Swig Program in Jewish Studies and Social Justice

Swig Program in Jewish Studies and Social Justice

Motto	“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Established	August 2008
Director	Aaron Hahn Tapper
Location	San Francisco, California, USA
Campus	University of San Francisco
Website	www.usfca.edu/artsci/jssj/

The Swig Program in Jewish Studies and Social Justice is a Jewish studies program at the University of San Francisco in San Francisco. Founded in August 2008, it is believed to be the only program in the world to formally link the fields of Social justice and Jewish studies. It offers a minor in Jewish Studies and Social Justice (SJSJ), an annual Social Justice Lecture, Ulpan San Francisco, a study-abroad course, intermittent films, presentations, and workshops, and a Social Justice Passover Seder.

History

Melvin Swig was a San Francisco real estate developer and philanthropist who endowed a multitude of charities, organizations and programs in the San Francisco Bay Area. In the mid-1970s Swig met Rabbi David Davis who, in conjunction with the Reverend John H. Elliott, a Lutheran minister and USF theology professor, had recently begun to teach a class called “Jesus the Jew” at the University of San Francisco. Swig, who was Jewish, was intrigued with the idea of a Jewish perspective being taught at a Catholic university, and he suggested that Rabbi Davis introduce him to Father John Lo Schiavo, the president of the university. The three men explored the idea of creating a Jewish studies program at USF. As a result of their collaboration, in 1977 the Mae and Benjamin Swig Chair in Judaic Studies was established as an homage to Swig's parents.^[1] The program was believed to be the first Jewish Studies program at a Catholic university.^[2] Swig later became the chairman of the University of San Francisco Board of Trustees.^[3]

Rabbi Davis became the first Mae and Benjamin Swig Chair of the university's new program, which was called the Swig Judaic Studies Program.^[3] Davis recalls that Father Lo Schiavo called him a “one man ecumenical movement” because of his work in building bridges between the San Francisco Jewish and Christian communities.^[4] Indeed, the collaboration between Swig, who was a prominent leader in the San Francisco Jewish community, and Lo Schiavo, an equally prominent member of the Jesuit community, would never have existed without Rabbi Davis' enthusiasm and encouragement.^[1] The new Swig Judaic Studies Program offered workshops, lectures, and seminars, and it cooperated with Jewish organizations in the Bay Area for additional educational programming. Rabbi Davis brought world-renowned figures to USF, including Nobel prize recipients Saul Bellow and Elie Wiesel; Erik Erikson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award; and Abba Eban, ambassador from Israel.^[3]

In 1997 Andrew R. Heinze, a USF professor of American History who specialized in Jewish Studies, was appointed to the chair. To solidify the program's academic standing, Heinze created a Jewish Studies Certificate program that expanded the curriculum beyond the Theology Department. He introduced courses in Hebrew, Jewish history, The Holocaust, Jewish American literature, and Yiddish culture. Heinze also introduced the Swig Annual Lecture Series: these free public lectures by distinguished scholars were published and distributed to universities, public libraries, and individual scholars in the United States and abroad.^[5] This series included a ground-breaking symposium on new religious approaches to homosexuality, and a symposium on Jewish-Catholic Relations that featured one of the Vatican's pre-eminent officials: Cardinal Edward Cassidy, president of the Pontifical Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews. In 1998 Heinze created Ulpan San Francisco, a summer Israeli-style Hebrew immersion program for the general public, the first such program in Northern California.^[6]

In 2007 Aaron Hahn Tapper became the third person to hold the chair.^[7] Hahn Tapper, who had earned a BA from Johns Hopkins University, an MA from Harvard Divinity School, and a Doctorate from the University of California, Santa Barbara, had primarily focused on "conflict resolution and social relations between Jewish, Muslim, Israeli and Palestinian communities."^[8] The University of San Francisco's dean of humanities, Jennifer Turpin welcomed Hahn Tapper's appointment to the Swig chair with the comment, "He's a person who welcomes people with many different points of view and backgrounds to the conversation. His commitment to transforming conflicts between different cultures and faiths is one that really resonates with the university." In fact, in 2006, Hahn Tapper had been formally recognized by former President Bill Clinton for his conflict resolution work with teens and college students.^[8]

The Program Today

In August 2008 Aaron Hahn Tapper redesigned the program. Drawing on his expertise in the fields of conflict resolution and social relations between Jewish, Muslim, Israeli and Palestinian communities, he relaunched the program as the Swig Program in Jewish Studies and Social Justice. The new program is believed to be the first formal academic program of its kind in the world.^[9]

The program includes a university minor in Jewish Studies and Social Justice,^[10] and it engages students in both theoretical and practical applications of what it means to be a Jewish social justice activist. On campus the program offers a wide range of Jewish Studies courses, and it extends beyond the university to the larger Bay Area community, offering educational programs focusing on social justice issues such as an annual Social Justice Lecture, a Social Justice Passover Seder, intermittent films, presentations, workshops, a study-abroad course, and Ulpan San Francisco. ^[11]

The Swig Program in Jewish Studies and Social Justice is built upon the following four ideas, each of which is rooted in Jewish Studies:^[11]

• Activism – each of us has a role in the process of activism, actively shaping the world as it is into the world as it can be.
• Intersectionality – all forms of marginalization and oppression are inter-linked.
• Social Identity – each of us has multiple social identities, whether a reflection of our age, citizenship, ethnicity, gender, nationality, physical ability, physical appearance, religion, sexual orientation, socio-economic standing, race, or something else entirely. Some identities are acquired, others inborn.
• Social In/justice – our social identities have a great deal of meaning for us and others. At times they give us access to opportunities. At other times they deny us entry to jobs, homes, and even food. The world in which we live currently functions as if our identities are real. Most of us live as if there is a specific definition to community X or Y, despite the fact that identities are not static but are constantly shifting.

Footnotes

References

External links

• Official website (URL accessed 18-May-14)