Welcome to The Rabbi Donald A. Tam Institute for Jewish Studies

The establishment of Emory University’s Institute for Jewish Studies in February 1999 gave institutional recognition to the university’s strength in the study of Jewish life and culture, and signaled Emory’s intention to become the premier site for Jewish Studies in the southeastern United States.

Dedicated to fostering the continued development of Jewish studies on the Emory campus, the Institute for Jewish Studies is the natural outgrowth of carefully laid groundwork. In recent years, Jewish Studies has flourished, as evidenced by new faculty appointments, including endowed chairs, new graduate and undergraduate degree programs, endowed lecture series, and enrichment funds to support student and faculty travel and study.

Faculty Highlights

Congratulations to Jeffrey Lesser and Eric L. Goldstein! The book 1929.0: Mapping the Jewish World (Hasia R. Diner and Gennady Estraikh, eds. NYU Press) in which both have chapters, has been named the winner of the National Jewish Book Award (anthology).


TIJS core faculty member Don Seeman has reviewed the recent Pew study of American Jews, and it appears on the cover of the current issue of Jewish Review of Books.

Congratulations to Oded Borowski on thepublication of his latest book Lahav III:  The Iron Age II Cemetery at Tell Halif (Site 72), published by Eisenbrauns, 2013.

News & Events

Couldn't make it to campus for the 2014 Tenenbaum Lecture? Watch video of Professor Dever's illustrated lecture, Did God Have a Wife? Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel.

View the Fall 2013 edition of the TIJS NEWSLETTER

Jews and Booze: Becoming American in the Age of Prohibition (New York University Press, 2012), the first book by Emory History/JS alumna Marni Davis (Ph.D. '06) is a finalist for the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature awarded annually by the Jewish Book Council. Read more about it here.

TIJS welcomes four new graduate students who are recipients of the TIJS graduate top-off fellowships.

Applications for the 2014 Blumenthal Awards are now being accepted! Submission deadline is March 21, 2014. See here for guidelines and information about previous years' winners.

Winners of the 2013 graduate and undergraduate travel and research grants announced!

Video and audio of Norman Stillman's 2013 Tenenbaum lecture "When Arabic Was a Jewish Language."

JS Seminar Series - Spring 2013

TIJS coordinates a graduate certificate program providing formal recognition of a Jewish-studies focus for Ph.D. students working in any department of Emory’s Laney Graduate School. Participants are part of a vibrant intellectual community that brings together students and faculty members from across the university. Visit the TIJS Certificate page for more information.

Emory Acknowledges Dental School Discrimination:
Sparked by a display in the “Jews at Emory” exhibit curated by Prof. Eric Goldstein in MARBL in 2006, Dr. Perry Brickman, well-known Atlanta dentist and leader of the Jewish community, began exploring the details of the anti-semitic discrimination he had experienced at Emory’s dental school in the 1950’s.  READ MORE

Video and audio of Neal Gabler's 2012 Tenenbaum Lecture "Jewish American Filmmakers: From Sidney Lumet to Judd Apatow"

Article highlights the increasing diversity of Jews in America