Sep 21, 2006 -- History was made on the Wilf Campus at a groundbreaking ceremony for the Jacob and Dreizel Glueck Center for Jewish Study. The Glueck Center is the first building to be constructed on the Wilf Campus in over 20 years and will house a two-story, 470 seat Beit Midrash, the largest at YU. The Center and the Beit Midrash bear the names of Jacob and Dreizel Glueck z”l in gratitude to the Glueck family for their visionary lead gift toward construction of the new facility. To view photos of the groundbreaking click here. Philanthropist Jacob Glueck is a Holocaust survivor who came to the US virtually penniless, built one of the country’s foremost flavor houses, and turned Citromax S.A.C.I. into a leading lemon producing and processing company. Mr. Glueck and his wife became major philanthropists in the US and Israel. In 1998, Mr. Glueck was the recipient of the Eitz Chaim Award, the highest honor the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS) can bestow for advancement of Jewish scholarship. Vivian Glueck Rosenberg, Mr. Glueck’s daughter, is a member of YU’s Board of Trustees and the Board of Directors of Stern College for Women, as well as co-founder of the Dreizel Glueck Bikur Cholim Foundation. She and her husband, Henry Rosenberg, are continuing her father’s example of leadership in the Jewish community. “I am delighted that the first new construction of my presidency – a project that was begun by Dr. Lamm – is a Beit Midrash, a house of study for our sacred texts which will without doubt spread so much light and warmth and enrich the world in so many ways,” said President Richard M. Joel. The Center will contain two large, modern lecture halls, 50 faculty offices and 11 classrooms, facilities for seminars and conferences, and will be connected to the adjacent Mendel Gottesman Library. It will be a venue for faculty and students to study and meet informally to share ideas. “It is so meaningful that the Beit Midrash will be connected to the library because it underscores our commitment to study the sacred texts with open eyes to allow these profound values to enrich the world,” Mr. Joel noted. The facilities will incorporate state-of-the-art technology. Students will have electronic access to the resources of the Gottesman Library and to the growing array of texts, research and commentaries available online from the world over. The university’s mission of Torah Umadda (the synthesis of general and Jewish studies) will be represented by the symbolic linking of the Glueck Center and the Gottesman Library via a ground floor atrium. This spacious and light-filled facility will be known as the Nagel Family Atrium and Student Commons, in tribute to YU Benefactors, Jack and Gitta Nagel and their children. Michael and Fiona Sharf provided the aron hakodesh (ark), and the Samuel and Claire A. Mozel Charitable Trust endowed the fourth floor of the Center which will be named for them. A classroom has been dedicated by Dr. Susan Dworken in memory of her husband, Rabbi Steven M. Dworken, former Executive Vice President of the Rabbinical Council of America and Director of the Morris and Gertrude Bienenfeld Department of Rabbinic Services at RIETS.