INTRODUCTION

Most of us regard teaching as well as scholarship as a vocation-and so we compartmentalize the larger institutional problems in the course of teaching-we enter the classroom determined to create our sacred space [mikdash me'at] taking due account of our students, physical setting, course materials, and much else besides. [...]some pressures are welcome- interest in effective teaching remains high and comes from self-reflection as well as external meddling. Klein came to Jewish Studies from anthropol- ogy, and like many academics, teaches a specific Jewish Studies course episodically rather than every semester. [...]as the author of Kosher Feijoada and Other Paradoxes of Jewish Life in Sao Paulo,8 Klein does not fall into the characterization that Jewish Studies reflects a Eurocentric bias reinforced by the Ashkenazic background of the majority of its practitio - ners.