This year, Fordham’s Center for Jewish Studies is celebrating its fifth anniversary. But before the formal founding of the CJS, many professors, students, librarians, and others taught, studied, and cultivated the study of Jews, Judaism, and Jewish history and culture at Fordham. This blog series features interviews with some of these people and celebrates their lasting contributions to the university.
This interview features Rabbi Tsvi Blanchard, who teaches Jewish Law and other courses at Fordham Law School.
When did you start teaching at Fordham Law School and can you describe the sorts of courses you teach and the range of students who, over the years, have taken your courses?
I started teaching Jewish law at Fordham in the fall of 2007. In the fall, I teach an adjunct course at Fordham Law School in comparative religious law – Jewish, Canon and Islamic. The course focuses on developing models for comparing legal systems, as well as on the role of values/ethical norms in legal systems. I deliberately choose “hot” topics, like war, the environment, and economic regulation. The Jewish law course I taught between 2007-2010 drew primarily, but not exclusively, Jewish students; students in the comparative religious law course, by contrast, come from Christian and Jewish backgrounds. Most students have an interest in subjects related to religion.
In addition, I am also the Jewish Scholar-in-Residence at the Institute for Law, Religion and Lawyer’s Work, which is guided by the role that mutual understanding and dialogue play in the practice of law. Jewish, Muslim, Christian and Hindu students participate by creating programming that includes everything from lectures and conferences to interreligious dialogue about working as religious lawyers.
Rabbi Tsvi Blanchard delivering an opening prayer at the dedication ceremony for the Henry S. Miller Judaica Research Room at Walsh Library in October 2022
Does a particular moment at Fordham stand out for you?
Just a few memories: There was the very traditional Orthodox student who joined because he realized that he would probably play a leadership role in his community and would need to know how to interact with leaders of other faiths.
There were Muslim women, both Sunni and Shia, who created cross-cultural programming and at the same time helped guide incoming students through the challenges of wearing headscarves in professional practice.
There was the Wolf Law Lecture I gave on ambiguity in Jewish law that brought in a large range of lawyers, high school teachers, university faculty and students from the wider Jewish and Christian communities.
These memories are just a few of the many experiences I have had that have shown me that Fordham is an environment that supports inter-religious dialogue, both academic, personal, and communal. My sense is that there is genuine respect for alternative faith traditions. There is also an academic commitment to intellectual breadth and rigorous standards. Even more important, from my perspective, as a Jesuit school there is an educational commitment to fully developing the students—intellectually, psychologically, socially, and spiritually.
Endy Moraes and Tsvi Blanchard at an event about workplace interfaith dialogue hosted by Fordham Law School’s Institute on Religion, Law & Lawyer’s Work (photo credit: Lindsey Pelucacci)
You split your time between New York and Berlin, where, since 2011, you have been the Meyer Struckmann Professor of Jewish Law at the Law Faculty of Humboldt University. Can you tell us more about that experience?
When I began teaching at Fordham in 2007, I had just completed my first semester of teaching Jewish law at Humboldt University zu Berlin. I continued teaching there yearly from April though the end of July, eventually becoming the Meyer-Struckman Professor of Jewish Law in 2011. I teach one large introductory course as well as an advanced seminar that draws law students from other European countries besides Germany. In addition, my work there includes teaching two courses in the theology faculty—one in Bible and traditional Jewish commentary, and the other an advanced seminar connecting theology/religion to the functions of narrative and the social sciences.
Throughout your long career, you have taught in many different contexts, including at other Catholic institutions, secular institutions, and Jewish institutions. In what ways (if any) has teaching at Fordham Law School differed from these other contexts?
I have mostly taught at secular universities: ten years at Washington University in St. Louis in Philosophy and Jewish Studies and some 14 years at Humboldt University in Berlin in the Law and Theology Faculties. But I also taught at Catholic – always Jesuit – universities: Theology at Loyola in Chicago and Law at Fordham. Both secular and Catholic universities valued teaching and research and shared a relatively open attitude to inquiry. They also had strong ethical values that informed teaching. For obvious reasons, religious commitment played a greater role in student life in the Jesuit colleges but, in my opinion, the focus on both secular and Catholic schools is on academic excellence in both teaching and research.
You have also served in various other positions throughout your career, not only in academia but also in psychology, social advocacy, and education. Do these previous endeavors find their way into your work at Fordham, and if so how?
My work outside of academia impacts my understanding of teaching and my relationship with students. Over thirty years of practice as a psychologist I learned to appreciate the special value of relationships in supporting personal growth. My work has been in varied educational settings. I was the principal and also a teacher at an Orthodox Jewish high school. I was a part time teacher and spiritual director at a rabbinical school. And, I spent years doing informal “adult education” courses for Jewish leaders.
From these experiences, I have come to seek creating an educational experience that provides:
1. Growth in knowledge
2. Increased sophistication of thought process
3. The discovery of and commitment to personal educational and life goals
4. A desire for lifelong learning in the subject area
5. The expansion of moral perception
6. A commitment to making a difference in society
7. A sense of one’s value as a person
At Fordham, I have tried to teach in a way that accomplishes these goals. My class aims to help students understand themselves as capable of enjoying serious intellectual inquiry in comparative law; it also invites them to assume responsibility for making a difference in the world.
There is also an interpersonal dimension. I encourage students to feel free to contact me with any questions and concerns about the course material and their own research. I keep saying, “You are not bothering me; that’s what I’m here for.” I make it clear that I always learn from my students.
Through your previous work at CLAL and with the Center for Christian-Jewish Understanding, you have been an advocate for religious pluralism and diversity. In 2007, you joined a delegation of bishops and rabbis for a meeting with Pope Benedict XVI in Rome. Can you tell us about that meeting?
My approach invites openness to a variety of approaches to life, belief and law. For many years, personally and professionally, I have been actively working to foster mutual understanding between different religious paths; alternative approaches to understanding human life, different ethical, religious, and philosophical beliefs, and also differing forms or ways of life. My primary focus has been on dialogue across boundaries. This commitment to serious cross-boundary dialogue has been a part of my work since the 1980’s and is an important element in my work at the Fordham Institute for Law, Religion and Lawyer’s Work. In general, the Fordham University that I know has a strong commitment to dialogue and mutual understanding between different religious and intellectual traditions.
A interfaith trip to Auschwitz with bishops and rabbis, including Rabbi Tsvi Blanchard, in 2007
Over the years, my participation in international Jewish- Catholic dialogue has brought me into serious relationships and contact with interesting, value-driven people. In addition to ongoing Catholic-Jewish dialogue, there were brief encounters with Pope Benedict and Pope Francis.
While I already knew and appreciated Benedict’s academic work, I was most struck by the loving and caring attention he paid to people with disabilities, even putting the high-power invited guests on hold until he finished encouraging disabled people. Francis was engaging, completely human and spiritual all at once. I met him with a group and yet he somehow managed to make each of us feel that he was talking to us individually. I left my meetings with both Benedict and Francis once more aware that no human tradition, mine included, has a monopoly on truth and spiritual seeking.
Thank you, Rabbi Blanchard, for sharing these memories and lessons with us!
This year, Fordham’s Center for Jewish Studies is celebrating its fifth anniversary. But before the formal founding of the CJS, many professors, students, librarians, and others taught, studied, and cultivated the study of Jews, Judaism, and Jewish history and culture at Fordham. This blog series features interviews with some of these people and celebrates their lasting contributions to the university.
This interview features Linda LoSchiavo, Director of Fordham Libraries, about her work building Fordham’s Holocaust and Jewish Studies Collections.
Can you tell us a bit about yourself and the work that you do at Fordham?
I am the Director of Libraries at Fordham University, which means I administer Walsh Library at Rose Hill, Quinn Library at Lincoln Center, and the Library at the Fordham Westchester campus. My University Library Director’s responsibility runs the gamut from providing strategic vision and leadership for an amazing staff and distinguished collections, to budget management, space planning, and crisis management. My two Master’s degrees (M.S., Pratt Institute and M.A., Fordham) didn’t adequately prepare me for the myriad skills required for this position, but even during the craziest of days, my job is a joy.
Linda LoSchiavo at the Fordham Library
When did you arrive at Fordham and what was Fordham like at the time?
My life at Fordham actually began when I was a freshman at Thomas More College, which was then Fordham’s women’s college. The war in Vietnam had escalated and Fordham did not escape the unrest that was roiling the campuses of colleges and universities. By the time I began my employment at the University in 1975, the campus turmoil had quieted down, Fordham, except for the dormitories, was fully coeducational (although men still heavily outnumbered women), and I began my position as a cataloger in the Keating Library Annex, located in the basement of Keating Hall, now the home of WFUV, Fordham’s radio station. The library resources at Rose Hill were not centrally located in Duane, which held the general Humanities book collection, and the Reference, Circulation, and Reserve departments. There were separate Biology, Chemistry, and Physics libraries scattered in various buildings on campus. The Technical Services departments (Acquisitions, Cataloging, Serials) as well as Government Documents, and collections of older monographs and back runs of periodicals were all in the Keating Library Annex. The library at Lincoln Center, located in the Lowenstein Building on West 60th Street, was a drab, leaky, crowded space. There was no Westchester campus at that time.
A Class at Thomas More College
Duane Library, which served as Rose Hill’s main campus library and now serves as a classroom
Duane Library
Fordham’s Libraries – and libraries in general – have evolved significantly during your time at the university. Can you share with us some of the biggest changes you’ve observed?
The greatest changes in the Fordham Library have been the technological advances that have shaped the way our libraries serve our users. When I began at Fordham, Catalogers were still typing catalog cards and staff were filing them in the large public catalog in Duane Library. In 1986 I assumed the position of Head of Retrospective Conversion and as such was responsible for the transfer of almost 1,000,000 bibliographic records from physical cards to electronic format. This conversion allowed us to have our full catalog available to our users on each campus in each library. We rapidly progressed from an automated library catalog to making electronic databases available through our online catalog. Today we offer a myriad online services to our users: catalogs from across the world, hundreds of databases, collections of ebooks and ejournals, digital Interlibrary Loan systems, document delivery services, digital archives including photo and video files, an institutional repository, virtual Reference services, chat Reference, a library blog, various social media profiles, and more on the way. Our technological capabilities further exploded once we moved into Walsh Library in 1997 where we had an entire floor (the Lower level Electronic Information Center) devoted to digital and electronic services, something quite innovative at the time. The EIC includes various technologies for students as well as a fully operational video production studio. In the Fall of 2022 the LITE Center opened on the Lower Level. This Learning and Innovative Technology Center, designed for faculty and student use, contains various teaching and learning software, as well as podcasting rooms, and a Makerspace. The Quinn Library at LC quickly outgrew its space and in 2016 we moved to 140 West 62nd Street, into the completely renovated former home of the Fordham Law Library. This afforded us greater space and greater variety in the services we could offer our users.
Staffing has also changed dramatically. Librarians continue to support faculty curriculum and teaching needs, and instruct students in research, but must also be technologically fluent, with solid IT skills and competencies. Reference services have expanded with the teaching of information literacy becoming an essential and critical component of a librarian’s job.
Linda speaking at the dedication of the Henry S. Miller Judaica Research Room at Walsh Library in October 2022
The origins of Fordham’s Rosenblatt Holocaust Collection serve as a great example of the impact that an individual can have on a university’s intellectual life. Can you tell us the story of how Fordham’s Holocaust collection originated and grew?
In 1982, Mr. Sidney Rosenblatt, a WWII vet and non-traditional age Fordham student, graduated with honors in History from FCLC. Sidney continued to audit history courses after he graduated and took a course with Professor Ed Bristow which covered the Holocaust in Europe. Assigned to do a paper, Sidney was disappointed by the University Library’s holdings in this area. He was an avid library user, so he decided to provide his alma mater with a comprehensive collection on the Holocaust. “Before I’m through I hope [Fordham University] will have the best collection of Holocaust materials of any college.” Sidney was a born bibliographer and he worked with me, my staff, and particular vendors in this field, to acquire those volumes and items of the most intrinsic value for a Holocaust collection. What began 30 years ago in 1992 with approximately 200 books, has now reached more than 11,000 volumes, in more than 9 languages and includes archival videos and Holocaust artifacts. Based on size alone, the Rosenblatt Holocaust Collection is among the top 25 Holocaust collections in the world.
I remained close to both Sidney and his wife Minna, who owned Minna Rosenblatt Antiques on Madison Ave, adjacent to the (then) Whitney Museum. She was one of the world’s foremost experts in Tiffany glass and when she died much of the collection was auctioned at Christie’s. (See Fordham catalog: Important Tiffany and art glass from the Minna Rosenblatt Gallery SPEC COLL 2003 6)
Linda LoSchiavo with Sidney Rosenblatt and Edward Bristow
Is there a particular moment or book that stands out for you in Fordham’s current Jewish Studies collection?
The Fordham University Library has encouraged and nurtured Jewish Studies, even “before Jewish Studies” by its comprehensive collection building in all areas of the Humanities. However, I think the book that stands out for me in our current Jewish Studies collection is the Barcelona Haggadah, an illuminated Passover compendium from 14th century Catalonia in facsimile. This exquisite volume, the gift of an extremely generous donor, was the first Jewish text to be added to our facsimile collection. Prior to this, Fordham’s facsimile collection was heavily Roman Catholic.
A page from the Barcelona Haggadah
Any thoughts about Jewish Studies @Fordham as we celebrate its fifth anniversary?
Having worked with Magda Teter for the past five years, I have no doubt that Fordham’s Jewish Studies program will grow to be one of the finest in the United States. Magda provides vision, leadership, and a seemingly unstoppable momentum. She is a wonderful partner and a generous collaborator.
Thank you, Linda, for sharing these reflections with us!
This year, Fordham’s Center for Jewish Studies is celebrating its fifth anniversary. But before the formal founding of the CJS, many professors, students, librarians, and others taught, studied, and cultivated the study of Jews, Judaism, and Jewish history and culture at Fordham. This blog series features interviews with some of these people and celebrates their lasting contributions to the university.
This interview features Daniel Soyer, Professor of History at Fordham University, whose research and teaching focuses on Jews in New York.
Can you tell us a bit about yourself and the work that you do?
I am a historian of American Jewry, and especially of Yiddish-speaking immigrants from Eastern Europe who arrived in the US in the late 19th and early 20th centuries – and especially in New York City, which then became the greatest Jewish metropolis of all time. From that starting point, I have also written on New York politics, which, of course, had a strong ethnic component. My training was in US immigration history, and I teach that at Fordham, along with courses in American urban history, the history of New York City, and modern Jewish history.
My scholarly interests, I guess, are also very personal. I was born in New York and grew up in Queens. I’ve lived in Brooklyn for over forty years now, commuting to the Bronx since 1997. I’m interested in my own urban surroundings, and in my own background as an American Jew. I love living in the midst of the history I study.
My friend, the late artist Yonia Fain, used to say that when he was sitting in a room with one other person, he always felt that there was a third person present – and that third person was History. Yonia lived through many of the cataclysmic events of the 20th century. My own life has been much, much less dramatic, and much, much less traumatic, but I also have the feeling of being made up of history, even if that history is that of gradual social and cultural processes.
Daniel Soyer (photo credit: Patrick Verel)
When did you start teaching at Fordham and what was Fordham like at the time?
I started teaching at Fordham in 1997. My impression is that Fordham was then in transition from being an essentially local (maybe regional) and parochial (in the narrowest sense) institution to one that had wider horizons both organizationally and intellectually.
Your area of research is American Jewish history, and the history of Jews in New York in particular. Most recently, you published Left of Center: The Liberal Party of New York and the Rise and Fall of American Social Democracy (2021), and you edited two books: The Jewish Metropolis: New York from the 17th to the 21st Centuries (2021) and Jewish New York: The Remarkable Story of a City and a People (2017). Your earlier work included studies of Jewish immigration to New York, Jewish immigrant associations, the stories of Eastern European immigrants to America, capitalism, socialism, and globalization. How did you become interested in the history of Jews in New York, and what are some of the contributions to scholarship that you are most proud of?
One correction: I was a co-author of Jewish New York: The Remarkable Story of a City and a People, which itself is a one-volume version of the three-volume City of Promises: A History of the Jews of New York (2012), of which I co-wrote with Annie Polland the middle volume, The Emerging Metropolis: New York Jews in the Age of Immigration, 1840-1920. It’s a complicated citation!
I started graduate school at NYU with the goal of getting an MA in History and training as an archivist. I was interested in Jewish history, and especially in Eastern Europe. But the action in the History Department seemed to be in American history, and so I shifted my focus in that direction, to look at Eastern European Jews as they arrived and got settled in the US. In a course she offered at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, Dr. Jenna Weissman Joselit suggested that someone do research in the fantastic collection of records of the landsmanshaftn (Jewish immigrant hometown societies) that YIVO had recently amassed. I said, “I’ll do that.” That became not only my MA thesis and PhD dissertation, but also my first book.
Some things I’m proud of:
The book on landsmanshaftn, which shows how the immigrants Americanized on their own terms;
In the collection of immigrant autobiographies that I edited and translated with Jocelyn Cohen, bringing to light the stories of “ordinary” people’s lives as they themselves saw them;
Showing the continued connections between immigrant Jews in the US and the “old country” through travel and travel writing, and the ways in which those connections influenced political attitudes;
Raising the historical profile of the anti-Communist left, which I think has been neglected in the historiography.
What are you currently working on?
I have finally decided to drop the pretense, and get to the point. I am writing a history of my own family in the context of modern Jewish history, or maybe it’s a history of the modern Jewish experience through the lens of one family from the Russian Pale of Settlement to the US and Israel. Hopefully, this will not be a narrow genealogy, but an exploration of the tremendous transformations in Jewish life that took place in the 19th and 20th centuries, including the rise of modern cultural, political and religious movements; mass migrations; integration; genocide; the revival of Jewish sovereignty; and revolutions in the ways Jewish identities were constructed.
One thing that working on this project has done is bring me back to my original interest in Russian Jewish history. I’m trying to excavate the life of my great-grandfather, Abraham Soyer, as he grew up in a traditional milieu in a Russian shtetl, moved his family to “deep Russia,” emigrated to the US, and became involved in the revival of Hebrew as a modern literary language.
A drawing of Abraham Soyer by his son, Raphael Soyer (“Untitled,” c. 1925, Jewish Museum)
Your family has deep roots in the Bronx. Your grandfather, Moses, and his twin brother, Raphael, were both well-known artists. Can you tell us more about your family’s story and how your personal history intersects with your research?
My great-grandparents Avrom and Beyle were raising their six children in the provincial Russian city of Borisoglebsk, where Avrom was a Hebrew teacher to the small Jewish community there. When he lost his permit to live outside of the Pale of Settlement, he and Beyle chose to emigrate. The oldest children, twins Moses and Raphael, were twelve. They first went to Philadelphia, where they had family (an example of “chain migration”), but soon moved to New York, where prospects for a teacher of Hebrew and Hebrew Bible were better. They settled in the Bronx, where Moses, Raphael, and their siblings grew up. As you mention, Moses and Raphael became painters, as did their younger brother Isaac.
Moses Soyer, “Three Brothers” (Brooklyn Museum)
Everyone else – brother Israel, and sisters Rebecca and Fannie, became teachers. New York City became their new homeland, whether they were centered in the Bronx, the Upper West Side of Manhattan (including Lincoln Square – see Raphael’s painting, “Farewell to Lincoln Square”), or in Bohemian Greenwich Village.
Raphael Soyer’s “Farewell to Lincoln Square” (1959)
I should also mention that my mother grew up in the Bronx, where she attended Taft High School. Her father was a prominent local dentist and her mother was a school teacher. They lived on and around the Grand Concourse, which is where prominent Bronx dentists and such tended to live.
My mother’s grandparents all immigrated to New York in the 1880s and 1890s, so my roots in the city go back well over a century – of continuous residence! I feel fortunate to have that personal connection to a place that is also such a fertile field for historical research.
Rebecca teaching Moses to dance in Raphael Soyer’s “Dancing Lesson” (Jewish Museum)
A letter from Moses Soyer to his grandson Daniel Soyer (Smithsonian Archives of American Art)
One of the dominant themes in your work is immigration. How does working at a university founded by immigrants, in a city of immigrants, impact the research and teaching that you do?
One of the purposes of studying history is to enable one to see one’s surroundings in four dimensions – in time as well as in space. Even though my research is on the immigrant wave of a century ago, it gives me some perspective on the immigrant city I live and work in now. And vice versa, observing the living immigrant city informs my perspective on the past.
Teaching immigration history, urban history, and Jewish history in New York City is great. The students can go outside and see how what they are studying looks in real life. They can do this on their own, of course, but in all my classes I also assign activities that involve finding traces of the past in today’s city. We also always go on at least one field trip together, something like a walking tour of a neighborhood like the South Bronx, Washington Heights, Harlem, the Lower East Side, or Jackson Heights.
What Jewish Studies courses do you typically teach on campus, and what inspired you to teach them?
I teach “HIST 1851: Jews in the Modern World,” a survey of modern Jewish history that is one of the choices among the History Department’s “Understanding Historical Change” courses that students must take as part of the Core Curriculum. Students also have a chance to write papers on Jewish themes in my NYC and immigration history classes.
In the coming year, I hope to offer a course in American Jewish history. This would be the first time that I would be teaching it, though it has been offered before by one of our visiting fellows, Dr. Ayelet Brinn.
Honestly, I offer these courses because I’m interested in them. But I hope that the students are also, and I’m sure that they can get something out of them which will help them understand their world better.
Daniel Soyer (right) leading a group of Fordham alumni on a walking tour of the Lower East Side
In what ways has Fordham’s Jesuit and Catholic missions impacted the work that you do, in the classroom and beyond?
As a Jesuit and Catholic university, Fordham takes seriously the humanities in general, and history in particular, and this has been a great encouragement in my teaching and research. Certainly, teaching at a Catholic institution has made me think more seriously about the role of religion (as opposed to just ethnicity), religious diversity, and, unfortunately, sometimes religious bigotry, in American history and culture, something that I think many American historians, with their secular(ist) training and personal inclinations neglect.
Any thoughts about Jewish Studies @Fordham as we celebrate its fifth anniversary?
It turns out that Jewish Studies has existed at Fordham for some time. Not only were there colleagues who studied Hebrew Bible and Rabbinic Judaism, but also modern Hebrew literature, Jewish ethnography, antisemitism, the history of Israel, and Jewish history. But some of us never even got to teach in our research specialties. It took the arrival of Magda Teter as Shvidler Chair to bring Jewish Studies out from underground, introduce Fordham Jewish Studies scholars to each other, create a coherent framework for the study and teaching of the discipline, attract students, and make Jewish Studies visible on the campus and the community. Thanks to Dr. Teter and now also Dr. Kattan Gribetz for all the great programming, collaboration with other institutions, and nurturing of students for Jewish Studies at Fordham!
Thank you, Daniel, for such a moving and informative interview!
This year, Fordham’s Center for Jewish Studies is celebrating its fifth anniversary. But before the formal founding of the CJS, many professors, students, librarians, and others taught, studied, and cultivated the study of Jews, Judaism, and Jewish history and culture at Fordham. This blog series features interviews with some of these people and celebrates their lasting contributions to the university.
This interview features Mary Callaway, Professor of Hebrew Bible in Fordham’s Theology Department, a department she chaired for many years. Professor Callaway began her studies at St. John’s College in Annapolis and came to Union Theological Seminary for her doctorate, and then began teaching at Fordham in the late 1970s, while writing her dissertation. She has been on the faculty ever since, teaching Hebrew Bible, midrash, and other courses in the Theology Department and the Honors Program!
When did you arrive at Fordham and what was Fordham like at the time?
I was writing my dissertation in 1977 when I received a call from the chair of Fordham’s Theology Department asking if I would teach a course in Hebrew reading, and one in “Judaism in the Hellenistic-Roman Period,” because the adjunct who had been covering those courses was suddenly not available. The department chair had called a notable Roman Catholic scholar of New Testament asking for names. The scholar, with whom I had worked, gave my name, assuring the Chair that even though I was female and Protestant I could do the job well! Within three years the department had a full-time position in Old Testament, and at the end of the search I was hired, the second woman and first non-Catholic in the department. All of the men but two were priests. There were about 80 graduate students, mostly clergy doing systematic theology, with about ten doing New Testament. Biblical studies meant learning to do exegesis using the original languages, on the 19th century German seminary model. It was rigorous, but from our perspective today, quite narrow. From the beginning, I felt welcome in the department and was mentored by senior scholars. Presidents O’Hare and McShane were always supportive, and appreciated my husband Jamie, who is an Episcopal priest.
In the early 80’s the undergraduate population was homogeneous, mostly white and Catholic. The core required 3 theology and 3 philosophy courses. The first two theology courses were somewhat similar to our two now, though the precursor to Faith and Critical Reason was more about faith than critical reason. The third course was chosen from an offering of contemporary subjects which included marriage, and “world religions,” and the students liked it best.
A short tale showcases the difference between then and now. In the first semester of my adjunct teaching I was pregnant with my first child, but not showing. For second semester, the chair had asked me to teach two sections of the undergrad core class “Tradition and Crisis in the Old Testament”; I have no idea what I was thinking when I agreed! Midway through the semester, at the beginning of spring break, Daniel was born by C-section. My husband and I paid a friend who was on sabbatical from his university to take my classes for the week after spring break, and then I was back in the classroom for the rest of the semester. Four years later, after I had been hired on a tenure-track line, I was pregnant with Hannah. I was done with Superwoman; this time I took a year off, with full support of the department. The university had no maternity policy, so they used disability for a semester. Over my years at Fordham, I have been so glad to see how different it has become for faculty in their child-bearing years.
Your area of teaching and research is the Hebrew Bible and midrash (biblical interpretation). What led you to this field?
Looking back, I can now see a clear pattern, repeated over the course of years. I was led to midrash in my years as an undergraduate at St. John’s College (Annapolis). With no departments or majors, and a set curriculum of “great books” for everyone, it was a campus alive with intellectual conversation. So it wasn’t unusual that there was an extra-curricular study group on Genesis, led by Simon Kaplan, a brilliant, elderly German Jewish scholar. In the course of a semester, meeting once a week, he barely got beyond the first few verses of Genesis 1 because there was so much to talk about! Why does the Torah begin with bet instead of aleph? Why is the first phrase ambiguous? This kind of rich texture, reading across centuries, and devotion to the text, was news to me, though I had grown up in a clergy house with knowledge of “Old Testament.” The next step was an extra-curricular course in biblical Hebrew. By my senior year I knew that I had to go on to graduate study.
Graduate study in Bible in those days was relentlessly Protestant. Though Union Theological Seminary is across the street from the Jewish Theological Seminary, there was no formal connection between the schools. However, a fellow doctoral student at Union was Jewish, and offered to lead a study group in the basics of rabbinic commentaries. We would meet in the early evening, study for a few hours and then continue the conversation over Heinekens. Learning the basics of Hillel’s rules of interpretation was transformative, and allowed us to see how Jewish much of the New Testament is. Back in the late sixties, that was news. We called our sessions “the light to the gentiles.”
In addition to this life-changing enrichment of my graduate classes, I had the benefit of my mentor, Jim Sanders, who did his doctoral training at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati and had also studied in Israel. I remember a Hebrew reading class in which he explained that the Masoretic notes in the margin were there “to guard the text” against well-meaning scribes who might want to correct a problem. This was in direct contrast to the scholarly notes at the bottom of the page, which described how the ancient versions varied and often encouraged an emendation of the biblical text. So, it turned out that the page layout of the Hebrew Bible we were all using showcased a crucial difference between rabbinic tradition and modern critical scholarship. This dialogue between ancient and contemporary approaches was formative for me as a scholar. In a graduate program that was largely based on nineteenth and twentieth century Protestant German scholarship, I was most fortunate to be formed by these counter-voices.
Your first book was titled Sing, O Barren One: A Study in Comparative Midrash. More recently, you published a book titled Jeremiah Through the Ages. Can you share what led you to write each of these books and what you hope readers learn from them?
My training emphasized the ancient Near Eastern origins of biblical traditions, which of course I found exciting, but my work with Jewish scholars had led me to see the Bible differently: not as the triumphant climax of ancient near eastern history, but rather as part of a long chain of living traditions. I wanted to argue that the process of reinterpreting ancient Near Eastern traditions that was so formative in ancient Israel continued in the work of the biblical authors, except that they were rewriting Israelite traditions. The dissertation was a case study in how this process worked. It traced the tradition of the barren women who bore important sons, first in the Tanakh, then in Second Temple literature, then in Philo’s idea of spiritual conception, in Luke (Mary’s virginity as a midrashic development), and finally in rabbinic midrashic tradition of the seven barren women. My thesis was simple, but radical for its time: some of the ways of thinking that shaped the texts of the Hebrew Bible are similar to the ways of thinking used by both Jews and Christians in antiquity to interpret those texts. In other words, biblical thinking was already midrashic thinking. More provocatively to Christian scholars: midrashic thinking is in many ways like biblical thinking.
Early in my career an entirely new field came into existence in biblical studies. Reception history was first known in English departments and only came to biblical studies in the 80’s. Its goal is to document and analyze the significance and effects of a given text, in politics, art, popular culture, and religion. It asks the question of what difference this text has made in the world. Jeremiah Through the Centuries (2020) came from a challenge by a dear friend from graduate school who was one of the editors of the Blackwell Bible Commentaries. The assignment was to write a commentary that picked up where traditional commentaries left off, exploring the ways that the biblical Jeremiah has been expanded and transformed from antiquity to the present. The question is how Jeremiah, both text and character, have left indelible marks on culture. I had published a few articles on Jeremiah in midrashic interpretation, and was intrigued by the project. Little did I know what I was in for! The scope of the project, the languages involved in the primary sources, delving into political controversies, art history and religious debates, deciphering old scripts, seemed to keep expanding. The initial task was to find significant reception for every chapter in Jeremiah, all 52 of them, but the final task was to cut back what I had found. Trips to libraries and museums in Paris, London and of course New York had yielded a trove of stories, art, devotional literature, political commentary and more. The greatest challenge of writing the book was resisting the rabbit holes that beckoned me to take a detour. My greatest pride is the illustrations, all 68 of them, from all over the world, including a 14th century Islamic picture of “Armia resurrecting a donkey,” and a Holbein cartoon of Erasmus as Jeremiah! One significant discovery was about Jeremiah’s so-called “Confessions” – his prayers and tirades against what God was asking of him. For nineteen centuries most exegetes criticized Jeremiah for his “blasphemous talk,” and warned readers that it was sinful. Then, in the blossoming of German Romanticism in the late 19th century, a German biblical scholar wrote that Jeremiah’s words were a commendable outpouring of genuine emotion and therefore commendable! Since then Jeremiah’s harsh words against God have been read approvingly as honest prayer. I find that some historical perspective about our ideas can help keep us humble.
You teach in both the Theology Department and in the Honors Program. What courses have you taught and what are some of your favorite texts or topics to teach?
My signature undergraduate course has been “Introduction to the Old Testament.” I love taking students by surprise, beginning not with the Bible but the Mesopotamian creation story, to help them realize that Genesis 1 is a richer, more complicated text than they had imagined. They tend to have an idea of revelation as a form of magic, and I want to nudge them to the idea that God uses history and human culture as vehicles of revelation. One persistent question early in the course is, “Who taught the Israelites how to talk about God?” As the semester progresses, the question is what new ways Israelites developed to talk about their wild, peculiar God. One that surprises and deeply engages the students is the persistent motif of talking back to God, beginning with Abraham challenging God about the plan to destroy Sodom. Students are also fascinated by the idea of midrash, and the idea that Jews bring a sense of humor along with reverence to their Torah study. They always seem engaged when I diverge from the lesson plan to tell a midrash. Some of my happiest memories are of Jewish students describing how the semester of studying the Tanakh drew them back into their faith.
Another favorite is “Foundational Texts,” the first-year Honors course. It’s a seminar with twelve freshmen around a seminar table, reading only primary texts. The syllabus includes Homer, Greek tragedy, Virgil and the Bible, among others. It’s thrilling for me to watch these smart eighteen-year old scholars move from their black and white vision of reality to beginning to embrace the discomfiting color gray.
One of my favorite parts of graduate teaching has been the language classes, which meant intermediate Hebrew reading and biblical Aramaic. The Aramaic course was engaging for me because I pitched biblical Aramaic as a stage in linguistic development from Bible to Targum, so I was able to draw the students into a bit of early midrash. My favorite language courses were on reading Hebrew narrative, when I tried to move students away from translating toward real reading, attending to the many subtle literary techniques of biblical narratives.
It seems almost quaint now, but in the mid-eighties through the nineties I developed several graduate courses in literary criticism and the Hebrew Bible. Of many happy memories from those heady days one that stands out is co-mentoring a doctoral dissertation with Richard Gianonne in the English Department titled, “Telling Stories About God: Narrative Voice and Epistemology in the Hebrew Bible and in the Fiction of Flannery O’Connor, Graham Greene and Cynthia Ozick.” The student did a sophisticated literary analysis of the Court History (2 Sam 7-20); the mentoring and the defense, in the English Department, was one of my most intellectually engaging experiences at Fordham.
One high point of graduate teaching for me was a course I developed on the Akedah (Genesis 22). Twenty centuries of readers struggling with that sublimely horrifying text reveals, among other things, the rich world of ideas and stories that one short biblical text can generate. One surprise for my students was discovering how consistently those interpretations became attached to the biblical text, traveling with it through time as if written between the lines. In fact, they were written between the lines in the medieval Glossa Ordinaria and in the margins in the Mikraot Gedolot. We see this in the developing persona of Isaac as willing victim, which began in the persecutions of Antiochus, was adopted by early Christian writers, and persisted through the medieval pogroms into early modernity. A favorite memory was the class when students performed part of a medieval mystery play enacting an emotional dialogue between Abraham and Isaac.
The other favorite graduate course is the basic M.A. course in Old Testament, which always included a good number of Jesuit Scholastics and other adult learners. They began with the classic Christian idea that the “Old Testament” was the prologue, and I loved watching as they discovered the theological riches from ancient Israel, and were constantly correcting their own presuppositions about the Bible.
You are a beloved teacher across campus. Students adore you, and many of them say that the course they took with you changed their lives. This is true of both current students as well as those you taught decades ago, who still remember your courses. Can you share some of your secrets?
This is very generous! My teaching has evolved over the years, and most of what I know I have learned from my students and colleagues. Teaching for me is a form of ministry, and the aim is to challenge as well as nurture. In my grad school days I often taught on Sunday mornings in my local Episcopal church, bringing some of the basic approaches of biblical scholarship to adults. Those experiences formed me as a teacher to be alert to where my students were intellectually and emotionally, and how far I could challenge them. A major joy of teaching at Fordham is its Jesuit identity, which has meant that a leitmotif of my classes is always what it means for people of faith to read the Bible critically. Just last semester a student in a course where we were reading the Bible along with Homer and Greek tragedy, asked, “Are we allowed to read the Bible this way?” Of course, every teacher loves it when a smart student mentions the elephant in the room!
In the early 90’s I became interested in the shift in educational theory that changed the focus in the classroom from the academic subject to the learner. I went to some conferences, read books, and secured a grant to engage an expert to help the department design a course in pedagogy for graduate students. The idea that we teach subjects rather than students is now the norm, but it was a major shift that happened well after my graduate education, which was based on the older European model. The move to a learner-centered theory of teaching was transformative for me. One effect was to break the fourth wall, allowing me to talk about what is going on in the class. Sometimes I would stop the class and say, “This isn’t working. What’s wrong?” and listen to what the students said. If the class bombed the midterm, we would have a conversation about it and I would offer a make-up on some of the essay questions. If a student submitted a sub-par paper, I encouraged a meeting to plan a rewrite. I tried to give lots of second chances, because so much learning happens when you revise your work. I always require a few sentences of metacognition, in which students reflect on what went wrong in the exam and what they had learned from the experience. Finally, a crucial part of teaching for me is being aware of how historical-critical study of the Bible might be affecting my students, and being real with them about it. Meeting with a student wrestling with the implications of the course on their faith has always been one of the most humbling yet exhilarating experiences for me.
Finally, I’m sure I benefit from my subject. Students expect a class in Bible to be pious and boring, so if it’s full of intriguing ancient Near Eastern parallels, some reception history, and humorous midrashim, they are pleasantly surprised.
You also served as Chair of the Theology Department, and many of the initiatives you spearheaded in that position, such as the end-of-year day-long retreat, remain mainstays of the department. What are some of the things you’re most proud of from this period in your career?
Life is full of surprises, and we don’t know ahead of time what we’re going to be called to do. In retrospect, I can see that my job was to help change the culture of the department into a community of scholars and teachers. When I first came to Fordham, faculty meetings were tense and sometimes erupted in shouting matches. I was among a small group of “young Turks” who wanted to make things better in the department. It began with the small gesture of bringing cookies to the meetings (low blood sugar feeds irritability!). Then a group of us led by Joe Lienhard tightened and codified the procedures in the graduate program. When I was Chair I worked with Harry Nasuti to design a retreat day at Mitchell Farm, a bucolic set of houses and grounds in Mahopac, N.Y. owned by the Jesuits. Along with the conversations in small groups, we had an informal worship service and then cooked dinner together using outdoor grills. I think at Mitchell Farm the idea took hold that community is precious, but it doesn’t just happen; you have to work at it. Then for years the beloved department secretary, Edie Mauriello, hosted a beginning of the year party at her house, which also built community. Jamie and I took that over when Edie could no longer do it, and we had the space. It was a sit-down dinner where people could enjoy long conversations at round tables, and it lasted for hours. One of the things I’m most proud of –and grateful for – is that we are a department where people talk together and learn from each other, but can also disagree with one another and find common ground. I had lots of training growing up, as my mother was executive director of the YWCA, and she often had difficult board members. She taught me by example about building community.
Another significant part of the Department’s history that I’m proud of is the move from our cramped quarters in Collins Hall to Duane Library. In Collins we were on two floors and shared some common space with the Philosophy Department. About twenty years ago we were given the chance to move to the ground floor of the old library, which had been vacant for several years. We were originally given only part of the space, but Harry Nasuti and I pressed for the whole space, working with the head of the project, Joe Scaltro. Joe was surprised that I wanted a full kitchen, but I reminded him that images of food and feasting are common biblical tropes for the divine presence. I’m most proud of how much common space we have, and how our physical space facilitates conversations among students and faculty.
In what ways has Fordham’s Jesuit and Catholic missions impacted the work that you do, in the classroom and in your research?
Teaching at a Jesuit university has been formative for me. The seminars on Ignatian pedagogy, the ethos of the campus, the discourses we use, and the presence of young Jesuit Scholastics together with seasoned elders have all shaped me as a teacher and scholar. For me the discipline of magis, the commitment to excellence, is enriched by the Ignatian freedom of finding God in all things. And of course cura personalis, which has shaped me to be more alert to how what’s happening in my classroom might be impacting my students’ lives.
One specific impact has been the habit of going on an 8-day silent retreat in the summer, at a Jesuit house on the coast of Massachusetts. There I was introduced to the Jesuit practices of recollecting the day, and of discernment of spirits. For years I had been walking across campus after class thinking how bad it was, and what an awful teacher I was. Then one day I stopped, probably struck by sight of the sun on the spectacular fall foliage, and had an Ignatian moment. What if, I thought, you think again about the class that just happened, and find in it a moment of grace instead of recrimination? It took me a few minutes of recollecting, but then I realized that a shy student had spoken for the first time that day. I could easily have missed that moment and what it meant for the student’s development. After that, I cultivated a habit of reviewing my class as I walked back to my office, naming the Ignatian moment of grace that had happened that day.
Mary Callaway, speaking with Father Nicholas Lombardi and Frank Hsu at the 2019 Convocation, when Mary received the Bene Merenti medal, celebrating 40 years of work at Fordham University.
You’re an active member of Columbia University’s Hebrew Bible Seminar. Can you share more about that community and how it has enhanced your time at Fordham?
The seminar was started in 1968 by a group of faculty at Columbia, Union, JTS, Hebrew Union College, NYU, Yale and other schools within driving distance. It was an even mix of Jewish and Christian scholars of the Hebrew Bible who wanted to have dinner together, listen to a scholarly paper and have a lively conversation. I joined in 1980, the year I became full-time at Fordham. In those days it was very male and the discussion after the paper could become contentious and even heated. Senior scholars pressed young scholars hard, almost hazing them. One legend tells of a senior scholar who always fell asleep at the beginning of the paper and woke up just as it was finishing to ask an astute question! I saw it happen. Over the years the ethos changed and it became more hospitable, with richly productive conversation. Being part of the seminar has been formative for me as a scholar of Bible because I was immersed from the beginning in Jewish perspectives. The kinds of theological questions that my graduate training emphasized were here replaced by lively issues about ancient Near Eastern influences, particularly light shed on a biblical text by evidence from Akkadian or Ugaritic. Most humbling for me was the way my Jewish colleagues usually cited a biblical text in Hebrew without opening a Tanakh. In my early years I was the only person doing Hebrew Bible at Rose Hill, so this community has been formative for me as a scholar.
You’ll soon be retiring. What are some of your favorite memories from your time at Fordham?
One memorable moment happened quite early in my teaching career, when a student somewhat aggressively challenged a point I had made. For a moment I froze, then some better angel prompted me to take it as an opportunity, allowing the class to see how my mind worked under pressure. There was a lively conversation, and real learning happened in that class.
Another memorable occasion is the commencement when I offered the invocation, standing on a wooden box. It was a formal but interactive prayer, based on the ancient Benedicite Dominum, in which I called on different majors and groups of students to “bless ye the Lord.” It turned out to be a very lively, noisy invocation. It was a risk, but after the noisy “Amen” Fr. McShane crossed the terrace and hugged me, joking that he hadn’t thought I was a Baptist!
In an ironic twist of history, some of my best memories are of faculty meetings, the very thing that horrified me when I started at Fordham. Whether at Mitchell Farm, or on a rainy Wednesday at a department meeting, being part of a group that can strongly disagree and keep working together to find a resolution for the common good is still thrilling for me.
What advice for the future do you have for current members of the Fordham family?
Treasure what is precious about Fordham, whatever that is for you, and work hard to preserve and strengthen it. Seek out people who have different perspectives and conversation partners who can challenge you. Cultivate the habit of Ignatian moments, stopping to reflect on what just happened, to say, “Wow!” or even to say a berakhah of gratitude.
Any thoughts about Jewish Studies @Fordham as we celebrate its fifth anniversary?
I was of course thrilled when the program in Jewish Studies began, and have loved watching it grow from seed to a flowering tree in five short years. I have learned so much from exhibits and lectures! Especially impressive is the way the programs range through history, from antiquity to now. The richly diverse programs are teaching the whole Fordham community that Jewish history and culture are not niche interests, but are a wonderful part of the intellectual world that we all share. Mazel tov!
Thank you, Mary, for this amazing interview, with so much wisdom, joy, and humor!
