Jewish Studies at the Central European University II. [antikvár]

The initiative to establish a Jewish Studies Program at the Central European University was launched by the Board of Trustees of the university six years ago. The central guiding idea has been to create a centre for teaching and research on Jewish history, culture, and society that reflects the long and rich contribution of thejews to the region served by the Central European University. Since 1996, Jewish Studies has organised six lecture series and four summer universities, and offered a number of courses taught by professors of the History Department and the Nationalism Program which relate to Jewish Studies and which have made it possible for interested students to expand their knowledge in this field. Our first Jewish Studies Yearbook, published in 2000, gave a detailed account of activities in the field of Jewish Studies in the first three years of the project. Since 1996 Jewish Studies has been running the successful public lecture series, which unites renowned scholars from both the region and Western Europe, the United States and Israel. In the academic years 1999-2000 and 2000-2001, in the series Facets of Jewish Experience through the Ages and The Presence of the Past: Jewish Experience East and West, 18 lectures were given. The bi-weekly lectures were regularly attended by a large, interested audience composed of the students and faculty of the CEU and other universities in Budapest. The full üst of lectures can be found at the back of the present volume. Since in communist Eastern Europe Jewish questions and issues were often disregarded, even 'taboo', little serious research was carried out on Jewish subjects. To fill in the gaps in our knowledge of the history, sociology, culture, and religion of the Jews of the region, CEU Jewish Studies has launched two research programmes. The first, Jews and Politics (under the direction of András Kovács), was initiated to analyse the participation of Jewish politicians and political institutions which intended to represent the interests of the Jewish communities in the political life of the countries of the region. Our purpose has been to support above all research on primary sources of Jewish politics in different archives of the region. The following themes have been examined in the framework of this research: Jewish politics in nineteenth-century Bohemia; Jewish politicians in the Hungárián parliament before the First World War; early Hungárián Zionism; Zionism between the two world wars in Hungary; and the exploration of documents relating to Jews and the Jewish question' in communist archives. The research was made possible by the CEU Research Grant. Somé of the results are published in the present volume (see the articles by Michael L. Miller, Attila Nóvák, and Árpád Welker). Our second project, the Jewish Studies Thesis and Research Support Program, was initiated to encourage both MA and PhD students to complete