by Reina Harris

Have you ever wanted to be a professor? Well take a look at some information about the Samuel N. Stroum Professor of Jewish Studies at the UW, Noam Pianko!

Noam Pianko really wanted to play baseball as a kid but he could not throw the ball hard enough so… He became an AWESOME professor! He decided to choose this job because he loved teaching and learning about the past. His favorite part of his job is having kids really listen to him, and he loves how they learn. A challenge for him is that it is hard to read old letters and documents because they are in different languages but he loves figuring them out because it helped him learns more.

Noam’s class is 1 hour and 30 minutes long and has 2-3 hours of reading and writing outside of class per week. Then it’s time for meeting with his awesome colleagues! Noam normally teaches his students critical writing and reading skills. Noam’s job helps people get a good education in Jewish studies because he always is looking for the information to answer his students’ questions! Noam is the Samule N. Stroum Professor of Jewish Studies. Noam has also written some very good books. His first book Zionism and the Roads Not Taken, and his second book: Peoplehood: An American Innovation, were such interesting books! Noam Pianko got his PhD in religious studies in 2004 from Yale University.

Noam has broadened the UW’s Jewish studies offerings considerably on the campus. He has over-seen the progress of an exemplary online presence with the creation of a graduate fellowship program, and hired the new Chair for Israel Studies. Noam serves on the board for the Association for Jewish studies. In addition, Noam lectures broadly on topics such as Judaism, Zionism, and technology. Noam contributes to his community in a number of ways. Noam makes sure that his students know about the past so that everyone can understand what happened and what not to repeat. Now do you want to be a professor?