FILE PHOTOProfessor David Hadas, well-known for teaching the popular course “The Bible as Literature,” died in his home of complications from cancer on March 3. He was 73.
Diagnosed just a few years ago with colon cancer, Hadas had undergone two surgeries to remove the cancer, but declined post-operational chemotherapy because it would leave him unable to teach-to him, a fate worse than death. Doctors gave him a 60 percent chance of surviving five years without treatment.
Hadas studied at Yeshiva University and had originally intended to become a rabbi before transferring to Columbia University, where he earned bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees. His studies focused on 16th century English literature, and he minored in John Milton, Renaissance studies and post-1860 American literature.
He began his teaching career at the University of Rochester in New York before joining Washington University’s English department in 1964. He taught English classes and comparative literature classes along with courses in the Jewish and Near Eastern Studies program.
Students say they appreciated Hadas most for the way he challenged them in the classes he taught.
“He questioned the students, working from their needs,” said graduate student Kathi Boyer-Edwards. “He was fascinated by their differences, and he really brought that out in class.”
Sophomore Joshua Trein took Hadas’ Bible as Literature course.
“He never let his own beliefs interfere with what he was teaching,” said Trein. “He didn’t tell us about his own religious beliefs until the last day of class.”
Trein said that Hadas believed what he or anyone else believed in was not the point of the course-instead, he aimed to change the way students thought about and addressed religion. Therefore, he refused to offer his religious biography to his students until the culmination of the semester.
Hadas’ students said that he was most concerned with what his students remembered after they completed a course, and tried his hardest to leave a lasting impression on those he taught. Many students, including those whom he taught in the 1960s and 1970s, continue to remember Hadas and the influence his courses had on them.
Last year, more than 100 of Hadas’ students, former students and colleagues gathered in Holmes Lounge to pay tribute to him, and a classroom in Dunker will be named “Hadas Hall.”
Students described Hadas as warm, generous and engaging, and said they felt like their contributions were welcomed in class. Registration for his courses was always high, and Hadas was able to engage students in even the largest of classes. The Bible As Literature, for instance, held over 80 students.
Almost right up until his death, Hadas rarely spoke about his illness. Teaching was his life and dedication, and he did not want his sickness to prevent him from doing that which he loved most, though he was aware of rumors circulating throughout campus about his illness and hospital visits.
Hadas continued teaching right up until he was physically unable to do so.
“I have done my job,” Hadas once told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “I have done something with my life and I don’t feel incomplete.”
Thank you.
Dr. Hadas was my professor at an NEH program at Bread Loaf years ago. He was brilliant, generous, open, challenging, joyful, and with great indulgence to a lot of high school teachers in a summer sponsored by the National Endowment of the Humanities.
Several of us figured out that Dr. Hadas was Jewish, and I was chosen (no pun) to ask him why he always carried a King James Bible to his lectures. We noted that he almost never referred to it because he knew it deeply. His response was, and this remembered quote is probably almost exact, “I teach English literature, and if you don’t know the King James Bible you don’t know literature.”
His intellectual openness and honest are quite at variance with the unhappy Elmer Gantrys demanding that the Bible (presumably not the Hebrew Bible or the Douay-Rheims) be force-fitted in inappropriate contexts in public schools. He well knew the difference between teaching and “preaching at.”
Again, thank you.