Jewish Studies Program

Message from the director

The scope of the Jewish Studies Program is bracketed by the two pictures featured on this page of our website.  One, a view of the excavations at the synagogue found at Qasrin in the Golan Heights of Israel, represents the goal of the program to connect students to the deep historical record of the Jewish people: from Israelite origins to the profound changes that were generated by the Jewish Enlightenment or Haskalah.  The other, showing the front of B'nai Jacob Synagogue in Middleton, Pennsylvania, reflects our focus on the experience of  modern Jews, as they encountered both the horrors of the Holocaust and the opportunities in America and elsewhere in the Diaspora as well as worked to build modern Israel. 

Our faculty is a strongly interdisciplary one, including historians, philosophers, social scientists, archaeologists, and language scholars.  The undergraduate academic program features a Major in Jewish Studies and a Minor in both Jewish Studies and Hebrew.  We are committed to providing individualized programs of studies for our students, to best meet their vocational and intellectual interests. Many opportunities for student research and study abroad are available.  The scope of Jewish Studies is broad and complex.  I welcome ideas and suggestions from students, faculty and friends as we work to enhance and refine what we offer.  Please come by my office in 103 Weaver (814-863-8939) or e-mail me (bch11@psu.edu) at your convenience.

 For those of you who might be curious, my background is in anthropology, in particular, the subdiscipline of zooarchaeology, the study of ancient animal remains.  Beginning with an early opportunity given me while I was an undergraduate, my fieldwork has taken me to various parts of the Middle East – Turkey, Iran, Lebanon – though more recently I have spend most of my summers in Israel .  Before coming to Penn State in 2003, I was the Chair of the Department of Anthropology and Social Work at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

With best regards and hope to hear from you soon,

Brian Hesse

Note:  The photo of the B'nai Jacob Synagogue was done by Jeb Stuart and is courtesy of the Pennsulvania Historical and Museum Commision.  The photo of the synagogue at Qasrin courtesy of Ann Killebrew.