Message from the Chairman

The nurturing that every child experiences during the first five years of its life is vital in determining that child’s character and future. These vital years, marked by amazingly rapid change and inspiring growth, chart the transition from infancy to responsibility, and culminate in the child's entry into formal schooling and social interaction with his or her peers.

As I look back on the past five, formative years of the Center for Jewish History—the American Jewish community's youngest and already richest and most important institution for the study of our people's history—I find myself experiencing emotions analogous to the naches of a parent seeing his child off for the first day of school. I know you will share my pride in the remarkable way in which the Center’s partners have matured and so quickly and gracefully coalesced to form the Diaspora's central address for all those interested in the Jewish historical experience. The many rich and varied educational programs, exhibitions, conferences, research projects, films, musical and stage productions and lecture series that have taken place at the Center during these brief but formative years since we opened our doors to the public in the year 2000, have far exceeded my most fertile expectations when the idea for the Center was originally conceived.

The past year has been particularly rich with anniversaries as the Center for Jewish History commemorated numerous auspicious milestones in Jewish History.

The 350th anniversary of the establishment of a communal Jewish presence in this great country was commemorated by the multimedia exhibition, Greetings From Home: 350 Years of the American Jewish Experience. Spearheaded by the American Jewish Historical Society, with contributions from all the Center's other partners, this most ambitious exhibition of the American Jewish experience ever undertaken drew record crowds of thousands of visitors from across the world.

The year 2005 also marked the 80th anniversary since the founding of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, featuring an array of celebratory programs which culminated in a truly stellar evening concert in Carnegie Hall: The Thomashefskys: Music and Memories of a Life in Yiddish Theatre, conducted by the renowned Michael Tilson Thomas, the grandson of the great Yiddish actors, Boris and Bessie Thomashefsky.

The Leo Baeck Institute's commemorations of its 50th year was a particularly poignant reminder of the miracle of Jewish survival, since none of its founders whose visionary goal was to ensure the survival of the material documentation of the remnants of German Jewry in the period immediately following the years of Nazi terror, could have imagined that this Institute would be thriving into the 21st century.

Yeshiva University Museum, in collaboration with Yeshiva's Cardozo Law School and Bernard Revel Graduate school, simultaneously commemorated two other major milestones in Jewish spiritual and intellectual history—the 800th anniversary of the birth of Moses Maimonides—the greatest philosopher of medieval Judaism—and the 900th yortsayt of Rashi—the most influential Biblical and Talmudic commentator—with an international scholarly conference: "Rashi and Maimonides: Themes in Medieval Jewish Law, Thought and Culture" that featured leading scholars of medieval Jewish thought from Israel, Europe, Canada and the United States.

The youngest and fastest-growing major partner of the Center for Jewish History is the American Sephardi Federation with Sephardic House, whose activities during the past years have mirrored the rapidly growing importance and visibility of the Sephardic community within American Jewry. Along with its ongoing mandate to expand its collections, encourage research in the experience of the Jews from Mediterranean lands and make its collections accessible with evermore sophisticated technology, the ASF has been an activist leader in the campaign to dignify the tragic modern experience and further the rights and claims of the approximately 900,000 Jewish refugees from Arab Countries who were exiled from their homes in the aftermath of the birth of the State of Israel.

Even as the Center's partners looked back with pride by both exhibiting and examining these many historical milestones, they all continued to build their resources for the future.

And so, as you read for yourselves about the amazing achievements of the still-new Center for Jewish History that are so copiously laid out in the Annual Report, I ask for your continued support so that we can continue to do justice to our vital, double-edged mission of the sanctification of the Jewish historical experience and its ongoing renewal.

Bruce Slovin

Academic Advisory Council

Partners

American Jewish Historical Society (AJHS)
Sidney Lapidus, President
Kenneth J. Bialkin, Chairman
David Solomon, Executive Director

American Sephardi Federation (ASF)
David E. R. Dangoor, President
Mike M. Nassimi, Chairman
Marc D. Angel, Vice President
Leon Levy, Honorary Lifetime President

Leo Baeck Institute (LBI)
Ismar Schorsch, President
Michael A. Bamberger, Vice President
Eva Brunner Cohn, Treasurer
Ernst Cramer, Honorary Trustee
Carol Kahn Strauss, Executive Director

Yeshiva University Museum (YUM)
Erica Jesselson, Chair
Ted Mirvis, Vice Chair
Sylvia Herskowitz, Director

YIVO Institute For Jewish Research (YIVO)
Bruce Slovin, Chairman
Joseph D. Becker, Vice Chairman
Max Gitter, Vice Chairman
Carl J. Rheins, Executive Director