Sholomo Levy, assistant professor of history at NCC, is one of the research editors and contributors to the most recent edition of The African American National Biography, released by Oxford University Press in February, Black History Month 2008. The epic, 8-volume work contains 4,100 biographies by eminent scholars. Levy authored 45 of these, including a biography of his father, Levi Ben Levy , an ordained rabbi who founded the Beth Shalom E.H. Congregation in New York City ; Father Divine; Maya Angelou; Tiger Woods; Sammy Davis , JR. ; B.B. King; author Jean Toomer and others.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Evelyn Higginbotham, both of Harvard University, edited the collection, a joint project of the W.E.B. Dubois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University and Oxford University Press.

The African American National Biography is the largest scholarly reference project on African American lives ever undertaken, including a wide range of biographical subjects, from highly famous individuals to those less widely known, from 1529 to the present. The aim of the work is to illuminate the abiding influence of African Americans on the life of this nation through the immediacy of personal experience.

NCC’s Paul and Harriett Mack Library is acquiring The African American National Biography for its collection.

Levy joined the NCC faculty in 2005. Prior to his appointment at NCC, he taught at Medger Evers College of the City of New York and Long Island University. He was also assistant director of minority affairs at Columbia University.

He earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Middlebury College, a master’s degree in African American history from Yale University and a master’s of philosophy degree in history from Columbia University.

An ordained rabbi, Levy leads the Beth Elohim Congregation in St. Albans, New York. He is also president of the Israelite Board of Rabbis, which prepares rabbis for service in black communities throughout the United States and the Caribbean.