In 1930, Columbia University appointed Salo Baron to be the Nathan L. Miller Professor of Jewish History, Literature, and Institutions—marking a turning point in the history of Jewish studies in America. Baron not only became perhaps the most accomplished scholar of Jewish history in the twentieth century, the author of many books including the eighteen-volume A Social and Religious History of the Jews. He also created a program and a discipline, mentoring hundreds of scholars, establishing major institutions including the first academic center to study Israel in the United States, building Columbia’s Judaica collection, intervening as a public intellectual, and exerting an unparalleled influence on what it meant to study the Jewish past.
This book brings together leading scholars to consider how Baron transformed the course of Jewish studies in the United States. From a variety of perspectives, they reflect on his contributions to the study of Jewish history, literature, and culture, as well as his scholarship, activism, and mentorship. Among many distinguished contributors, David Sorkin engages with Baron’s arguments on Jewish emancipation; Francesca Trivellato puts him in conversation with economic history; David Engel examines his use of anti-Semitism as an analytical category; Deborah Lipstadt explores his testimony at the trial of Adolf Eichmann; and Robert Chazan and Jane Gerber, both once Baron’s doctoral students, offer personal and intellectual reminiscences. Together, they testify to Baron’s singular legacy in shaping Jewish studies in America.
Daftar Isi
Introduction: Salo Baron, Columbia University, and the Expansion of Jewish Studies in Twentieth America, by Rebecca Kobrin
1. Salo Baron’s Legacy and the Shaping of Jewish Studies Into the Twenty-First Century, by Jason Lustig
2. Finding the Future in the Jewish Past: Salo Baron at Columbia, by Bernard D. Cooperman
3. Emancipation: Salo Baron’s Achievement, by David Sorkin
4. An Economic Historian Reads Salo Baron, by Francesca Trivellato
5. Salo Baron on Anti-Semitism, by David Engel
6. The Professor in the Courtroom: Salo W. Baron at the Eichmann Trial, by Deborah Lipstadt
7. Building the Foundations of Scholarship at Home: Salo Baron and the Judaica Collections at Columbia University Libraries, by Michelle Margolis Chesner
8. From Europe to Pittsburgh: Salo W, Baron and Yosef H. Yerushalmi Between the Lachrymose Theory and the End of the Vertical Alliance, by Pierre Birnbaum
9. Salo Baron and His Innovative Reconstruction of the Jewish Past, by Robert Chazan
10. Remembering Professor Salo Baron: Personal Recollections of a Former Student, by Jane Gerber
11. Recollections from the Baron Daughters, by Shoshana B. Tancer & Toby B. Gitelle
Bibliography of the Publications of Professor Salo Wittmayer Baron (1895–1989), by Menachem Butler
Acknowledgments
Contributors
Index
Tentang Penulis
Rebecca Kobrin is the Russell and Bettina Knapp Associate Professor of American Jewish History at Columbia University. She is the author of
Jewish Bialystok and Its Diaspora (2010), editor of
Chosen Capital: The Jewish Encounter with American Capitalism (2012), and coeditor of
Purchasing Power: The Economics of Jewish History (2015).