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BY DEBORAH SOSIN This January, Dr. David M. Gordis celebrated his tenth anniversary as President of Hebrew College. To mark the occasion, HCT asked Dr. Gordis to reflect on his first decade of leadership, how the College has changed and what he envisions for the future. As you look back over the past ten years, what were the priorities that have guided the transformation of Hebrew College?
We realized that there had been major changes in Jewish life from the time the College was established in 1921—specific changes that affected the mission of the institution. Jewish education had become far more diverse with the evolution of day schools, early childhood programs, family education and other specialized modes. The original function of the College as an institution to transform Jewish education had become even more important than in 1921, as well as more challenging and diverse. At the same time, the fact that Jewish studies had become part of the general curriculum at universities around the country raised the question of what was special and unique about this institution compared to other campuses. This led to the whole process of rethinking priorities. Our guiding principle was the need to apply high-quality academic study of Judaism to the life of the community along three axes—by expanding the definition of Jewish studies to include not only classical texts, history, thought and literature but also all aspects of Jewish creativity, including music, art and film; by placing renewed emphasis on lifelong Jewish learning through programs ranging from training early childhood educators to our Prozdor high school and new Me'ah Graduate Institute; and by increasing access to Jewish education via a variety of modalities, from the dialogical engagement of Me'ah to what are now our growing online offerings through Hebrew College Online and MyJewishLearning.com. The Rabbinical School represents a major step for the College—some would say a departure from our historic tradition as a nonreligious institution. Why is this a key initiative? As the College reflected on its role and concluded that we are committed to the application of high-quality Jewish studies to the life of the community, we had to ask how this goal would best be expressed. As an academic institution in the front ranks of advanced Jewish study, we set as our priority the creation of programs that shape the leadership of the community. We do this within a k'lal Yisrael environment, so it's not enough to be a feeder to other schools. We need to offer the senior academic degree in the field through our new doctoral program in Jewish education, and the highest credential of community leadership in the form of rabbinic ordination through our new Rabbinical School. It's the natural next step, and we're very proud to have gotten to this point. Now our responsibility is to ensure that the programs attain excellence within a context of Jewish pluralism that respects the multivocality of Jewish texts. How does Hebrew College today compare with your vision of the future when you first arrived? The College has exceeded my expectations of where we would be by now—in terms of the number of students, physical setting, range and quality of programs. Nonetheless, in assessing our impact on the Jewish community, though we've come a long way, we're really just at the threshold of seeing positive results in terms of realizing the accomplishments of our growing student body, the quality of our graduates and their achievements as leaders in the Jewish community. At a deeper level, the College fosters a kind of exhilaration that is a product of Judaism's creative spirit. We're open to a variety of voices and interpretations, open to sharing with the larger world the Jewish experience in all its manifestations.
In a world in which pathologies generated by a variety of fundamentalisms are so palpable, we're an institution deeply committed to Jewish civilization and culture, and at the same time we have a general discomfort with fundamentalist smugness and closed-mindedness. If we are successful in conveying this kind of spirit in our graduates, they will be instrumental in transmitting these values, modeling pride and commitment to Judaism as well as an openness to discovering and sharing our commonalities. What are your goals for Hebrew College for the next five years? The next period is one of consolidation and making sure that the infrastructure—academic, administrative, physical and fiscal—are all in place as we plan for further campus and programmatic expansion. Over the next four to five years, our priorities are to create a firm foundation for the rabbinical and doctoral programs. The budget has grown about seven-fold over the past ten years. We've been fortunate in expanding our donor base, but we have a lot more work to do. You have often described yourself as an institution builder. How has your leadership of Hebrew College enabled you to realize personal goals? This has been the major challenge of my professional career, and the one I take most pride in having taken this far. It's hard to imagine being anyplace else. The institution is a very creative place with a lot of energy. It's been a good shidduch. I was fortunate to come to Hebrew College at a time when the College's mission was becoming a priority for the Jewish community. I arrived shortly after the publication of the 1990 population survey, which made clear that the foundations of Jewish education and Jewish life needed to become higher communal priorities. In addition, there are certain things about the size of the institution that fit. In a larger university setting, the president is often a broker between power centers, a role that can restrict influence. Here I've been able to have direct relationships with every member of the faculty, staff and board—and to have a real impact. For Felice and for me, what's been unique to this experience is the fact that the people we've met in a professional context, be they colleagues or leadership, are people we would have chosen as friends. It's been a remarkable blessing. |
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What struck me most when I first arrived in 1993 was the leadership's deep commitment to Hebrew College, coupled with their awareness that if we were to make a major impact on Jewish life, the College would have to reconceptualize its mission and mode of operation. So we began a process of reflection and embarked on our first strategic planning process. 