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Graduate Studies in Jewish Culture

The interdisciplinary Taube Center for Jewish Studies at Stanford seeks to provide a comprehensive interpretation of the Jewish experience and the varied expression of Jewish life. As participants in the program, graduate students enjoy the benefits of a rich and lively intellectual community, and they make significant contributions to both scholarship and teaching at Stanford.

Graduate students who wish to pursue a concentration in Jewish studies enroll in any of the affiliated departments. Then under the guidance of a faculty advisor, each student designs a program of study tailored to match his or her specific area of interest. Currently, twenty graduate students are engaged in research in subjects from nineteenth century Russian Jewish women to modern Jewish identity; from the American Jewish labor movement to post Holocaust theology.

In a special colloquia series, Jewish studies faculty, graduate students and visiting scholars regularly gather twice a month to share papers and discuss their current work. In addition, the Taube Center for Jewish Studies annually sponsors several endowed lectures, conferences and a faculty/graduate student colloquia series that bring leading specialists in all aspects of Judaica. (See Upcoming Events.) Graduate students also serve as teaching assistants in the undergraduate Jewish studies curriculum, where they gain valuable teaching experience.

To learn more about Graduate Studies in Jewish Culture at Stanford, we invite you to contact our program office by e-mail at jewish.studies@stanford.edu, or by mail at:

Taube Center for Jewish Studies
Stanford University
Building 360, Room 362G
Stanford, CA 94305-2190
Phone: (650) 725-2789
FAX: (650) 725-2920

To request an application for admission to graduate studies in History, Religious Studies, or English, please write to the appropriate department c/o Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, or visit the Stanford University Graduate Admissions Page at http://www leland.stanford.edu/group/uga/graduate.html.

Fellowship Support

Every graduate student admitted to the program is guaranteed five years of funding, plus additional funding for two summers of language study. Students are also eligible to apply for additional support during their sixth year. In addition, the Taube Center for Jewish Studies assists advanced graduate students in exploring outside fellowship opportunities.

The Judaica Library

Since its inception, the Taube Center for Jewish Studies at Stanford has remained committed to the acquisition and maintenance of an outstanding research library in Jewish studies. Stanford now has an impressive research base of some 80,000 volumes covering the full expanse of Jewish culture in Hebrew, Yiddish, Ladino, German, Russian, and many other languages. In the last three years, Stanford's holdings in Jewish studies have tripled.

The centerpiece of Stanford's Judaica Library is the Taube-Baron Collection of Jewish History and Culture. Collected by the eminent historian Salo Wittmayer Baron, these 25,000 volumes and periodicals document virtually every aspect of Jewish life from its beginnings to present. In addition, the Stanford Judaica Library also includes the Wornick/Braude Collection, a 6,000 volume collection especially rich in the field of Midrash and Aggadah, the Israel Cohen Collection, containing over 20,000 works published in Palestine under the British mandate and in the early decades of the State of Israel, and the Jo and Rabbi Milgrom Collection, containing over 6,300 titles in Biblical and rabbinical literature.

For more information on Stanford's Hebraica and Judaica Collection holdings, go to http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/hasrg/jewish/jewish.html.

Jewish Social Studies

Graduate students can apply to serve as fellows of the Conference on Jewish Social Studies and to help in the production of the journal Jewish Social Studies.