The Center for American and Jewish Studies Library Collection

To view the Library's holdings go to http://bearcat.baylor.edu/ftlist and click Center for American and Jewish Studies.

Below is an article about the library that appeared in the Waco Tribune Herald on June 1, 2002.

A Judaic Oasis
New Jewish reference library at BU to offer fresh religious lens

By TERRI JO RYAN
Tribune-Herald staff writer

Judaic scholarship will become an integral part of the Christian education offered at Baylor University through the establishment of a Jewish reference library.

"We're looking to build the best Jewish collection in a Christian-identified university," said Marc Ellis, director of the Center for American and Jewish Studies at Baylor University. His goal, he said, is to demonstrate to Baylor students that Judaism is a living religion, not just a preamble to their own faith. "It is another lens through which to view their own religion," he said.

Ellis' oasis of Judaica on the third floor of the Carroll Library, within the J.M. Dawson Center for Church-State Studies, began in November 2000 with more than 300 books he donated out of his own collection. Now a collection of 1,000 volumes, that number will almost double by the end of the summer, he said. Baylor is funding the development by giving him a budget to acquire volumes at the rate of 700 to 800 a year.

The noncirculating reference library targets Baylor students first, Ellis said. But other members of the Waco community are welcome, he said.

The core of the collection is what theologians would term "root" literature: English versions of the Hebrew Bible and Jewish commentaries on it through the centuries, as well as rabbinical teachings. The Encyclopedia Judaica, books on holidays and observances of the faith and the various religious branches and social movements within the United States and Israel are available.

Books on Jewish-Christian relations, Jewish-Islamic relations, Jewish and African-American relations, and even the spiritual development of a Jewish Buddhist movement are included.

Other volumes examine the Jewish heritage of Christianity's founding fathers and writings by Jewish thinkers.

Ellis said he hopes that not only seminary students will use these resources.

The center library also has books on Islam, liberation theology, contemporary Christian theology, contemporary Jewish theology, Middle Eastern history and current events. Israeli newsletters and Palestinian journals are
available, as well as periodicals and books on Palestinian history and culture.

"What will set this collection apart is that I'm building a library for a Jewish future, and that future includes understanding Palestinians," Ellis said.

Texas university and seminary libraries have several extensive collections.

Claudia Rivers, head of special collections at the University of Texas-El Paso, said her Judaica division now boasts more than 6,000 pieces.

Because of the genealogical interest in the Crypto-Jews or Conversos — Jews ejected from Spain in 1492, or who escaped the Inquisition by pretending to convert to Catholicism — her library has a special drive for those materials, as well as bilingual texts. It draws scholars from around the world, she said.

In January, the Brite Divinity School at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth purchased the personal library and collection of a rabbi — a holding of almost 10,000 pieces, including rare 400-year-old printings, manuscripts, early prayer books and a Persian Torah.

David Hirsch, president of the Research and Special Libraries division of the Association of Jewish Libraries, said he was intrigued by the news that Jewish scholarship was taking root deep in the heart of Texas. As librarian of the Mideast collection at the University of California-Los Angeles, he has charge of about 180,000 items.

Hirsch added that the Hebraica Division at the Library of Congress has close to 500,000 items. The Judaica division at Harvard, originally founded as a divinity school, boasts the most comprehensive Jewish collection for an American university.

But scholars don't have to travel to Massachusetts or New York or even California to get a taste of Jewish learning. Most synagogues and temples have libraries.

Congregation Agudath Jacob, the Conservative synagogue in Waco, for example, has hundreds of books that are a community resource. Rabbi Shaina Bacharach said the synagogue's library is sometimes used as a chapel, so the public needs to call ahead if they wish to use the library. Some check-outs are allowed on the honor system, she added.

"For a congregation of our size (about 90 families), we're very pleased with what our library has to offer," she said.

Rabbi Seth Stander of Temple Rodef Sholom said the synagogue library has more than 1,000 books. The public is welcomed to do research during office hours, but people need to call ahead.

Roger Loyd, director of the Divinity Library at Duke University in Durham, N.C., said he is aware of the work of the Dawson Library at Baylor. Jewish libraries are not all that rare, he said, adding that Duke has some 24,002 individual titles of a Jewish nature in its catalogue, compared to 11,065 such records in Baylor's Moody Library.

Loyd said that if the Center for American and Jewish Studies already has about 1,000 volumes, "it's off to a great start."