Dr. Henry Abramson believes in putting the past back into the hands of the people most connected to it

Visitors to Professor Henry (Hillel) Abramson’s office may notice a small display case hanging on the wall behind his desk.

It has a glass door labeled “In Case of Emergency,” and inside is a manila envelope. You don’t actually have to break the glass, fire-alarm style, to access the envelope; he keeps a key in his desk. Now he jumps up to unlock it and display the contents: a transcript of his undergraduate grades.

Dr. Abramson, dean of Touro’s Lander College of Arts and Sciences and Machon L’Parnasa, takes it out whenever he feels it necessary to give a little chizuk and perspective to students who come in panic-stricken about less than stellar grades. “Academically, I only really took off in graduate school,” he admits, “I keep these transcripts handy to remind myself — and the occasionally dejected student upset by a C in Statistics — that one may emerge stronger, not weaker, from temporary setbacks.”

Despite one E (it didn’t stand for Excellence) and a few other academic blemishes, Dr. Abramson went on to earn a doctorate in history from the University of Toronto and post-doctoral fellowships at Oxford, Cornell, and Harvard Universities as well as a diploma from the Kiev State University in Ukraine. The author of seven books, he also claims the distinction of being the only author to have published books with both Harvard and Feldheim Publishers.

Mishpacha readers may recognize his name from one of his more recent people-friendly endeavors: He produces a daily two-minute segment for All Daf, the OU’s daf yomi site, in which he chooses something from the day’s daf — a person, a place, an animal, a form of labor — and provides the background.

I first encountered Dr. Abramson when my son recommended listening to his YouTube videos on Jewish history, which he initially began in order to raise money for Touro College scholarships. His discourses are fascinating and erudite, much in the manner of Rabbi Berel Wein, one of his mentors and role models. Who knew that the first reference to Jews in Spain dates all the way back to the early second century, or that the Jews seemed to get along well with their Visigoth rulers in the early centuries of their dominion? The jokes that accompany many of his lectures, including recurring gibes about Jewish migrations following the Chinese restaurants, make them all the more entertaining; but it’s Dr. Abramson’s affable, good-humored, yet thoughtfully balanced approach to his subjects that have made him so popular.