Emory University ranks highly amongst other colleges and universities as having an enormous Jewish population. Roughly 17% of the undergraduate student body is Jewish (hillel.org). Judaism has been apart of Emory's founding since the university was established in 1836.
In 1919, Rabbi Tobias Geffen met with Bishop Warren Candler, who was the chancellor of Emory, which was a newly established Methodist college that had recently moved to Atlanta from South Georgia (jewishvirtuallibrary.org). Geffen was concerned about Saturday classes which in turn prompted Candler to permit observant Jewish students who attended the university to be present on the Jewish Sabbath and holidays without having to take notes and take examinations. The first two Jewish students in this category were Joel Geffen and Professor Moses Hadas.
Until the 1950's, the Jewish student body at Emory University remained quite small. In 1949, Professor Nathan Saltz, who graduated from Emory medical school in 1940, made aliyah and established the surgical systems for all major hospitals in Israel. In 1998, Saltz was awarded the Israel Prize in Medicine. In the 1950s the number of Jewish students in all the Emory University schools was between 150 and 175 and by the 1970s Emory's reputation was attracting Jewish students from the entire United States. Parallel to the increase in student growth was the faculty growth both in Jewish academia and and general academia. When it was established in 1976, Professor David Blumenthal was given the Jay and Leslie Cohen chair in Jewish Thought. When the Carter Center came into creation in the early 1980s, Professor Ken Stein, a Middle East specialist, was chosen as the academic director. In 2004 there were 12 full-time faculty members teaching in all areas of Judaica. The Dorot Professor of Jewish History is the noted Holocaust specialist, Deborah Lipstadt. A masters program in Jewish Studies exists and a doctoral program was being planned. It is evident that Judaism remains an important part of Emory's culture and academia, and the Jewish programs the school installed remains unique to the university.
Within the last 25 years, The Woodruff Library has purchased thousands of new Judaic volumes in Hebrew, English, Yiddish and other languages. The Rabbi Jacob Rothschild papers, Holocaust collections from various sources, the Elliot Levitas papers (Rhodes Scholar and Georgia congressman), the Morris Abrams papers, the Geffen papers, and numerous other collections are all in Emory's Special Collections. Nineteenth century Judaica Americana has both been donated and purchased.
Today, the University contains three popular student organizations for Jewish religious life. These include: Chabad, Hillel and MEOR. Emory continues to be ranked amongst the best colleges with active Jewish communities.