Mar 27, 2012 By: admin
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David Berger assumed his current role as Dean of Revel in September 2008, at which point he turned to Revel Professor of Bible Mordechai Cohen to serve as his Associate Dean. Sunday’s Yom Iyun reflects the efforts of the Berger-Cohen Revel administration to make YU’s graduate school of Jewish Studies a resource to the broader Jewish community.
Yosie Levine, Rabbi of the Jewish Center and Cohen’s former student at Revel, explained why he regarded this event as an important milestone for his congregation: “The Jewish Center is delighted to partner with the Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies. Part of our goal is to build a bridge between the academy and the broader Jewish community by engaging the talents of leading scholars and inviting them to teach us about their respective fields. It is our hope that this will be the beginning of a wonderful partnership that will give us entrée into an academic universe brimming with possibility.”
YU President Richard Joel attended the Yom Iyun and addressed the audience prior to Berger’s keynote speech. As Cohen noted in his introductory remarks, it was President Joel who recognized the need to bring Berger to YU on a full-time basis in 2007. Although Berger has long been teaching at YU part-time, his full-time academic post for over thirty yeas was at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where he achieved renown as a leading Jewish historian and thinker. Joel described Berger’s appointment as “one of [YU’s] great achievements of the last decade” since he has assumed a leading role in the direction of academic Jewish studies at Yeshiva University.
Both Carlebach and Schacter were Berger’s students as undergraduates at Brooklyn College. Schacter, a former Rabbi of The Jewish Center, expressed his appreciation to Berger as he addressed his former congregation. “He has influenced my life in extremely deep and profound ways,” Schacter said about the Dean. “I was mesmerized by his brilliance, his humanity; I wanted to be like him.” For Schacter, working on New Perspectives was “a labor of love and expression of hakarat hatov,” he continued. “...I really can’t thank Dr. Berger enough for his influence in my life.”
Joel spoke proudly about Revel’s achievements over the past few years since Berger took the helm—especially the dramatic growth of Revel’s PhD program, from 9 students in 2008 to its current 26. Additionally, the school’s MA program remains vibrant, and increasing numbers of non-degree students and auditors attend Revel courses purely out of interest in the range of subjects taught there. Joel also mentioned the expansion of the Revel faculty, with 7 new appointments (some directly to Revel and some undergraduate faculty who have become a part of the Revel faculty as well) in the last 9 years, which greatly enhance the scope of the program. “[Revel] is a resource for the community on multiple levels, permeating modern Orthodox life and literacy,” emphasized Joel.
The first lecture, ![](/sites/default/files/wp-content/uploads/sites/17/2012/03/Associate-Dean-Mordechai-Cohen-300x199.jpg)
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