Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies
The Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania—commonly called the Katz Center—is a postdoctoral research center devoted to the study of Jewish history and civilization.[1]
This article is about the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at 420 Walnut Street. For the historic building at 2321-2335 N Broad Street, see Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning.
Former name
Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning; Annenberg Research Institute
1993
History[edit]
The Katz Center is the continuation of two pioneering institutions devoted to advanced research: Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning and the Annenberg Research Institute. Dropsie College was the first accredited doctoral program in Judaic studies in the world. The Annenberg Research Institute was a center for advanced study in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam founded in 1986 with staff and collections carried over from Dropsie College. The founding director of the Katz Center was David B. Ruderman.[2] The current Ella Darivoff Director is Steven Weitzman.[3]
The Katz Center was established in 1993 as a part of the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. It was first named the Center for Judaic Studies (CJS); later, the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies (CAJS)—and in 2008, the Katz family endowed the center in memory of former board chair and philanthropist Herbert D. Katz. It is located in an award-winning building across from Independence National Historical Park in Center City Philadelphia.[4]
The Katz Center houses offices for scholars who are in residence throughout the academic year for postdoctoral research, as well as an extensive library of Judaica,[5] a reading room, and seminar and meeting spaces.[6]
Library at the Katz Center[edit]
The combination of the Dropsie/Annenberg library with the Judaica holdings of the Penn Libraries resulted in a 350,000-volume collection of Judaica, including more than 8,000 rare books and an assortment of cuneiform tablets.
There are also 451 codices in eleven alphabets and 24 languages and dialects. Some of the languages and dialects represented include Hebrew, English, German, Yiddish, Ladino, Arabic, Latin, Judeo-Arabic, Armenia, Telugu, and Syriac. Fragments from the Cairo Geniza and others written in Coptic and Demotic on papyrus round out the collection.
The library also holds the personal letters of more than 50 Jewish-American leaders from the 1800s and 1900s, including Isaac Leeser, Sabato Morais, and Abraham A. Neuman (three ministers of Congregation Mikveh Israel in Philadelphia), Cyrus Adler (president, Dropsie College, Mikveh Israel, American Jewish Committee, Jewish Theological Seminary of America; librarian, Smithsonian Institution), Charles Cohen (president, Mikveh Israel, Fairmount Park Commission), his journalist sister Mary M. Cohen, Yiddish journalist Ben Zion Goldberg, and the benefactor Moses Dropsie.[10]