Middle East in middle Utah

What do a young Latter-day Saint scholar, a New York rabbi and a black Baptist from New Jersey have in common?

Sounds like the beginning of a bad joke. But for the three men involved, the common experience was study at Oxford University in England. And the common thread that they wove into lasting friendships was a shared fascination with Jewish history.

The LDS scholar, Michael T. Benson, now is president of Snow College. The rabbi, Shmuley Boteach, has a New York radio talk show focused on political and social issues, and Cory Booker is an up-and-coming politician, having recently lost a mayoral race in Newark, N.J., by only 4 percentage points. Time Magazine has named Booker one of the 100 most promising young politicians in the country.

Though life has taken them in different directions, the friendships built as members of Oxford's L'Chaim Society have held true, Benson said. All three were officers in the Jewish club at the same time. It was Oxford's second-largest extra-academic program, said Boteach.

"At Oxford, we became friends, and Mike remains one of my best friends," Boteach said in a telephone interview.

In Benson's case, the fascination with Jewish history has evolved into a unique objective for the small Utah college located in the state's agricultural midsection. One of several commitments he made when he was installed as president of Snow was the pursuit of a Jewish studies program. Last week, Benson met with Howard Jonas, chairman of the board of IDT Corp. and got a preliminary commitment for help in creating the program, although no specific amount was named.

Benson believes it will take about $500,000 to establish the project, money that would help in hiring a faculty member with expertise in Jewish history and Middle East affairs and meeting other costs of building the program. He hopes that the money will be committed by the end of May.

Boteach has been helpful in directing the Snow College president to potential donors, Benson said.

"Since 9/11, there has been a lot of interest among our students. They want to know more about the background of Arabs and Jews," Benson said. And the war in Iraq and its aftermath "is God's way of teaching Americans geography. . . . No problem of the present is so firmly rooted in the past," he said.