A very small internship program exists deep in the Jewish Studies department of the College of Liberal Arts that allows students to get hands on experience working at a Jewish organization in the city. Called “Service Learning,” it is open to all students in the department.

“We mostly work with students to build intellectual links between the work they are doing in the community and reading and writing assignments that enhance and help historicize that work,” explains program coordinator, Laura Levitt (also director of the department), She commented that while only a handful of students actually do the program, they maintain contacts with several organizations.

“What generally happens is a student comes with an interest and a connection that he or she wants to pursue and we work with them to make this happen,” says Levitt.

This semester Jewish Studies Junior Jonathan Alexander is interning at the Feinstein Center for American Jewish History, located at Temple. Working under Center Director Michael Alexander (no relation), and Assistant Director Nancy Isserman, Michael is creating a DVD based on a textbook series on American Jewish history; his DVDs, which are created with pictures, music clips, maps, and more, are designed to be a compliment to the textbook that will help students learn. He says of his internship:

All I am hoping to get out of it is a sense that I did a good job and Jewish kids who are the future of American Judaism are going to have a better understanding of where they came from and who they are. If they are able to grasp the material better because of the work that I have done, then my job was a success and I will feel completely fulfilled and satisfied with the job that I did.

In the past students have interned at Jewish summer camps, after school programs, and the Center for Afro-Jewish Studies, also located at Temple.

Center founder and Temple professor Lewis Gordon says, “We’ve focused mostly on graduate students and research, but we did have some undergraduates work with us on four projects with happy results: the ISRST [Institute for the Study of Race and Social Thought ] Newsletter, organization of some on campus symposia, assistance with a meeting at the Institute for Jewish and Community Research think tank, and the local filming of a documentary on Jewish diversity.”