivity and a fact-based critical discussion. Teaching and research in the field of Jewish studies raises awareness of the cost of intolerance, racism, exclusion, and vicious propaganda. Jews suffered from persecution for centuries and were not allowed a place of refuge, nor a voice of their own. American Jews found both welcome and exclusion in America, and, at times, its gates were barred. As a result, welcoming immigrants and understanding the history of American attitudes towards "the stranger" is a crucial piece of Jewish studies. The study of past and present attempts to marginalize vulnerable groups teaches that an attack against one minority inevitably spreads to others. The pursuit of academic knowledge requires the free and open movement of people, regardless of their religion or nationality, in order to foster the open exchange of ideas. We call our fellow students and faculty to continue to pursue the democratic constitutional ideals of liberty and justice for all, and resist any engagement in discriminatory practices against select groups, whether based on religion, nationality, ethnicity, race, gender, sexuality, or anything else.