Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies

The Center for Advanced Judaic Studies (CAJS) at the University of Pennsylvania is the world's only institution exclusively dedicated to post-doctoral research on Jewish Civilization. It is located at 420 Walnut Street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The institution now known as CAJS was founded in 1907 as the Dropsie College of Hebrew and Cognate Learning and finally as Dropsie University. It was named after its benefactor, Moses Aaron Dropsie (1... more

The Center for Advanced Judaic Studies (CAJS) at the University of Pennsylvania is the world's only institution exclusively dedicated to post-doctoral research on Jewish Civilization. It is located at 420 Walnut Street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The institution now known as CAJS was founded in 1907 as the Dropsie College of Hebrew and Cognate Learning and finally as Dropsie University. It was named after its benefactor, Moses Aaron Dropsie (1821–1905), a wealthy half-Jewish religious convert who willed his entire fortune to "the promotion of and instruction in the Hebrew and cognate languages and their respective literatures." Dropsie granted more than 200 Ph.D.s between its inception and its closing as a degree-granting institution in 1986. Dropsie was also the publisher of the Jewish Quarterly Review, which was at the time the most respected journal on the subject. Although no longer a degree-granting college, it became the Annenberg Research Institute after its 1986 closing and... less