春水堂视频

Eileen and Richard Greenberg created the fund to continue the late scholar鈥檚 life鈥檚 work

In life, Professor David Shneer strove to spark meaningful conversations among scholars, artists and the public; after his death, his friends, colleagues and supporters aim to continue this work.

, who was the Louis P. Singer Endowed Chair in Jewish History at the University of Colorado Boulder, passed away last fall after a long battle with cancer. He was 48.

Elias Sacks, director of the Program in Jewish Studies and associate professor of religious studies, announced recently that donors Eileen and Richard Greenberg had made a significant gift to inaugurate the .

The new fund will support all aspects of Jewish studies public programming, bringing academics and artists to Boulder for lectures, workshops, symposia, performances and other offerings, and 鈥渆nsuring that the CU Boulder community of learning is precisely that鈥攁 genuine community, in which scholars, performers, students, and members of the public can learn, think and grow together,鈥� Sacks said.

鈥淚鈥檓 deeply grateful to Eileen and Richard for their generous gift,鈥� he said, noting that they and their family are long-standing supporters of the Program in Jewish Studies, including of the Sondra and Howard Bender Visiting Scholar series, honoring Eileen鈥檚 parents.听

Eileen is a CU Boulder alumna, having earned a BA in physical health in 1978, and she and Richard are the parents of three CU Boulder graduates.听

鈥淭hey were also dear friends of David鈥檚,鈥� Sacks said, adding, 鈥淚鈥檓 humbled to count them as partners in carrying forward his vision.鈥�

Sacks said Shneer 鈥渃ared deeply about building community,鈥� making connections between the academy and the broader world, hosting visiting speakers in Jewish studies, organizing symposia with University Libraries, and launching the Archive Transformed artistic residency.

鈥淒avid was passionate about the need for conversations between scholars, artists and members of the public,鈥� Sacks said. 鈥淔or David, this relationship-building was more than just one aspect of academic life among others. Rather, it stood at the heart of his vision of what it meant to be a scholar, teacher and activist at a public university in the 21st century.鈥�

Called a 鈥減athbreaking鈥� scholar by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Shneer focused his research on 20th-century European, Russian and Jewish history and culture.

He received his PhD in history from the University of California, Berkeley in 2001 and directed the Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Denver before joining the CU Boulder faculty in 2008.

While at CU Boulder, Shneer served as director of Jewish studies, professor of history, and chair of religious studies. He was a distinguished lecturer for the Association for Jewish Studies, faculty director for Yiddishkayt, co-editor in chief of East European Jewish Affairs, and was the inaugural faculty director of CU Boulder鈥檚 Post Holocaust American Judaism Archive.

His book 鈥攚hich won the 2013 Jordan Schnitzer Prize of the Association for Jewish Studies and was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award鈥攍ooked at the lives and works of two dozen Soviet Jewish World War II military photographers to examine what kinds of photographs they took when they encountered evidence of Nazi genocide on the Eastern Front.听

His other books听include听Queer Jews,听finalist for the Lambda Literary award; Yiddish and the Creation of听Soviet Jewish Culture,听finalist for the National Jewish Book Award,听New Jews: The End of the Jewish听Diaspora;听Torah Queeries: Weekly听Commentaries on the Hebrew听Bible;听and,听most recently,听Grief: The Biography of a Holocaust听Photograph.

In fall 2011, the traveling museum exhibit 鈥淭hrough Soviet Jewish Eyes鈥� debuted at the CU Art Museum in Boulder and then showed at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City, the Holocaust Museum Houston, the University of Louisiana鈥檚 Museum of Art at the Illinois Holocaust Museum in Chicago.