Beker Foundation Makes $1 Million Gift to Shalem College

March 4, 2010 | 18 Adar 5770

Post Purim greetings from the Shalem Center. In this issue of E-News, you’ll find news of a new gift of one million dollars to help launch Shalem College, which is the first contribution that has been made as part of matching the $5 million dollar challenge grant announced last week. In addition, there are details of two Shalem scholars appointed to prestigious positions and exclusive content for E-News readers from the newly launched Jewish Review of Books.

In “Essential Reading” this month, we bring you two articles outlining some initial steps aimed at broadening the scope of study at Israel’s public universities, as well as news on the spread of liberal arts colleges to England.  

The Shalem Center is building Israel's first liberal arts college, preparing generations of students for a lifetime of learning, service, and leadership. We hope you find E-News useful and informative, and encourage you to share it with your friends, family, and colleagues. If you’d like us to send them a copy directly, simply email us their names and email addresses at e-news@shalem.org.il. If for any reason you’d like to unsubscribe, please follow the instructions at the bottom of this email.

$5 Million Lead Gift for Shalem College Matched by New $1M Donation from Beker Foundation
Last week, the Shalem Center announced a $5M dollar challenge grant opportunity from The Conduit Foundation, which will be matching gifts of $1 million or more that are earmarked for helping to launch Shalem College. This week, we are pleased to announce the first such matching gift, a $1M dollar donation from the Beker Foundation, a New York based private foundation with a longstanding commitment to funding education, medicine, and community organizations.  Harvey and Jayne Beker, trustees of the Beker Foundation, told E-News, “We are very impressed with Shalem College's vision and with the quality of Israeli leaders and intellectuals they have attracted to their work.  We believe this is a crucially important effort, not only because of the College's potential to develop future leaders for Israel, but also because we believe the state of Israel will benefit tremendously from a new and invigorated model of higher education.” Click here to read more on the JTA website where news of the gift is featured:

Israel’s Council for Higher Education Appoints Shalem Center’s Ofir Haivry as a Member
Shalem Associate Fellow Ofir Haivry has been appointed by the Council for Higher Education as one of its members. The Council for Higher Education is the supreme Israeli body in all matters pertaining to academic studies, institutions and degrees, and it consists principally of scholars representing Israel’s leading academic institutions. Haivry, who is one of the founders of Shalem, told E-News: “I was selected by the Education Ministry because of my background in social and political thought and my past involvement in public debates about the vital role of the humanities in the future of Israeli education. In particular, my appointment stems from my interest in liberal education, a field that does not as yet exist in Israel. Due to the widely perceived crisis in the humanities in Israel, and the search for new ideas and approaches, the Appointments Committee and the Education Minister apparently felt that my membership could contribute new perspectives to the council's deliberations about those issues.” Click here to read more about the composition of the Council and its mandate:

Shalem Center Provost Yoram Hazony Appointed to Templeton Foundation’s International Advisory Board 
The Pennsylvania based John Templeton Foundation has appointed Shalem Center provost Yoram Hazony to their board of advisors. The Foundation’s mission is “to serve as a philanthropic catalyst for discovery in areas engaging life’s biggest questions. These questions range from explorations into the laws of nature and the universe to questions on the nature of love, gratitude, forgiveness, and creativity.” Vice President for Philosophy and Theology Michael Murray told E-News: “The Foundation is very pleased to have Yoram Hazony join our International Board of Advisors. Dr. Hazony is a vibrant and refreshing voice in both the Jewish academic community and the wider public sphere. Through his leadership at the Shalem Center, he has played an instrumental role in fostering and promoting scholarship that advances our understanding of Judaism and brings Jewish thought into a rich dialogue with contemporary thought, particularly in the domains of philosophy and theology. We are grateful for his willingness to share his expertise and insight with us in the coming years.” Click here to read more about the Board of Advisors:

Shalem Press Publishes First English-language Edition of The Hebrew Republic by Carlo Sigonio
The Hebrew Republic by Carlo Sigonio, first published in Latin in Bologna, Italy in 1582, was one of the pioneering works dedicated to examining the religious and political institutions of the ancient Hebrew state. It enjoyed great popularity and profoundly influenced such thinkers as Grotius, Althusius, and Bodin. This work has never been available in English, but has now been translated for the first time and published by Shalem Press.  Click here to read more about the book, including a special purchase offer valid until April 30. 

Israel’s Universities Take Small Steps to Widen Education; “Students Don't Even Know What They Don't Know,” Officials Say
Israeli Council for Higher Education officials are spearheading a new initiative at Israel’s public universities to “afford broader thought and a broader education.” According to the Israeli daily Ha'aretz the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has, during the current academic year, introduced a requirement that all students take a small number of courses outside of their major, and the country's other colleges and universities will follow suit next year. “It's hard to measure the damage caused by a narrow education, but it definitely exists,” said Prof. Manuel Trajtenberg, chairman of the Planning and Budget Committee of the Council for Higher Education in Israel. Click here to read the article.

“Horses Wearing Blinders”; Haaretz Op-Ed Backs Education Changes
In a strongly worded op-ed in Haaretz, published after the proposed changes outlined above were announced, Prof. Na’ama Sheffi, head of the Communications School at Sapir College in the Negev, says “More than 10 years late, the people in charge of higher education have remembered to tackle the real problem. Not research budgets, not tuition fees, not lecturers' salaries - but education itself.” She continues, “the narrow focus that breaks academic occupations into tiny squares has made us into horses wearing blinders, our vision has become so narrow.” Click here to read the article.

New Private College in England to Put Emphasis on High-Quality Teaching for Undergraduates
A group of leading independent schools in the United Kingdom are studying plans to set up an elite private university for families frustrated by the quality of education at mainstream institutions. The university would be modeled on American liberal arts colleges, which concentrate on providing high-quality teaching for undergraduates, reports The Times (of London). Click here to read the article. 

E-News Readers! Exclusive Access to Subscriber-Only Content In New Jewish Review of Books
The Jewish Review of Books is a new quarterly publication (in print and on the web) for serious readers with Jewish interests. Leading writers and scholars are committed to the ideal of the thoughtful essay that illuminates as it entertains. “We aspire to offer something different: a lively magazine of ideas and argument, criticism and commentary, written especially for intelligent men and women who believe, as I do, that Jewish subjects are worthy of attention that is serious, accessible, and occasionally even playful,” writes editor Abraham Socher. The Jewish Review of Books has offered E-News readers exclusive access to a subscriber-only book review by Shalem College Philosophy Chair and noted scholar of Jewish thought Menachem Kellner. Click here to read “God and Idolatry.”  

Senior Fellow Ze’ev Maghen: “Why (and How to) Study Islam.”
On February 10, senior fellow Ze’ev Maghen addressed the Shalem academic community on the necessity of seeking a deeper understanding of the religion that increasingly influences and even guides the lives of hundreds of millions of people in countries surrounding the state of Israel.  He argued that “seeking a deeper understanding” means the opposite of what is generally assumed: not an attempt to penetrate beyond the outer husk of ritual, law and narrative to the inner kernel of theology, morality and metaphysics, but rather an attempt to burrow upward and outward from the universal ideas that comprise the kernel – belief in God, social justice, reward and punishment, and other notions with which we are all familiar – into the particular husk that makes Islam sui generis.  Maghen then proceeded to offer a taste of some of the unique institutions and predilections that set Islam off from all other religions, including naskh or “abrogation,” in the context of which Allah regularly changes His mind in response to human needs, and muzaha, the pervasive presence of humor in the Muslim classical texts. Click here to read more about Ze’ev Maghen. 

Kellner, Shalem College Philosophy Chair, Lectures on Maimonides
Menachem Kellner, professor of Jewish thought at Haifa University and chairman-designate of Shalem College's Department of Philosophy, Political Theory and Religion (PPR), delivered his inaugural lecture Shalem on Wednesday, February 24 on the topic “Haredi Appropriations of Maimonides in the Twentieth Century.” Kellner illustrated for the assembled faculty the way in which Maimonides, often treated in academia as a champion of philosophy and universalism, is equally embraced by haredi (“ultra-Orthodox”) Jewry, by treating the views of R. Elhanan Wasserman, a leading haredi thinker murdered by the Nazis. Click here to read “Faith, Science and Orthodoxy,” Kellner’s essay from Conversations, the journal of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals.

Defending Identity; Former Shalem Distinguished Fellow Sharansky Outlines A New Direction for the Jewish Agency
At the Board of Governors meeting of the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem at the end of February, agency chairman Natan Sharansky, who has been at the helm of the organization since June, laid out a new focus for its mission. From 2006 to 2009, Sharansky was Institute Chairman and distinguished fellow at the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies at the Shalem Center. In his book, Defending Identity: Its Indispensable Role in Protecting Democracy, written during his time at Shalem, Sharansky defined identity as “a sense of life beyond the physical and material, beyond mere personal existence. It is the sense of a common world that stretches before and beyond the self, of belonging to something greater than the self, that gives strength not only to community but to the individual as well.”  The Jewish Agency must be “responsible for building the Jewish people into a tightly connected family that has the feeling of a [shared] Jewish identity.” Sharansky told The Jerusalem Post, summarizing his view of that new mission. “It will become an organization with a unique set of programs, people and ideas working to strengthen Jewish identity – the connection of individuals to communities, communities to Israel, and Israelis to their Jewish roots.” Click here to read the Jerusalem Post article.

Ma’ariv Columnist: the Shalem Center “One of the Most Important Research Institutes in Israel”  
In an article published in the weekend section of the Ma’ariv newspaper on January 29, Ben-Dror Yemini, a prominent Israeli journalist, wrote of Shalem that it is “one of the most important research institutes in Israel. To the credit of this institute,” he wrote, “there are publications, research articles, and a high-quality journal, Azure, that represent a sane dialogue. As opposed to the plethora of journals and research institutes that have turned into breeding grounds for hatred of Israel, here is an institute which enables research and intellectual dialogue without a prior commitment to the radical left.” Click here to read a selection of Yemini’s articles in English.

“Through This Program…I’ve Discovered a World Filled with Richness and Wisdom” - Attracts National Attention
The Israeli weekly newspaper Gal Geffen, which reaches more than one million readers in areas from Modi'in to Rishon Le’Tzion, covered the Shalem Center's Rimon Program for high school students in its issue dated January 28. “This program expanded my horizons and shattered a number of stigmas,” says Eyal Pasternak, an eleventh grade participant. “Take, for instance, how I had always thought of rabbinic teachings as something archaic and irrelevant to today's world.  Through this program, I’ve discovered in them a world filled with richness and wisdom.  I agree with Dr. Ido Hevroni, one of the directors of the program, who said that ethical issues are important and relevant to the future of Israel no less than are mathematical formulas and the elements of the periodic table.” Click here to read a translation of the article in full.

The following web addresses provide an easy to access directory of all Shalem Center sites:
The Shalem Center: www.shalemcenter.com
Azure: www.azure.org.il
Techelet: www.techelet.org.il
Hebraic Political Studies: www.hpstudies.org
The undergraduate program: www.shalemstudents.org
Martin Kramer: www.martinkramer.org
Daniel Gordis: www.danielgordis.org

We want to hear from you. Please send comments and questions to e-news@shalem.org.il. 
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