Jewish
Jewish Studies at Barnard
The Barnard College Program in Jewish Studies is a dual-major program that enables undergraduates to acquire a thorough knowledge of the most important aspects of Jewish culture, civilization, and history in an interdisciplinary setting. The purpose of the program is to help the student identify resources for constructing rigorously detailed and methodological majors.
The program begins from the assumption that a meaningful major can be most profitably framed in one of the existing departments—such as, but not limited to, American Studies, Ancient Studies, Anthropology, Art History, Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures, Classics, Comparative Literature, English, History, Music, Religion, Sociology, and Women’s Studies. The program director works with the student to ensure that the subject matter of that major contains enough interest in Jewish subjects and is rigorous enough in methodology.
Professor of Religion and Ingeborg Rennert Chair of Jewish Studies, Beth Berkowitz
Announcing the 2024/2025 Rennert Prize Winners!
2025 Ingeborg, Tamara, and Yonina Rennert Research Award: Hannah Cohen
Hannah Cohen, Barnard sophomore and religion major, will be using the Rennert Research Fund to provide travel and research support for the Steiner Summer Program in summer 2025. The Steiner Summer Program is a seven week-long course of intensive Yiddish language-learning in the mornings and an internship in the afternoons. It is run by the Yiddish Book Center and takes place on Hampshire College’s Northampton campus.
2025 Ingeborg, Tamara, and Yonina Rennert Senior Thesis Prize in Jewish Studies: Judith Goldstein
Judith Goldstein’s “A Night at the Ball: Jewish Immigrant Social Events in New York City, 1900-1939,” a senior thesis from Barnard’s Department of History, is a significant piece of research, with three chapters, an Introduction, and a Conclusion. Making impressive use of English and Yiddish-language oral histories, novels, poetry, maps, newspapers, and archival documents, the thesis tells the story of the evening balls organized by early 20th-century Jewish immigrant societies in New York City, with an emphasis on the presence and organizing activity of Jewish women. The work is well-grounded in relevant scholarship but what stands out is Goldstein’s original work with a wide variety of primary sources. Goldstein uses the methods of a historian but has the aims of an anthropologist in trying to produce an ethnography of the balls. The ingenious organization of the thesis takes the reader through a night at the ball, starting with purchasing the ticket and learning the dances, moving to preparations for “the big night” with ballgowns and evening wear (for which girls would sacrifice their meager earnings), proceeding to the night of the ball and its location, decorations, lighting, music, and guests, continuing on to the courtship norms that governed the socializing, and ending with what became of the balls by the mid-twentieth century. It’s wonderful work that's serious and fun at the same time. Rennert faculty board members called the work "creative, original, analytically daring and well-argued" and " an excellent, original work of solid scholarship."