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Article: Home again? (teaching Jewish Studies)(Jewish Studies in Northern California)
- Article from:
- Judaism
- Article date:
- September 22, 1995
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1995 American Jewish Congress. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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I recall the moment as, I began university when I first realized -- rather astonished, actually, at the thought -- that "this place exists so that people can think freely." I had emerged a few weeks earlier from an Orthodox rabbinical seminary in Chicago where the boundaries between what was and wasn't acceptable intellectually were stark. There I had shoved dubious books under my bed for fear of their being discovered; these books included Bernard Malamud's novels and one of Walter Kaufmann's interpretations of existentialism, which I recall carrying with me to yeshiva. Now, for the first time outside a parochial school, I realized I could sit myself down and read ...