Inaugural lecture of the new dean of the Faculty of Religious Studies
To celebrate the appointment of Professor Barry Levy, former Chair of the McGill Department of Jewish Studies and Director of the Jewish Teacher Training Program, to the Deanship of the Faculty of Religious Studies of McGill University a group of friends and former students is sponsoring Dean Levys inaugural lecture.
Montrealers of all creeds are thus invited to enjoy Dean Levys talk on the following topic:
"Jewish, Christian, and Moslem Responses to the Hebrew Bible"
Tuesday, April 1, 1997 at 6:00 p.m.
Redpath Hall
McGill Main Campus
Admission is free
Barry Levy joined McGill in 1975. After completing his education in New York at Yeshiva University and New York University, he was hired as assistant professor at Brown University. Shortly after his Brown appointment, McGills former chair of Jewish Studies Ruth Weiss (now at Harvard University) encouraged him to join her department. At the end of his second year at Brown, Levy took McGill up on its offer. "I figured I would come to McGill for a couple of years and go back to the States. And here I am. I liked it very much. I liked the city, I liked the University, and obviously I made it a career."
Current Jewish Studies chair Eugene Orenstein says of his predecessor, "Hes been a pillar of the Department of Jewish Studies. As well as being an excellent teacher (Levy won the H. Noel Fieldhouse Award in 1992), he had a devotion to building the department."
Levy has published Planets, Potions and Parchments, a book he released to go with an exhibition on the history of science at the David M. Stewart Museum. Levy was curator of the 1990 exhibition and persuaded the Israelis to lend a fragment of the Dead Sea scrolls. Proficient in several ancient and modern languages, Dean Levy has worked on a new translation of the Babylonian Talmud due to be released this year. (Source: Eric Smith McGill Reporter, January 16, 1997).
