UCLA Jewish Studies Honors Founding Director

The UCLA Center for Jewish Studies recently honored founding director Arnold Band, professor emeritus of Hebrew and comparative literature, for his half-century of service to UCLA. Raymond P. Scheindlin, professor of medieval Hebrew literature at the Jewish Theological Seminary, delivered the annual lecture named for Band and sponsored by Sheila and Milton Hyman on Oct. 21.

Band made his mark while on sabbatical in Israel in 1962 and 1963. He discovered that an antiquarian bookstore, which featured an impressive Hebraica and Judaica selection, was up for sale after its owner had died. Band helped arrange the purchase of what would become the 33,000-volume Cummings Collection, which forms the nucleus of the UCLA Library’s Jewish studies collection. Band also founded the UCLA Comparative Literature Program in 1969 (now the Department of Comparative Literature) and the Center for Jewish Studies in 1994. Over his career, Band has received several prestigious honors, including the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship.