JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

Republican Party of Pennsylvania, Dropsie ran for public office
only once. He became leader and officer of many Jewish
communal activities, and was an admirer and disciple of Isaac
*Leeser. Their sense of mutual understanding was disturbed
only by their divergent sympathies in the early days of the
Civil War. Dropsie was an active supporter of Leeser’s shortlived
Maimonides College from its inception in 1867, the first
Jewish theological seminary in America. Dropsie believed
that one of the major reasons for its failure was the refusal of
New York Jewish leaders to give it their full support; when the
Jewish Theological Seminary was organized in 1886 in New
York City, he refused to lend a hand. This resentment was one
of the factors which motivated his establishing a bequest for
a totally new institution for higher Jewish learning. Another
factor was his anger, which he also expressed in a number of
pamphlets, against what he considered to be the extremism
of Reform Judaism. Dropsie’s will was written in 1895, while
he was serving as president of *Gratz College. He assigned his
fortune to the creation of Dropsie College.
Bibliography: C. Adler, Lectures, Selected Papers, Addresses
(1933), 43–64; B.W. Korn, Eventful Years and Experiences (1954), 187–9;
H. Morais, Jews of Philadelphia (1894), 255–8.
[Bertram Wallace Korn]
DROPSIE COLLEGE, independent, nontheological, academic
institution dedicated to graduate instruction and research
in Jewish studies and related branches of learning. It
was founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1907 as Dropsie
College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning. The establishment
of the institution was provided for in the will of Moses Aaron
*Dropsie, dated September 17, 1895. Dropsie stated: “The increasing
need in the United States for a more thorough and
systematic education in Jewish lore has long been felt, and is a
matter of solicitude to true Israelites, who cherish the religion
of their ancestors… . [Hence] I order and direct that there be
established and maintained in the City of Philadelphia a college
for the promotion of and instruction in the Hebrew and
cognate languages and their respective literatures and in the
Rabbinical learning and literature.” The will directed “that in
the admission of students there shall be no distinction on account
of creed, color, or sex.” The college offered the Ph.D. and,
from 1952 onward, the M.A. degrees in areas such as Hebrew,
Arabic, and other Semitic languages, biblical and rabbinic
studies, medieval Jewish philosophy, Assyriology, and Middle
Eastern studies. In 1962 it instituted a program in Jewish education
leading to the Ed.D. The original president of Dropsie
was Mayer Sulzberger, who directed the Board of Governors
selected to execute Dropsie’s will. The first operating president
was Cyrus *Adler, who served from the opening of the college
in 1909 until his death in 1940 while holding other important
positions including the chancellorship of the Jewish Theological
Seminary. He was succeeded by Abraham A. *Neuman
(1941–66), Abraham I. *Katsh (1968–76), Joseph Rapaport
(1979–81), and David M. Goldenberg (1981–86). In 1986 the
college closed its doors as a graduate school and reopened two
dropsie college
years later as the Annenberg Research Institute for Judaic and
Near Eastern Studies, a postdoctoral research center and fellowship
program in Judaic and Near Eastern studies. In 1993
the institution was incorporated into the University of Pennsylvania
as the Center for Judaic Studies.
The college’s importance lies in that fact that when it was
founded, and for several decades afterwards, it was the only
non-theological institution in the United States that offered
the Ph.D. in Judaic studies. As such, it attracted many distinguished
scholars to its faculty (such as Cyrus H. Gordon, Benzion
Halper, Leo L. Honor, Henry Malter, Max L. Margolis,
Ben-Zion Netanyahu, Moshe Perlmann, Solomon L. Skoss,
Bernard D. Weinryb, and Solomon Zeitlin). The faculty produced
close to 250 Ph.D.s, many of whom filled positions in
Judaic and related studies throughout the United States, thus
spurring the growth of Jewish studies programs in the country.
From its beginnings the college published the Jewish Quarterly
Review, continuing the publication begun in England in 1888
under the editorship of I. Abrahams and C.G. Montefiore. As
the only American Ph.D.-granting school in Judaic studies
for several decades, Dropsie acquired an important library
collection (including manuscripts and incunabula) in biblical,
rabbinic, and medieval Jewish literature, as well as early
American Jewish imprints.
Ironically it was the success of the college that, to a significant
extent, spelled its demise. With the burgeoning of Jewish
studies programs in U.S. universities during the 1950s and
1960s, Dropsie found that with its limited resources it could
not compete with the larger and well-endowed universities. By
the early 1980s it appeared that the college would eventually
be forced to close. An attempt at a revival was made in 1981
with the appointment of David Goldenberg to the presidency
of the institution. Goldenberg, a recent Dropsie graduate and
then faculty member, rebuilt the faculty with young promising
scholars, revived the languishing Jewish Quarterly Review, attracted
funding for the conservation of genizah manuscripts,
and hired professional library staff to convert the collection
to the Library of Congress cataloguing system and provide
online access to the library’s holdings. However, the general
financial situation of the College did not much improve and,
finally, in 1986 the Dropsie closed.
By this time, Albert J. Wood, a member of the Board of
Trustees, had induced the American Jewish philanthropist and
former ambassador to Great Britain, Walter H. Annenberg, to
become involved with Dropsie’s future. Wood saw that while
a small graduate school was no longer feasible, a postdoctoral
research center in Jewish studies would fill a need. Annenberg
embraced the plan, funded the construction of a new building
near historic Independence Hall in Philadelphia, and supplied
the new institution’s annual budget. Thus Dropsie was
transformed into the Annenberg Research Institute for Judaic
and Near Eastern Studies. Under its first president, Bernard
Lewis, the scholar of Islamic studies, the Institute opened it
doors in 1988 with an annual program of invited scholars from
throughout the world to work on various themes in Jewish and
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 6 25