Trojan Family Magazine

In the old world, aiding the poor, feeding the hungry, caring for the sick and providing for the elderly had been a collective communal obligation. Jewish tradition placed responsibility for the management and distribution of shared charitable resources in the hands of a respected lay leader. But with the avalanche of uneducated, desperately poor European Jews washing up on America’s shores at the turn of the century, the old formula didn’t work anymore. Instead, Jewish federations – large charitable networks – started cropping up in cities like New York, Boston and Philadelphia. Unfortunately, no one knew much about running them.

Early attempts to create training centers for Jewish communal workers had languished. When Presidents Kennedy and Johnson called for a New Frontier and a Great Society, Jewish agencies found themselves in crisis. A plethora of outside social action groups were suddenly competing for their tiny pool of organizational talent. In 1968, HUC established the Daniels School of Jewish Communal Service as a direct response to this “brain drain.”

At the same time, the Six-Day War between Israel and its Arab neighbors had been a watershed moment for American Jewry. “It energized a whole generation,” explains Steve Windmueller, director of the Daniels School. The community realized that “what had happened in the Holocaust could not and would not happen again, and it was their responsibility to see to the needs of Jews worldwide and at home.” Jewish philanthropy exploded during those years, and so did the market for so-called “Jewish professionals.”

In 1972, HUC (recently settled in the University Park neighborhood) partnered with USC’s School of Social Work to offer a double master’s degree with the Daniels School. Three years later, USC’s Davis School of Gerontology introduced its own dual master’s. (The program has since been phased out due to a lack of a clinical component.) USC’s School of Public Administration (now called the USC School of Policy, Planning, and Development) rolled out its joint MPA program with HUC in 1982. A decade later, USC’s Annenberg School for Communication kicked off its dual degree in communications management and Jewish communal service. In 1999, USC’s Marshall School of Business unveiled its dual MBA program. And two years ago the Daniels School and USC’s School of Fine Arts admitted their first shared students in an experimental dual master’s in public art and Jewish communal service.

More joint degrees are in the works, and not only with the Daniels School. Officials at the USC Thornton School of Music are actively discussing links between the sacred music department and HUC’s fledgling cantorial music program. (HUC’s cantorial faculty is headquartered in New York, but the Los Angeles campus has a pre-professional curriculum in place.)

Discussions with USC’s School of Cinema-Television aren’t far behind. Between USC’s stellar documentary filmmaking program – noted for its strength in Jewish topics, with Oscar-winning documentarian Mark Jonathan Harris (Into the Arms of Strangers, 2000) on faculty – and the Casden Institute’s partnership with the film school in presenting the annual Jewish Student Film Festival, now in its fifth year, the pumps are primed.

A partnership between USC College’s School of Religion and HUC’s Magnin School of Graduate Studies has produced some outstanding academics over the years, including DePaul University professor Frida Kerner Furman PhD ’70; HUC-Los Angeles professor Rachel Adler PhD ’97; and Daniel Gordis PhD ’93, founding dean of the University of Judaism’s rabbinic program and now vice president of the Mandel Foundation Israel.

Downsizing during the early 1990s saw the elimination of USC’s doctoral program in religion and social ethics – and hence, the suspension of its joint Ph.D. with HUC. Since the 9/11 attacks, however, there has been an upsurge of scholarly interest in religion in general, and a beefing up of USC’s religion faculty that bodes well for future HUC collaborations.

“I could envision a half dozen other joint Ph.D. programs in history, religion, anthropology, social psychology, sociology,” says former Magnin School and Louchheim School director Reuven Firestone.

Undergraduate minors in Judaic studies (School of Religion) and Jewish-American studies (Department of American Studies and Ethnicity) are increasing traffic between HUC and the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. The two already collaborate on the university’s General Education program.

There’s even talk of a joint biblical archeology degree program. HUC’s present scholarly efforts in this arena are headquartered at its Cincinnati and Jerusalem campuses; however, the Jewish college’s collection of 25,000 ancient artifacts – including magnificent examples of Israelite-Palestinian pottery – is here in Los Angeles, housed at the HUC-affiliated Skirball Cultural Center.

USC’s own antiquities aren’t too shabby either. Religion professor Bruce Zuckerman oversees the USC Archeological Research Collection, composed of 5,000 artifacts dating from 10,000 BCE through the Byzantine and Islamic periods. And USC participates in ongoing archeological digs in Israel, Greece and Turkey.

“Between USC and HUC, there is a fabulous archeological collection here,” says HUC’s Los Angeles dean Lewis Barth.

– Diane Krieger