Brandeis students are guaranteed housing for their freshman and sophomore years, and the majority of these students live in the North and Massell quads. Each dorm features student lounges, a kitchen with utilities, laundry facilities, dorm programming, and a large community space with TVs, billiards, and foosball tables.
As reported by Arielle Kaplan ’10:
“There are two quads for first years at Brandeis. Massell Quad has four dorms (Shapiro, Usen, Deroy, and Renfield) and North Quad has three dorms in which first years can live (Reitman, Gordon, and Cable). The fourth building in North Quad is reserved for sophomores and is called Scheffres. First years live in single, double, or triple rooms.
Sophomores have the option of living in Scheffres in North Quad, Pomerantz or Hassenfel in East Quad, Usen Castle, the Rosenthal Suites, 567 South Street, or the Charles River Apartments (known colloquially as Grad). In addition to the usual double/single/triple living arrangement, sophomores can opt to live in suite-style housing with five other people. Each person has his or her own room and there is a common area. This type of housing only shows up in Rosenthal, four rooms in the Castle, 567, and Grad.
Juniors and Seniors are not guaranteed housing but if they are eligible and choose to take it, their options are the Village (singles and doubles), Ziv Quad (six-person suites), Grad, and the Foster Mods (only for seniors). When the new Ridgewood apartment-style dorms are finished, they will be housing for upperclassmen as well.”
Jehuda Reinharz has been the president of Brandeis since 1994. He is the 7th president of the university and is also Richard Koret Professor of Modern Jewish History. Reinharz was born in Haifa in 1944, in what is now modern-day Israel. He received his high school education in Germany, and emigrated to America with his family in 1961. Reinharz earned simultaneous bachelor’s degrees from Columbia University and the Jewish Theological Seminary, and continued on to receive his master’s degree from Harvard and his doctorate from Brandeis (both in Jewish history).
Reinharz went on to teach at the University of Michigan, where he became the university’s first professor of Jewish history. He was there from 1972 until 1982, and during his stay he established the program in Judaic Studies. In 1982, he became a professor of Modern Jewish History in the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis. After a series of further academic successes, Reinharz was made president of the university in 1994.
He has published 20 books and more than 100 articles in multiple languages, and is considered one of the leading scholars of modern Jewish history. Reinharz has also been elected into the Royal Historical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Council on Foreign Relations.
Jehuda Reinharz is married to Shulamit Reinharz, also a professor at Brandeis (sociology), and they have two daughters, Yael and Naomi.
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