Berkeley professor of architecture Raymond Lifchez grew up in an observant community in South Carolina, but he was far from Jewish population centers. Only later, as an adult, did he discover a fuller expression of Jewish life in America. Now, Lifchez has established the Berkeley Seminars in Modern Jewish Culture as a hallmark of this growing Jewish identity.

Lifchez, who provided funding for this new University initiative with his late wife, Judith Lee Stronach, hopes to increase understanding and appreciation of the rich variety of Jewish-American culture. Through the Jewish Studies Program, the Berkeley Seminars in Modern Jewish Culture will bring to campus novelists, poets, artists, composers, architects, and others whose works reflect on Jewish culture from the 18th century to the present. The seminars complement the Jewish Studies Program's distinction in earlier eras and provide a particular emphasis on Jewish culture in the United States.

Robert Alter, director of the Jewish Studies Program and Class of 1937 Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature, says the seminars will resemble short courses, with the visitors teaching, co-teaching, and otherwise interacting with Berkeley students and faculty over a several-week period. He expects to convene the committee to select the first visitors during the current academic year and to introduce the seminars during 2008-2009.

"These visitors will be creative figures rather than conventional scholars. We want to move beyond the perimeters of the strictly academic framework," explains Alter. "For our students, this should reinforce the sense that many have already that Berkeley is not only a good place to get graduate training, but also an exciting place to get training. In addition to enhancing the intellectual experience of our students, this will demonstrate in a visible way that Berkeley is a major forum for the discussion of Jewish culture."