Forward: NYU Bailout of Jewish History Center is DOA

Clearly the CJH is in receivership and NYU wants to divest itself of housing the Skirball Department.

The hyperbole of the whole venture is amazing, to wit: "The proposed merger would create the largest institution outside Israel for Judaic research." That is utter nonsense given the size of JTS, HUC and YU. And is quantity a good thing or ought we not strive for quality?

Most puzzling is the absence of the three seminaries, especially Yeshiva University in this scenario. The YU Museum is part of the CJH now. Does YU want to just cede it to NYU? To me that says that YU is in no position to bail out the Museum. That just confirms the theory that the Stanton donation of $100 million to operating expenses of YU was itself a massive bailout of that Orthodox institution.

BTW look at just how far the YIVO has fallen! The Neue Galerie, famous now for housing the "Portrait of Baroness Elisabeth Bachofen-Echt," by Gustav Klimt, circa 1914, is itself housed in former Yivo Institute building that was originally designed by Carrere & Hastings for William Starr Miller on the southeast corner of Fifth Avenue and 86th Street. Now that is some location.

Read the Forward report here.

NYU Bid To Take Over Center for Jewish History Called ‘Dead on Arrival’
Jennifer Siegel | Wed. Oct 31, 2007

The ink is barely dry on New York University’s preliminary plan for bailing out the financially strapped Center for Jewish History, but some insiders at the center have wasted little time in proclaiming it dead on arrival.