nless you are Roger Angell,
The New
Yorker
writer, you might not think of a
sports figure in connection with a prominent
scholar of Hebrew literature. But at a large
university, many different kinds of teachers
leave magnificent legacies. It is for that rea-
son that Professor Arnold Band, an honorary
alumnus of HUC-JIR, was heralded recently
by the UCLA campus newspaper along with
John Wooden, the legendary coach of
UCLA’s dynamite basketall teams of days
past. Both were considered among the twen-
ty great teachers of the past century. And
even more recently, a group of Professor
Band’s friends and students collaborated to
honor him in another way: with the publica-
tion of a
Festschrift
–
a volume of essays
devoted to his favorite subjects. University.
If the editors of such a volume are fortunate,
the
festschrift
emerges – not as a dull, heavy
document – but with coherence and a cen-
tral theme. It can point the direction for
future scholarship, and it may contain a few
essays that teachers in the future will recom-
mend to students. One of the dangers in
editing such a volume is that the scholarly
contributions will be “all over the map,” and
another is that a scholar in some distant city
will simply contribute something already
underway and not related to the honoree.
As editors, David Jacobson and I were fortu-
nate in that the authors of our articles stepped
up to the line and wrote exciting fresh articles
from their fields. They also kept their eyes on
the basket by responding to our wish that the
articles would reflect Professor Band’s wily
temperament and prodigious achievements.
We didn’t receive one article that did not fit
our scheme and every one of the forty articles
was written with exquisite care and belief in
the task at hand. Our authors from through-
out the world included in the range of their
themes subjects related to either Classic Texts,
Diaspora Literatures, or Zionism, the Holocaust
and Israel. The essays were well conceived,
and beautifully executed. And they honored
Professor Band by doing precisely what he
achieved in his career: they read documents in
entirely new ways that added freshness to the
well-known canons of Jewish literature.
I was proud that the Hebrew Union College
Press was one of the sponsors of the book,
along with many of Band’s friends and, par-
ticularly, the family of Lloyd Cotzen.
Prominent among our authors were HUC-
JIR faculty: Stanley Nash, Ezra Spicehandler,
David Ellenson, Michael Meyer and William
Cutter. In addition, several of our honorary
degree recipients are represented: Ruth
Kartun Blum, David Patterson, Glenda
Abrahmson, Aharon Appelfeld, Gershon
Shaked, and Joseph Dan. Appelfeld is one of
Israel’s prominent authors, often translated
into English through his amazing laconic
tales of life surrounding the Holocaust;
Shaked is the dean of Israel’s literary histori-
ans and critics; Josef Dan holds the Gershom
Scholem Chair in Jewish Mysticism. This
distinguished array of senior scholars joined
with younger scholars who had actually been
Band’s students.
One article dealt at length with a remarkable
short story of 5 lines written in the early
twentieth century about the pogrom in a
major town in Russia. Another undertook a
rereading of one of Yehuda Amichai’s latest
poems. Michael Meyer translated and ren-
dered brilliant commentary on Heinrich
Heine’s “Princess Sabbath.” David Ellenson
contributed a long and seminal article on the
way in which “double consciousness” and
living in two worlds has affected Jewish
communal and individual behavior and legal
decisions. Nearly forty more articles on dif-
ferent subjects flood this rich expression of
thinking, research and innovation. It was a
pleasure for me, as it was for Professors
Shideler, Komar and Signer, to reminisce
personally about the honoree and to link all
of our memories to his massive contribution
to Jewish Studies.
Arnold Band is one of the pioneers in Jewish
Studies in the United States. His over one
hundred articles and books have created a
field within a field and represent the best of
creative scholarly inquiry. Band’s own articles
are like perfect string quartets—tending
towards the concise twenty to thirty page
length, gem-like in brilliance, architectural in
design, all devoted to the field he helped
invent. It was our hope to present him with a
volume of articles that reflect his method and
that approach the quality of his life’s work.
The readers will tell us if we have achieved
our goal.
U
IN THE FACULTY AUTHOR’S WORDS | IN THE FACULTY AUTHOR’S WORDS | IN THE FACULTY AUTHOR’S WORDS
History and
Literature:
New Readings of
Jewish Texts in Honor
of Arnold J. Band
William Cutter and David C. Jacobson
Brown Judaic Studies, 2002
Dr. William Cutter and Professor
Arnold J. Band
Dr. William Cutter
Professor of Hebrew Language
and Literature, HUC-JIR/LA
2003
ISSUE 62
27