Bringing a focus to Jewish studies

Jim Spatz is the Chair of Dalhousie's Board of Governors.

The movie Defiance recounts a little-known story of courage and persistence in the face of the Holocaust. Starring Daniel Craig of James Bond fame, the movie tells the story of Jewish people who survived the Second World War by retreating to the woods, where food was scarce and the cold was bitter.

But Jim Spatz was well aware of the story—it was lived by both his parents. His mother, Riva, belonged to a partisan group in the Jewish resistance movement and lived out the war in the woods of Poland. His father, Simon, also Polish, was interned at a labor camp and fled with his younger brother to the forest just a day before the camp was “liquidated” and all the occupants murdered.

Dr. Spatz, chair of the Board of Governors at Dalhousie University, honors the courage and resilience of his parents in helping to create an endowed chair in Jewish studies.

Once fully funded, the Simon and Riva Spatz Chair in Jewish Studies will reside in the Religious Studies Program within Dalhousie’s Department of Classics and the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS).

Dr. Spatz is forever inspired by what his parents went through to give him and his sister opportunities in life. “It makes you more tolerant. The freedom and opportunity represented by Canada makes you want to give back,” he says.

His parents’ experiences didn’t make them lose faith, but rather embrace it all the more. After the war, Riva and Simon met and married in Munich and immigrated to Canada where they built a successful business in property management. In Halifax, they joined a small, close-knit Jewish community.

Dr. Spatz, who was a year old when the family immigrated, went to Dalhousie medical school and practiced emergency medicine for several years before joining his father in the family business, now known as Southwest Properties.

He says he’s proud to be a graduate of Dalhousie University, which was founded on the principal of inclusiveness, “its doors open to all.” Unlike other universities, Dalhousie never had a quota on the number of Jewish students it would accept.

The Simon and Riva Spatz Chair in Jewish Studies will have three areas of focus: teaching, research and outreach. The chair is envisioned to help students appreciate how centuries-old beliefs influence contemporary world events.

Shirley Tillotson, associate dean in FASS, is hopeful the endowed chair is just the first of several to represent major world religions.

“We strive to have a more interdisciplinary religious studies department,” says Dr. Tillotson. “Scholars in the social sciences and the humanities are thinking with new seriousness about the place of religion in the political world.”