18 scholars of Jewish music funded by Katz Center Fellowship

"The Sound and Music of Jewish Life" is the theme for 2023-24's cohort

The Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies brings together a cohort of around 20 scholars every year. The scholars congregate at the Center, which is located at the University of Pennsylvania campus in Philadelphia for a semester or full year of study on a particular Jewish topic.

The theme for the 2023-24 cohort was decided to be “The Sound and Music of Jewish Life“ with 18 scholars participating. Public events are often streamed and can be found on the Center’s website.

The Center’s current director is Prof. Steven Weitzman, a scholar of the Tanakh and Jewish culture. Weitzman discussed the fellowship in an interview with Miri Villerius below.

Interview

MV: To get started, can you give me a brief history of the Katz Center?

SW: The Katz Center actually originated as an independent institution called Dropsie College, which started in 1908. It was a kind of independent college in Jewish Studies. Then, as Jewish studies began to become accepted into universities, it made a decision at a certain point to merge into Penn, so it became a part of the University of Pennsylvania. It kind of repurposed itself as a research center, whose purpose is to advance research in Jewish Studies in all the different disciplines, principally through a fellowship program that brings about 20 scholars every year, to do research on a particular theme within Jewish Studies.

MV: Can you tell me a bit about the aims and the ethos of the fellowship?

SW: Fellowship is born of the year basically has two goals. The first goal is to give scholars the time and space and resources to pursue their own research projects. Lots of faculty spend so much time in teaching committees and different things, they don't have enough time for their own research. So one major goal is just to give them that gift of time. The second is to foster a sense of intellectual community by bringing together scholars who share intellectual interests together so they can gauge each other in conversation and learn from each other and give feedback on each other's work. We meet every week for seminar where one of our fellows presents their research, and they have two hours, which is very rare — to get two hours of time with, you know, all the different specialists in your field. So that's the second major goal.

MV: Tell me about the decision process on focusing on music for this year's cohort.

SW: All our themes originate from proposals that scholars make to the Katz Center from wherever they are in the world. We got a proposal from somebody to do the focus on music, which we've never done before. And usually, when we get a proposal, we get feedback from other scholars in that area. And it was recommended to us that we expanded from just music to sound studies as well. So the focus of the years, both music and sound studies in Jewish Studies. That is basically the process that we that led us to this theme. And we are always looking for something where it feels like it's at the cutting edge of new research. And we quickly learn that there's a lot of exciting research happening instead of just music and a lot of you know, people who combined scholarship with music as performers.

MV: What does the fellowship provide to each of the fellows?

SW: We provide a stipend so they can support their living expenses while they're in Philadelphia. Some come for the whole academic year and some come for a semester. We provide them with a space we give them an office at the Katz Center, which is in Philadelphia, and we have a wonderful, the building that we're located in has a Judaica library in it with a fantastic staff so they could have access that staff and they get access to each other.

They're all in the same building. So a lot of the most valuable party experience that they could have a hallway conversations, you know, the coffee meetings and things like that where they can talk to each other because it's unusual, I think what's unusual about is you don't get a chance you might go to a conference, but you don't get a chance to be a whole year with a group of scholars who are in your subfield Jewish studies. So I think that's really the what makes this experience special for people.