Recently, I lost one of the most important teachers I’ve ever had and the Penn community, as well as the larger world of Jewish Studies, has lost a giant. Sol Cohen was an Orthodox rabbi and semitic philologist—a deeply learned person. I studied rabbinics with him for fourteen years. He died on Friday, January 3, following complications from surgery.

The Katz Center shares the sad news that Dr. Sol Cohen passed away on January 3, 2025. Until a few years ago, Sol served as an associate visiting scholar and resources person at the Katz Center, after serving for many decades as a professor of Assyriology at Dropsie College, the Center's predecessor institution. 

Earlier last year, in an effort to build on the educational recommendations of Penn’s task force on antisemitism, the Katz Center established a three-year postdoctoral fellowship in the study of contemporary antisemitism studies. The goal was to strengthen an ongoing initiative to promote better understanding of antisemitism through new courses and public programs, and to support new research in the field by creating a position for an early career scholar. We are grateful in this initiative for the generous support of Katz Center board members Ivan Ross and Jerry Silk.

Arthur Kiron, Schottenstein-Jesselson Curator of Judaica Collections, acquired a wealth of new collection items over the summer. Eager to announce this news and determined to give each acquisition the attention it deserves, we included only a few new items in the fall newsletter—a Yiddish translation of Romeo and Juliette, a collection of stories for children written by Anne Frank, and a Tsarist government edict.

I am delighted to announce that the Katz Center has launched an Instagram account! We are using this additional platform to connect our abundance of scholarship to new constituencies, experts and enthusiasts alike.

In a recent email I asked Arthur Kiron, Schottenstein-Jesselson Curator of Judaica Collections, what was new in Judaica at the Penn Libraries. In reply he shared an array of wonderful recent acquisitions. There was such an abundance that I worried that if I included too many in in this newsletter, I would deny each item the individualized attention it deserves, so I narrowed them down to a just a few fascinating items (a difficult task). 

The Katz Center mourns the passing of Louise Strauss (March 31, 1960–February 27, 2024) who died after a long illness. A member of our board of advisors, Louise’s commitment to the Center, its collections, and to the field of Jewish studies was profound; in this she followed in the footsteps of her parents, Ione Apfelbaum Strauss, the former chair of the board of the Katz Center, and Hilary Strauss, also an avid Penn supporter. One of Louise’s last acts as a Katz Center board member was to endow the Center’s rare book room in memory of her parents.