Source: The Washington Post
Georgetown University, a Catholic institution long known for scholarship on the Arab world, is intensifying its study of Jewish civilization with aid from a series of significant donations. The latest, to be announced Wednesday, is a $10 million gift for research on the Holocaust.
A 13-year-old Jewish studies program in the Jesuit university’s prestigious School of Foreign Service will be formally renamed the Center for Jewish Civilization next week. The shift in nomenclature is not a small matter in academia: It signifies money, depth and commitment.
The center will have a $20 million endowment, officials said, counting the new $10 million gift from Miami philanthropists Norman and Irma Braman. Its mission is to explore foreign policy pertaining to Israel; the Holocaust and genocide issues; Jewish-Catholic relations; and Jewish literature, culture and religious expression.
Through the Braman gift, the center will research a singular catastrophe of the 20th century: the murder of 6 million Jews under Nazi Germany. Georgetown said in a statement that the Holocaust will be examined “in all its dimensions — its causes and consequences, its role in the establishment of the state of Israel, and its continuing impact on modern Judaism, which has been impacted by a rise in acts of anti-Semitism and questions of Israel’s legitimacy.”
Among the center’s faculty is the Rev. Patrick Desbois, a Holocaust historian whose forensic sleuthing has documented mass graves in Eastern Europe. Author of a book called “The Holocaust by Bullets,” Desbois will hold an endowed professorship through the Braman gift.
“We are pleased to make this gift to support Father Patrick Desbois’s very important research on
the Holocaust and to provide it a permanent home at a distinguished American university,” Norman Braman said in a statement. “As America’s oldest Catholic and Jesuit university, Georgetown was the natural location to focus Father Debois’ unique research.”
Braman added: “I have decided to make this gift, now, and to Georgetown, in part as a sign of my appreciation for the leadership of Pope Francis and the priority he so clearly attaches to fostering closer relations between Jews and Catholics.” Braman, a billionaire auto dealer, is a major supporter of Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, one of the leading Republican presidential candidates.
Categories: America, Christianity, Jewish Faith, The Muslim Times, USA