A New Name and a New Beginning
Shaping the Shorstein Center for Jewish Studies
By Joelle Carmel
As you enter the Judaica Suite on the second floor of Smathers Library, you are swept into a magical space. Designed by renowned architect Kenneth Treister, the building holds the special collections of the Isser and Rae Price Library. The wooden windows, carved with Stars of David, bring in the soft glow of sunlight, illuminating the room filled with beautiful furniture. The shelves house hundreds of historical Jewish books, foundational religious texts and scholarly studies that connect you to the past.
The Judaica Suite main hall (Bernard Brzezinski and Hannah Pietrick/ UF Judaica Suite website)
The Isser and Rae Price Library of Judaica is considered the foremost Jewish studies research collection in the southeastern United States, and the largest Jewish library in Florida, with holdings of over 120,000 volumes and more than 250,000 digitized pages. The growth of this invaluable collection since 1977 mirrors the expansion of Jewish studies at the University of Florida. The Center for Jewish Studies was established a few years earlier, in 1973, to encourage and support the growing interest in Jewish Studies among UF students.
Exactly fifty years later, under the leadership of Professor Norman J. W. Goda, the Norman and Irma Braman Professor of Holocaust Studies, it became the “Bud Shorstein Center for Jewish Studies.” Its eponym, Samuel R. “Bud” Shorstein, a successful accountant and Governor Bob Graham’s chief of staff in the Senate, believes in the mission of increasing access to Jewish education and programming on college campuses, especially at his alma mater. Bud Shorstein’s support has enabled new research initiatives to be possible and has allowed students to explore new areas of Jewish studies.
“HaTanin Journal” spoke with Shorstein, who shared his belief in the importance of expanding access to Jewish education and programming on college campuses, a mission that continues to guide the Center’s work today.
“I’m hoping that the Center for Jewish Studies at the university will become one of the leading centers for Jewish studies in the United States of America,” Shorstein said. “I think we are heading in that direction.”
Bud Shorstein pictured at a public talk, Pugh Hall. (Michel Thomas/ UF Liberal Arts and Sciences News site)
The University of Florida is home to the largest undergraduate Jewish student body of any college in the country, according to Hillel International, with 19% of its students identifying as Jewish. Shorstein sees this as a unique opportunity. He hopes to see students of all faiths and backgrounds engage with the Center, “we are interrelating with what I hope to be the future leaders of our state and country.” He stresses how important it was for them to have an opportunity, “to develop a relationship with the Jewish people.”
Most recently, the world was struggling to make sense of the conflict in Israel, an event that deeply affected the global Jewish community.
“Jewish people in America and worldwide are at a point we haven't been in for years and years,” Shorstein said. “Antisemitism has creeped up again, and it is certainly a very serious problem.”
In this climate, creating a space for informed and respectful dialogue is crucial, and the Center’s faculty stepped in to meet that need.
“The scholars are a very impressive group of people, and they're in demand around the country and around the world,” Shorstein said. “This is one of the things we should be very proud of.”
A New Director
The Bud Shorstein Center for Jewish Studies, in its new home at Walker Hall, has recently welcomed its new interim director, Professor Natalia Aleksiun, Harry Rich Professor of Holocaust Studies. A historian of modern Jewish history, she is interested in several aspects of Jewish life, especially in the experience of the Jewish intelligentsia, the new university-educated Jewish elite emerging in East Central Europe in the late 19th century and Jewish childhood and adolescence in the first half of the 20th century. Aleksiun also works on anti-Jewish violence and political mobilization before the Holocaust, particularly in university settings.
Interim director, Dr. Natalia Aleksiun (Bud Shorstein Center for Jewish Studies website)
Aleksiun’s two monographs focus on the history of Polish Jewry. Her first book, “Where to? The Zionist Movement in Poland, 1944–1950,” examines the political choices facing Holocaust survivors in the immediate postwar years. Her second, “Conscious History: Polish Jewish Historians before the Holocaust,” illuminates a cohort of Jewish scholars—both men and women—deeply committed to documenting their own past. She is currently at work on a new book exploring the experiences of Jews in hiding in western Ukraine during the Holocaust.
“I believe it is a period that needs to be studied as part of Jewish history rather than examined primarily through the lens of perpetrators,” she said. In the spring semester, she will be teaching the introductory course, History of the Holocaust.
Aleksiun continues to work in the field of “aftermath studies,” a relatively new area of Holocaust studies that examines the experiences of survivors after the Second World War as they sought to rebuild their lives—sometimes in their old homes, but more often in new ones. She is currently writing an article on the relationships between survivors and their rescuers in Poland in the immediate postwar period.
When asked about her plans for the Center’s future, Dr. Aleksiun said she envisions an academic community thriving with programs and ideas.
“The goal of the Center is to be part of many conversations on and off campus and be a resource for students with interest in Jewish topics,” Aleksiun said.
She hopes that the Center will continue to collaborate with other university units and Jewish institutions and organizations in the area, such as Chabad UF, UF Hillel and Congregation B'nai Israel.
The Center invites many speakers to engage UF students and faculty in conversations about Jewish history, religion, thought and culture. Most recently, they partnered with UF Chabad for the “How Charlottesville Changed America” lecture delivered by Professor James Loeffler of Johns Hopkins University to kick off this year’s events of the Forum for Fairness in Discourse. In January, the Center is holding the second event of the Forum, a lecture by Richard Breitman titled “What FDR Said about the Holocaust.”
“Through the center, students could learn things that are not necessarily directly connected to their majors, but in some way also enrich their understanding of the Jewish experience,” Aleksiun said.
Since its naming, the Shorstein Center for Jewish Studies has continued to expand, offering a wide range of learning opportunities for students interested in Jewish history and culture. The Center also provides research opportunities and scholarships open to students of any major. At the heart of this mission is a simple belief: every student matters.
“The Shorstein Center for Jewish Studies tells the story of the Jewish people,” Shorstein said. “We have a good story. I hope students will come away knowing significantly more about the Jewish experience than before they started.”
Joelle Carmel is a sophomore psychology and criminology student at the University of Florida. She is passionate about music, baking, nature and being involved in Jewish life on campus.