Slide/Lecture Presents History of England’s Jews

CHESTERTOWN, MD—Washington College adjunct professor of history Gary Schiff will explore the thousand-year old history of the Jews of England in a slide/lecture on Thursday, November 15, at 4:30 p.m. in the Forum of the Casey Academic Center, on the Washington College campus, 300 Washington Avenue.  Titled “In Search of Jewish England,” the talk is free and open to the public.  

Geographically, Schiff’s talk will explore London, where the majority of England’s Jews have always lived, medieval cathedral cities such as Norwich and York, the ancient university town of Oxford, and modern industrial centers such as Birmingham and Liverpool. He will illustrate the great diversity of English Jewry, visiting both the urban mansions, country estates and grand synagogues of its upper class and the gritty sections where the working-class lived. 

The slide/tour will explore familiar tourist sites through the eyes of English Jewish history, and share lesser-known locations such as Bevis Mark, the nation’s oldest synagogue, and the stone house of Aaron of Lincoln, the Jewish banker believed to have been the richest man in England in 1200.  Schiff also will introduce and illustrate the lives of some of the most prominent Englishmen of Jewish origins, including politicians, prime ministers, financiers, and philanthropists. “Part of what I cover is how English Jews throughout the centuries rose from humble origins to attain middle class status and above, and how they managed to obtain equal rights over time,” he says.

The November 15 event is sponsored by Hillel and the Office of the Provost and Dean.          

WC Alum and Scholar to Share Story Of Correspondence Among Separated Austrian Jews

Dr. Jacqueline Vansant.

CHESTERTOWN, MD—Sometime between March and August of 1938, a small group of 15- and 16-year-old Jewish schoolboys stood on a bridge in Vienna and said goodbye to each other “forever.” Their families were about to flee Austria to avoid the increasing Nazi persecution. But pledging to stay in touch, the boys first devised a complicated plan for a group correspondence or “round robin.”

On Tuesday, October 23, Washington College alumna  Jacqueline Vansant ’76, a professor of German studies at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, will share the story of the remarkable correspondence the young men maintained for more than 15 years across three continents.  Her presentation, “Making Connections over Space and Time: The Extraordinary Group Correspondence of Jewish-Austrian Schoolboys,” will take place at 4:30 p.m. in the Washington College Hillel House, 313 Washington Avenue. It is free and open to the public.

Vansant says she was first drawn to exile studies as a student of Washington College professor of German Erika Salloch, who had fled Nazi Germany. She has long focused her research on post-war Austrian literature and culture and in 2001 published Reclaiming ‘Heimat’: Trauma and Mourning in Memoirs of Jewish-Austrian Reemigres.

When Vansant heard about the correspondence among the nine Viennese schoolboys, she saw an opportunity to study how the experiences of the youth compared with those of the adult Jews who escaped Austria. “I was also fascinated by the thought of looking at texts that were contemporaneous with the historical events described in them,” she adds. “The letters indeed are amazing!”

 John Kautsky.

Vansant has worked closely with one of the original correspondents, John Kautsky, now a professor emeritus of Political Science at Washington University in St. Louis. She also met the son of correspondent Ali Hector, who emigrated to Erez Israel, and learned more about Ali’s life after the correspondence ended.

“My conversations with John Kautsky have given me a fuller understanding of just how important the correspondence was for the young men,” says Vansant. “John remained friends with some of the correspondents until their recent deaths. His wife, Lilli, has also shared her experiences of flight from Austria, which bring home how many stories are out there to be told.”

The Oct. 23 talk is sponsored by the Department of Modern Languages; the Institute for the Study of Religion, Politics, and Culture; the Office of Multicultural Affairs; and Hillel House.  For more information, contact Nicole Grewling at (800) 422-1782, ext. 5763, or by email, ngrewling2@washcoll.edu.

Washington College Dedicates New Hillel House as Welcoming Center for Jewish Life on Campus

President Reiss presents Nan and Roy Ans with a hand-set broadsheet of Jehanne Dubrow's poem commissioned for the occasion.  The couple made the lead gift to bring the long-awaited Hillel House into being.  

** Watch video and see photos from the dedication **

CHESTERTOWN, MD—Washington College dedicated its new Hillel House Friday, April 20, in a program that featured remarks by the national president of Hillel, a poem written for the occasion by award-winning poet Jehanne Dubrow, and the installation of the mezuzah at the front door. Located at 313 Washington Avenue, the charming gray-and-white bungalow faces the Campus Lawn. Nearly 200 people gathered for the dedication ceremony, which was held outside beneath a white tent.  

            The house bears the name of Washington College alumnus Roy P. Ans ’63, M.D., and his wife, Nan. Roy Ans chairs the committee that has raised funds to renovate and endow the House. A retired ob-gyn doctor who lives in Florida, Dr. Ans is a member of the College’s Society of Visitors & Governors and a longtime supporter of an enhanced Jewish life at Washington College. In 2006, he endowed the Roy P. Ans Fellowship in Jewish American Studies.

            Roy Ans “willed this building into existence,” College president Mitchell B. Reiss said in his remarks. “He and his wife, Nan, made the lead gift and then worked tirelessly to recruit a committee of alums who were similarly committed to building a center for Jewish life on campus—a beautiful, inviting space where students can gather, study and learn.”

Special guest Wayne L. Firestone, national president and CEO of Hillel, The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life, eloquently traced the evolution of Jewish students on America’s college campuses—from their early efforts to blend in, to their desire today to stand out and proudly share their heritage with others. Likewise, he said, “Hillel is not your father’s Hillel,” he explained. “In the old days, Hillel houses were safe havens, refuges where students could take a break from the mainstream. Now the mandate of Hillel is essentially the opposite: We go out into the mainstream, where Jewish students feel very comfortable, and show them ways to explore what sets them apart.”

Jehanne Dubrow, assistant professor of creative writing and English and interim director of the Rose O’Neill Literary House, read her prose poem commissioned for the occasion, referencing her mother’s family and their personal journey as a window into the universal Jewish story of Diaspora and the search for “home.”  President Reiss presented the Anses with a framed and signed limited-edition broadside of Dubrow’s poem, which master printer Michael Kaylor set by hand in the press room of the Rose O’Neill Literary House.

            Following the remarks, the crowd gathered around the entrance to the new Hillel House to watch Rabbi Peter E. Hyman, MAHL, DD, of Temple B’nai Israel in Easton, and Washington College alumnus Lawrence Golub ’63 affix the mezuzah to the doorframe. Dr. Gary Schiff, a cantor in the Chestertown Havurah and an adjunct professor at the College, recited the traditional blessing (likboah mezuzah) and prayer of thanks (Shehecheyanu). Guests then entered the house for a reception and, for many, a first look around.

The College continues to raise funds toward its goal of $350,000, not only to cover the cost of the renovations but also to fund an endowment for the House and its programming. Joining Dr. Ans on the fundraising committee are fellow alumni Jonathan D. Bookbinder ’10, Beth Kahn Leaman’73, Peter D. Maller ’90 and Mark A. Schulman ’67, Ph.D.  For more information: http://hillel.washcoll.edu/.

Poem on the Dedication

of the Hillel House, at Washington College,

on Maryland’s Eastern Shore

I think of my mother’s family, circa 1936—folding
Warsaw and Berlin in their steamer trunks,

beneath prayer shawls, pictures of the dead. How,
shipped to Honduras,

they learned to speak new languages the way they
learned to eat

tortilla after years of bread. How they built history in
walls, shelves for books,

windows framing a street that wasn’t Stuttgart or
Odessa. There would be a table for their meal,

a box of charity. Candles would stop them getting
lost. How all of us need an entrance,

even here, a post on which to pin a prayer, a door that
creaks when prophets enter,

or when angels. How all of us carry home like a
steerage ticket crumpled in our hands.

— Jehanne Dubrow

Jehanne Dubrow is the recipient of numerous poetry awards and honors, including a Sosland Foundation Fellowship from the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. She recently won the Poetry Society of America’s 2012 Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award for her fifth collection, a manuscript-in-progress entitled The Arranged Marriage.

Washington College to Unveil New Hillel House as Welcoming Hub for Jewish Students

CHESTERTOWN, MD—Washington College’s gleaming new Roy P. and Nan Ans Hillel House will be dedicated Friday at 4:30 p.m. in a program featuring remarks by the national president of Hillel and a poem written for the occasion by award winning poet Jehanne Dubrow.

“Hillel House is going to be a magnet for Jewish students on campus; it’s going to ensure their voice on campus; it’s going to help them establish their own identities; and it’s something other competitive schools already have that will attract students, particularly Jewish students, to Washington College,” says Roy P. Ans ’63, M.D., who chairs the committee that has already raised more than $208,000 to renovate and endow the house at 313 Washington Avenue, across from the campus lawn.

The program will include an address by special guest Wayne L. Firestone, national president and CEO of Hillel, The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life. Washington College president Mitchell B. Reiss will deliver welcoming remarks and Rabbi Peter E. Hyman, MAHL, DD, of Temple B’nai Israel in Easton will deliver the invocation.

Rabbi Hyman, along with Lawrence Golub ’63 and Roy and Nan Ans ’63, will also preside over the installation of the mezuzah, the fragment of parchment inscribed with Hebrew verses from the Torah that is rolled up in a decorative case and affixed to the door frame of Jewish homes.

Jehanne Dubrow, assistant professor of creative writing and English and interim director of the Rose O’Neill Literary House, will read her prose poem commissioned for the occasion: “Poem on the Dedication of the Hillel House, at Washington College, on Maryland's Eastern Shore.”

“The poem brings together my family’s personal history – that Jewish story of Diaspora and the long search for home – with an acknowledgement of what a permanent Hillel House can bring to Washington College,” Dubrow says. “The Hillel House will be a physical embodiment of the ways in which we all need community; we all need a warm room, a table around which to share meals or tell stories.”

Mike Kaylor, master printer of the Literary House Press at Washington College, is making a handset limited-edition broadside of the poem to commemorate the event.

There will also be remarks by Washington College Hillel president Ashley Carol-Fingerhut ’14 and by Dr. Ans, who is a member of the WC Society of Visitors & Governors and a longtime supporter of an enhanced Jewish life at Washington College. In 2006, he endowed the Roy P. Ans Fellowship in Jewish American Studies.

The College has set a goal of raising $350,000 to both renovate the house and create an endowment to support it. Jonathan D. Bookbinder ’10, Beth Kahn Leaman’73, Peter D. Maller ’90 and Mark A. Schulman ’67, Ph.D., serve on the fundraising committee chaired by Dr. Ans.

A reception will follow the dedication ceremony, which is free and open to the public. For more information: http://hillel.washcoll.edu/.