Center for Judaic Studies 2025-2026 Annual Report
Our annual report celebrates the students, faculty, alumni, donors, and community members who advance the Center’s mission of deepening human understanding through the study of Jewish history, culture, and thought. This year’s report highlights the Center’s most notable achievements and milestones from the 2025-2026 academic year. As we head into our 50th anniversary, we invite you to explore the people and the programs at the heart of our work to shift perceptions, challenge prejudice, and cultivate leaders prepared to apply their knowledge in service of the public good.
Letter from Dr. Adam Rovner, Director of The Center for Judaic Studies
Sound the shofar loud!
In the Hebrew Bible, the Jubilee year trumpets liberty and revival in the Land of Israel. Here at the University of Denver, the Center for Judaic Studies will soon celebrate its own jubilee—our 50th anniversary.
Over the last few years, we have:
- Served more than 1,000 undergraduates in Judaic Studies courses
- Added 24 new Judaic Studies courses
- Created 2 undergraduate awards for outstanding coursework
- Endowed 1 new scholarship for Judaic Studies minors—the Gary & Terri Yourtz Scholarship
- Awarded 4 Dr. Helen Morris Jewish Life & Culture grants for curriculum development
- Launched our Holocaust Awareness Institute’s Survival & Witness platform to support the Colorado state mandate for Holocaust education
- Awarded 2 Rocky Mountain Jewish Historical Society (RMJHS) & Beck Archives research fellowships
- Formalized the 1st American partnership with the Institute of Jewish Studies—Barcelona
- Offered 20 travel subsidies through our Israeli Cultures Initiative to send Hebrew language students to conferences in the U.S.
- Announced a campaign to endow the 1st professorship to link the Holocaust to historical and contemporary antisemitism—the Emil & Eva Hecht Professorship
Welcomed 1,000s of Front Range community members to 120+ events and programs featuring internationally recognized scholars, authors, filmmakers, and musicians from the U.S., Israel, and beyond
These are just a sampling of our many achievements. None of these successes would have been possible without our wonderful students and alumni, dedicated faculty and staff, eager community participants, and generous donors.
We hope you will attend one of our anniversary year programs, meet our impressive students, and see firsthand how our work is transforming DU and shaping the lives of the next generation of thought leaders. Our Center is truly at the center of higher education across the Mountain West, and you can help us shape its next 50 years. Spread the word—sound the ram’s horn—about all that we have done and will yet accomplish.
B’shalom
Adam Rovner, Ph.D.
Director, Center for Judaic Studies & Professor of English and Literary Arts
