Hillsdale College, a Christian classical liberal arts college in southern Michigan that does not take government funding, intends to create a minor in Jewish studies, reported The Collegian, a student paper.
The program would cover the “great Jewish texts, their historical context and the Hebrew language,” the paper reported, citing a college official.
Michael Weingrad, professor of Judaic studies at Portland State University in Oregon, plans to teach a course on “Israeli culture before and after Oct. 7” as a visiting professor at Hillsdale this spring, he told JNS.
The school’s “classical educational values” are “an inoculant against the antisemitism currently infecting American political culture,” he told JNS, contrasting the college to the “incoherent mix of left-wing political impulses” at Portland State.
Teaching the course at Hillsdale will be a “blessed reprieve from the moral and intellectual rot of Portland,” he added.
The student paper reported that Weingrad’s one-credit course, which is to be part of its collegiate scholars program, is “the college’s attempt to start incorporating Judaism studies in its curriculum.”
“The Israelis really do give us a number of wonderful lessons on how to live life and how to have a connection to faith, nation and family under really extraordinarily difficult conditions that we can find inspiring,” he told the student paper.
“Hillsdale students who are living lives of faith and understanding the way in which they live their religious traditions in a modern world can find a lot of parallels in the experience of Israelis and how they put their Jewish faith into practice in contemporary conditions,” he told the paper.
The Collegian reported that “a launch date for the minor is undetermined, as specific plans for the program have not yet been proposed to faculty or the educational policies committee.”
Weingrad noted that the federal government is currently probing Portland State for alleged antisemitic harassment and civil rights abuses. The public school “has tolerated, and in many cases encouraged, violent anti-Jewish behavior,” he told JNS.
He cited what he said was more than $1 million in damage to the school’s library by “pro-Hamas activists,” who, he said, “have faced no significant consequences.”
He contrasted Portland State students with those at Hillsdale, who “participate in Passages, a Christian trip to Israel, and seek to deepen their connection with the country.”
Hillsdale’s student group, the Jewish Mishpacha of Hillsdale College, hosts Shabbat dinners and says it “provides a way to better understand the ‘Judeo’ portion of the Judeo-Christian foundation of Hillsdale College,” it states, encouraging “Christian and secular friends to join in.”
