A Note of Thanks to Arthur Jacobson

I owe Arthur a great personal debt as a mentor, and as a thinker, and I'm happy to be able to publicly proclaim it today. When I first came to Cardozo, I packaged myself very astutely as a federal courts groupie; and I was going to write all the next great articles on federal courts. And it was Arthur, more than anyone else on the faculty who was there, welcoming me and persuading me that I had to pursue my passion, instead. Other members of the faculty (I won't name names) said: "You're not going to get tenure writing on Jewish law!" After, all, who on earth is going to read that?

No one." I got lucky, of course, but I truly owe my success to Arthur. And eventually Jewish law became Arthur's passion, too.