enrollments, Schiff pushed, but to no avail, for renewed interest by the ad-
ministration. Although the department was like “a child” to him, an un-
happy Schiff resigned from the visiting committee in 1914. During his
twenty-five years of service he had donated over $250,000 to the Semitics
program and library, and in his will he left another $25,000 to the museum.
The short-term failure notwithstanding, the desire to legitimate Jewish
studies in American universities as a means to combat prejudice lived on. In
1895 one prominent Chicago rabbi put it this way: “One Jewish professor,
especially if he teaches Jewish science and teaches the history of Judaism
and the philosophy of Judaism, does more for the generations to be than all
other movements to combat prejudice combined.”^111
Some five years after Schiff’s death, Harvard appointed Harry Austryn
Wolfson to the Littauer chair in Jewish literature and philosophy, thereby
inaugurating a university program in Jewish studies. Coincidentally, it was
Schiff who had underwritten stipends for Wolfson when the latter was a
bright undergraduate. But because Schiff disapproved of the young man’s
plans to pursue a teaching career in Palestine, he gave the assistance grudg-
ingly. The whole point of Judaic studies was to cultivate an appreciation of
the Jewish heritage in American non-Jews and Jews, and the talents of
Harvard-trained scholars were needed in the United States.^112
“I welcome with my entire heart every work and every movement that will
tend to demonstrate to the world the debt it owes to Semitic civilization,”
Schiff wrote in 1891. Often, as a self-appointed missionary, he gave his
Christian friends Jewish books or books about Judaism. He also distributed
copies of Rabbi Kaufmann Kohler’s magnum opus on Jewish theology, a
heavy work explaining the fundamental beliefs of Reform Judaism, among
Christian clergymen and public libraries. No undertaking was too insignif-
icant if it promised to raise non-Jewish consciousness about the riches of
Judaism. When a faculty member at City College of New York asked for
material on Jews and Judaism, Schiff gladly supplied it. In 1905, at the cel-
ebration of the 250th anniversary of Jewish settlement in America, Schiff
chaired the ceremonies in New York. It was a fitting occasion, he thought,
for publicly singling out the share of both Judaism and Jews in the
country’s development.^113
At the same time, Schiff directed a sizable portion of his donations to Jew-
ish education. Jews too had become woefully ignorant of their tradition
and, in a society largely barren of major Jewish cultural institutions, were
rapidly drifting away from their religion. Constantly deploring the prefer-
ence of philanthropists for institutions like hospitals and orphanages, he
Leadership and Philanthropy 79