Comments (1)BHU’s Music
September 25, 2009Andrew A. Buerger
Publisher
Erika Pardes Schon wrote a beautiful piece last week for our on-line edition, jewishtimes.com . She poetically began her 1,200 words with an analogy of moving a withering plant from the former Baltimore Hebrew University president’s office. A year later, with a little water and a great deal of sunlight, the plant is flourishing at her new office on the Towson University campus.
Mrs. Schon, director of the Baltimore Hebrew Institute at Towson University, gave a much longer and much more animated update at the Associated’s board meeting last week.
She worked hard to fit into her limited speaking time the scores of benefits the new entity had, post-merger. She had to fly through her prepared remarks in order to list them all. After what seemed like five minutes, I fully expected the Associated to start playing music, signaling that Mrs. Schon had far exceeded her allotted time to thank everyone involved with the BHU-Towson merger.
Just as Mrs. Schon harkened back to the previous year though the life of her plant, I couldn’t help but think back to the time I first met the passionate president of the once struggling independent Jewish university.
We met for lunch at the City Cafe, she along with a small army of impressive academic, rabbinic and philanthropic Baltimore leaders, including my own spiritual leader at the time, Rabbi Mark G. Loeb.
I couldn’t hold a candle to their scholarship or Jewish credentials. I did know, though, that they weren’t going to convince me that the Associated should keep funding the institution to the tune of $1.1 million a year; enrollment had spiraled downward to the point where the funding per student of the several dozen graduate students had far outweighed the communal benefits.
Back then our community was introduced to yet another impressive academician as the latest and greatest president, whom we knew wouldn’t last. There was no way he could raise the needed money to save the University.
BHU leaders pleaded their case to our editors and to me. We listened, but it still made no sense at a time when — pre-“Great Recession” — we were struggling to educate thousands of Jewish day and supplemental students, to make Jewish camping affordable, and to maintain basic services to meet people’s growing needs. Why should the Associated continue to give BHU more than $1 million for a handful of graduate students?
The University’s many supporters turned the Associated’s good idea into a PR nightmare with town hall meetings and a slew of letters to the BALTIMORE JEWISH TIMES.
What a difference a few years makes.
Most BHU supporters now no longer see the Associated as an enemy trying to drive them out of business. For her part, Mrs. Schon, for years active with the Associated, sings the Associated’s praises for both helping to broker the deal and for providing the funding to allow BHU to land at Towson. The Associated is thrilled because that $1 million can be put to more urgent uses.
Towson gets a world-class library now easily accessible to more people. (More importantly, you can sip on Starbucks coffee while perusing the collection.) Towson also is instantly more attractive to affluent Jewish Baltimore and the school gets very solid professors. Meanwhile, those professors and their students gain far greater technology, modern classrooms and a trove of other resources they could not dream of as a standalone entity.
Besides being able to drink java in the library, we all keep BHU’s efforts of creating a more educated Jewish Baltimore thriving thanks to a well-funded, growing institution.
But back to the Associated board meeting. It’s known more for cheerleading sessions than a place to hotly contest dire issues — save the once a decade debate over opening the JCC on Shabbat. Yet I looked over at the Associated leadership and was proud that no one wore an “I told you so” smile. Everyone was thrilled it turned out well, particularly when cost cutting is more important than ever in the Associated’s 90-year history.
Hearing the joy over the merger that created the Baltimore Hebrew Institute at Towson University gives this long, difficult ordeal a Hollywood ending.
Cue the music.