For many who have passed through the doors and classrooms of Hebrew College, this 86-year-old institution is far more than just a place to come and study Jewish concepts. It is also an intimate community of students, faculty and staff who are invested in each other and in the future of Jewish learning and the Jewish people. Conveying that essence is the goal of a new HC oral history project, headed by Bernice Kazis.
Initiated at the request of President David Gordis, the project will provide a historical record of HC programs from HC’s inception in 1921 to the present, based on taped and transcribed interviews with alumni, professors, board members and other affiliates. The goal is to capture personal and unique memories of the HC experience and the life that followed for those individuals.
Kazis is assisted by an advisory board, which includes many HC lay leaders and alumni: Rose Bronstein
P’41, BJEd’45, MHL’70; Sharlene Finkel
P’60, BJEd’64; Paul Gilman
P’58; Zellie Kaplan; Barbara Karas; Ted Teplow
Cert’96,
HMHL’99; Murray Tuchman; Leon Satenstein
P’34,
BJEd’38 and Ruth Wolf.
Since the advisory board met for the first time six months ago, several members of the HC community have volunteered to become interviewers. Over a dozen interviews have been conducted with a cross-section of alumni and professors who were at Hebrew College during its early years in the 1920s and 30s.
A longtime HC supporter and attendee of its lectures and classes, Kazis was married to the late Rabbi Israel Kazis, who graduated from HC in 1931. Their children are also alumni of HC. She completed an oral history of the Russian resettlement of the North Shore by compiling 95 interviews into a book. When the HC oral history project was offered to her, she felt ready and willing to take on the challenge. "This would be my contribution to HC, if I can finish it, " says the energetic 82-year-old.
For more information about the Hebrew College oral history project, please contact Bernice Kazis at 617-332-2265 or
bkazis@lasell.edu.
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