By Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO—The on-campus Love Library is named for former San Diego State University President Malcolm Love, and not for the emotion that so motivates men and women. But had it been otherwise, then the Snyder Judaic Studies Reading Room on the library's third floor would still very much belong, for it celebrates a widower's undying affection and regard for the companion of his years.

Back in 1987, when the amount seemed prodigious, real estate developer Irving J. Snyder donated $50,000 to establish the reading room in his wife Sylvia's memory and to provide funds to SDSU's Lipinsky Institute for Judaic Studies for special purchases. Ironically, the name of the reading room has outlasted the name of the Institute it was intended to enhance.

I've seen the process unfold again and again in the Jewish community in which philanthropists have a building, or a sanctuary, or a room named for them or for a loved one, only to have that name become all but obliterated by the march of progress. Donors may think that their names or those of their loved ones will be preserved long after they have gone to the graves, but changing demographics and economic realities often militate against these hopes. Instead of for eternity, loved ones sometimes are memorialized for only a generation or two.

There are numerous synagogues and Jewish agencies in San Diego that have changed locations over the years. Names that graced rooms in the previous buildings can't be carried over to the new buildings because   new sets of donors must be courted and rewarded  It probably has always been thus that the needs of the present generation outweigh the demands of the past.

In some cases, institutions save the old plaques, and even re-hang them on a memorial wall, in an attempt to continue honoring the memory of the generous donors of the past.  But in other cases the institutions don't even do that.  Except in photographs, or in old newspaper clippings, or minute books, the record of previous donations—and their donors—soon fade from memory. Remember Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem about Ozymandias?

The story about how the name of the Lipinsky Institute for Judaic Studies may someday completely fade from memory is based in the reality of fundraising economics.  When Dorris and Bernard Lipinsky donated $250,000 in 1985 for the institute's establishment, it was thought that by banking that money as an endowment fund, there would be a continual source of funds for the institute's programming.

However, over the next two decades, the amount of interest one could receive from a quarter of a million dollars purchased less and less.  Augmenting the endowment fund proved difficult because with the Lipinsky name on the Institute, other potential donors assumed that their own money was more urgently needed elsewhere.

Under History Prof. Lawrence Baron, who took over the Lipinsky Institute in 1988, there had been a busy schedule of on-campus and off-campus activities.  On-campus, the Lipinsky Institute coordinated the Jewish Studies Program, which brought a visiting Israeli professor to SDSU each year.  It also offered a variety of courses which ambitious students could parlay into an academic major by augmenting them with some Jewish Studies courses offered via teleconferencing by other California State Colleges.

Off campus, the Lipinsky Institute sponsored  a variety of colloquia, symposia, and an array of speakers who would give lectures to both civic and Jewish organizations.  Baron, himself, delivered numerous lectures throughout the Jewish community in conjunction with Jewish film festivals.  

University officials met with the heirs of Dorris and Bernard Lipinsky—their children Elaine and Jeffrey Lipinsky —and persuaded them that one of their parents' favorite causes, San Diego State University, would be better off if the Institute's programs and name were revamped.  Given that the clock tower near the Student Activities Center already is named for the Lipinskys, and that Bernard was one of the few people ever to receive an honorary doctorate from SDSU, it's fair to say that there is a real love affair between the Lipinsky family and the university.  The children generously acceded to SDSU's wishes.

Baron decided to move onto other projects once the transiton were made  So after nearly 18 years as director of the Jewish Studies program--a chai lifetime—he was succeeded in that position by Religious Studies Prof. Risa Levitt Kohn.   In turn he took up new responsibilities as the academic advisor to graduate students in the History Department.  I'm one of the new graduate students he is now advising.

In addition to her SDSU responsibilities, Levitt Kohn has been very busy of late—and is likely to continue to be for some time—as the local curator for the blockbuster Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition that will be coming to the San Diego Natural History Museum in Balboa Park next July through December.

Meanwhile, the Snyder Judaic Studies Reading Room on the Third Floor of the Love Library is getting quite crowded. Not only does it house a collection of books that are of interest to students in the Jewish Studies program, it also is the home of the archives of the Jewish Historical Society of San Diego. This group has been collecting scrapbooks, papers, awards, plaques and other memorabilia of historic interest to San Diego's Jewish community and making these research  treasure troves available to students and to other researchers. But success breeds its own problems: eventually there simply won't be enough space in the  reading room to house both collections.

It may be some time before all this is sorted out, but eventually the question will be answered, "Is it time to move the Snyder Judaic Studies Reading Room to bigger quarters?"

And then, there may be such other questions as  "How should a new facility be paid for?"  "Would a philanthropist be willing to donate if we named the new quarters after him or her?"

In the meantime, the Snyder Judaic Studies Reading Room remains in the Love Library for all to enjoy. Books such as those that line the shelves had a special meaning to Irving Snyder.  Having immigrated to the United States at age 19 from Russia, and having immediately taken a job in his adopted country, he did not have the opportunity for a formal education.  But whenever he could, he read, and read.  "The only education I got was through reading," he recalled back a few months before his death in 1988.  

For nearly two decades now, anyone who wanted to could do the same in the reading room which recalls the memory of his beloved Sylvia.  

What about his legacy?  Whatever becomes of the reading room, Snyder had the pleasure of knowing during his lifetime that his record of good deeds for the Jewish community would be carried on by his daughter, Jodyne Roseman.

He had the opportunity to kvell  when she became the president of the Jewish Campus Centers (Hillel) organization which served both UCSD and SDSU.  In the last year of his life, he proudly watched as she became president of the regional chapter of the Anti-Defamation League.