Shalem Fellow Awarded National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship

January 2010 | Tevet 5770

Winter greetings from Jerusalem. In this issue of E-News, you’ll find details of a National Endowment for the Humanities grant to Shalem visiting fellow Jacob Wright, news of great books just published in translation by Shalem Press, and an announcement of the upcoming Zalman C Bernstein Annual Memorial Lecture.

In Essential Reading this month, we bring you three stories that reflect efforts in different parts of the world to effect change at the highest levels by establishing pioneering new colleges that provide a liberal arts education. Read below for stories of transformational colleges launched in Ghana, Pakistan, and California.  

The Shalem Center is building Israel's first liberal arts college, preparing generations of students for a lifetime of learning, service, and leadership.

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Shalem Fellow Jacob Wright Awarded National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship
Jacob L. Wright, Assistant Professor of Hebrew Bible at Emory University, has been notified by James A. Leach, Chairman of the US National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), that he has been awarded a prestigious NEH Faculty Fellowship. With more than 1300 applications, the NEH is one of the most selective fellowships for American academics. The fellowship will support Wright as he carries out research on the role of war as a catalyst for change in ancient Israelite society. As a visiting fellow at Shalem during the 2009-2010 academic year, Wright is completing a book for Oxford University Press on war commemoration and national identity in ancient Israel and early Jewish history. Click here to read more about Jacob Wright.

Eva Brann, Renowned Philosopher and Educator, to Deliver Annual Zalman C. Bernstein Lecture
Eva Brann, a 2005 recipient of the National Humanities Medal, has been selected to deliver the Shalem Center's annual Zalman C. Bernstein Memorial Lecture in Jewish Political Thought. The lecture will be held at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem on Wednesday evening, January 6, 2010; a reception begins at 6:30 p.m. and the lecture starts at 7:00 p.m. Brann is a former dean (1990-1997) and the longest-serving faculty member (1957-present) at St. John's College, Annapolis, which offers the best-known great books program in the United States. She will speak on “The Role of Higher Education in a Young, Jewish Republic.” If you wish to attend this year’s ZCB Lecture, please RSVP to kated@shalem.org.il or call 02-560-5544 by Sunday, January 3. To read the Dedication to Brann compiled by St. John’s College to mark her fiftieth year there, Click here.

Shalem Founder Hazony to Launch ‘Jerusalem Letters’ This Month
Yoram Hazony, founder and provost of the Shalem Center, will be launching Jerusalem Letters, a series of email dispatches on philosophy, Judaism, Israel, and higher education, on January 15. Hazony earned a reputation as an innovative and provocative thinker for his books, The Jewish State: The Struggle for Israel’s Soul and The Dawn: Political Teachings of the Book of Esther; as well as for his essays and Articles in The New York Times, The New Republic, Commentary, and Azure. His next book is The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture: An Introduction. Jerusalem Letters, Hazony’s first regular appearance on the web, will comment on new books and old ones, important trends in academic research and public life, and an occasional film too. “These dispatches are a response to the growing demand for serious engagement between things Jewish and the world of ideas, especially among scholars, students, and educated lay people,” says Hazony. “But I’ll try to keep the scope broad. This isn’t for specialists. It isn’t just for Jews, either. It’s for people looking to take part in a broader conversation.” Click here to subscribe to Jerusalem Letters.

Shalem Fellow David Gelernter’s Judaism, A Way of Being, Receives Critical Acclaim
David Gelernter’s Judaism, A Way of Being, which was published in mid-2009, has attracted widespread critical attention. Gelernter, a professor of computer science at Yale University, did much of the research and writing on this book when he was a Shalem senior fellow in Jewish Thought (2005-2006). Cynthia Ozick has called it "a Song of Songs for the contemporary temperament" and American literary theorist Stanley Fish writes, “Gelernter’s prose is at once plain in its patient unraveling of knotty problems and rhapsodic in its celebration of what it knows it cannot present.” The book celebrates three thousand years of Jewish ideas and their power to effect civilizational change. Click here to read The Weekly Standard’s review of the book.

Sir Martin Gilbert in Azure: Lawrence of Arabia, Lawrence of Judea
For generations of British Arabists, T.E. Lawrence remains a symbol of British understanding of and support for the Arab cause. Virtually unknown, however, is his support for Jewish national aspirations in the same era. In an article in the current issue of Azure, Sir Martin Gilbert, Winston Churchill’s official biographer, writes that Lawrence marveled at the "skill and capital" of the Jews, and hoped that the settlement of Palestine would be done in a way that would be “beneficial to the Arabs….” T.E. Lawrence died at the age of only forty-seven, writes Gilbert. “The accomplishments of his short life have assured his place in the pantheon of modern Arab history. Perhaps it is now time that modern Jewish history paid him homage as well.” Click here to read the article.

In Ghana: Former Microsoft Exec Explains How A Liberal Arts Education is Critical to Forming Leaders
After working at Microsoft for almost a decade, Patrick Awuah returned home to Ghana and cofounded Ashesi University, a small liberal arts college that aims to educate Africa's next generation. Founded in 2002, Ashesi University is already charting a new course in African education, with its commitment to educating young people in critical thinking and ethical service, values Awuah believes are crucial for the nation-building that lies ahead there. Smart, young and idealistic, Awuah left Ghana as a teenager to attend Swarthmore College in the United States. Students in Ghana, he said, “had a stronger sense of entitlement than a sense of responsibility.” He set out to change that. To watch his inspiring TED talk about the college, click here.

In Pakistan: “You Can’t Build a Country if you’re not Thinking Beyond Your Own Lifetime”
In Pakistan, private philanthropy has invested in higher education to build an elite institution that in just over twenty years has been dubbed the “Harvard University” of the country. The Lahore University of Management and Sciences was founded by renowned businessman Syed Babar Ali to counter a leadership crisis that beset that state. “For Mr. Ali,” reports The New York Times in the article linked below, “education was the country’s most urgent need, and in 1986 he helped create L.U.M.S. Founded as a business school, it later added a rigorous liberal arts program, one of the strongest in Pakistan.” Click here to read more about the school Mr. Ali hopes will transform leadership in his country.

In California: How to Start a Liberal Arts College
In North San Diego County, California, philosophy professor Tim Mosteller is part of a group of people who’ve recently formed a small, classical “great books” college, and are recruiting students for their first class in the fall of 2010. In this article, Prof. Mosteller sets out the reasons he and his colleagues are building San Elijo College, and how they are going about it. He points to the deficiencies in his own education and sets out the “ideal” envisaged at San Elijo: “a unified curriculum incorporating the great books… open to all. I envisioned a small learning community of master scholars and student apprentices focused on the great works of Western civilization.” Click here to read more.

Chanukah 5770: A Real Miracle or the Doing of Extraordinary People?
In his December 10 Jerusalem Post column, Shalem senior vice president Daniel Gordis shares a moving story of “unspoken and inexplicable bonds.” It is the story of two mothers and two sons, and the anniversary of Operation Cast Lead in which Dalia Emanuelof lost her son Dvir. As Gordis writes, “It is the quintessential Jewish story... It is a story of shared destinies… and as is true of this little country we call home, it's often impossible to know which part of the story is the real miracle, and which is the doing of extraordinary people." Click here to read Gordis’ column.

Suzanne Last Stone Joins Shalem as a Visiting Fellow
Suzanne Last Stone, Professor of Law at Cardozo School of Law and Director of Yeshiva University’s Center for Jewish Law and Contemporary Civilization, has just completed a semester as a visiting fellow at the Shalem Center. A series of essays she has written, tentatively entitled Divine Subjection, examines the biblical and rabbinic subjection of supra-rational phenomena, such as prophecy, to the lens of law and rational inquiry. On December 9, she addressed the Shalem academic community on the topic “Law Without Nation: The Contemporary Legal Debate and the Ongoing Jewish Halakhic Discussion”. Stone is a graduate of Princeton University and Columbia University Law School. Click here to read her full biography.

Shalem Press Publishes Karl Popper’s The Poverty of Historicism in Hebrew
Described by author Arthur Koestler in 1957 as “probably the only book published this year which will outlive this century,” Karl Popper's The Poverty of Historicism is a spirited argument against belief in the “laws” of history, social development, and progress—a belief that is still popular today, in spite of its disastrous consequences in the 20^th century. Shalem Press has just released the first-ever publication of the book in Hebrew as part of the Leviathan Series of Western classics being translated for use at Shalem College and other universities and colleges in Israel. Popper was Professor of Logic and Scientific Method at the London School of Economics. Among his other significant works are The Open Society and its Enemies (published in Hebrew by Shalem Press in 2003). Click here to read more about The Poverty of Historicism.

Adelson Institute’s Uriya Shavit Publishes New Book on European Muslims
Uriya Shavit, Director of Programs in Democracy at the Adelson Institute of Strategic Studies at the Shalem Center, has published The New Imagined Community (Sussex Academic Press), which explores how senior Arab religious scholars attempt to construct the identity of Muslims in Europe. Based on hundreds of books and religious edicts, many of them analysed for the first time, Shavit illustrates how these religious scholars have established a theory that regards Muslim immigrants as the vanguard of a global Muslim nation and tasked them with establishing parallel societies, converting Christians, and awaiting the fall of the declining Western civilization. Click here to learn more about the book.

Shalem College President Designate Kramer Lectures at Columbia
Martin Kramer, President Designate of Shalem College, lectured in November at Columbia University on "How Not to Fix the Mid East." His remarks were subsequently published in the Middle East Papers series of Middle East Strategy at Harvard University. Kramer argues that the Obama administration runs the risk of thwarting its own aims by seeming reluctant to uphold American primacy in the region. To download the paper, click here. In a separate posting on his Sandbox blog, Kramer analyzes one of the Goldstone Report's claims about economic damage to Gaza, and concludes: "The report isn't just biased. It's shoddy.” Click here to read Kramer’s analysis.

Eliezer Berkovits’ God, Man and History Launched in Hebrew
On December 9, Shalem Press held a kick-off event in Jerusalem to celebrate the publication in Hebrew of God, Man and History by the late Jewish philosopher, Eliezer Berkovits (1908-1992). A new edition of the English-language version of the book, published by Shalem Press in 2004, has helped to reintroduce to contemporary readers the philosophy and theology of one of the twentieth century's most important Jewish thinkers. At the event, Menachem Kellner, professor of Jewish thought at the University of Haifa and chairman designate of the Shalem College Department of Philosophy, Political Theory, and Religion, discussed the book with Professor Emeritus Shalom Rosenberg of the Hebrew University department of Jewish Thought. Click here to read more about Berkovits’ book.

Azure Essay on Morality of Gaza War Debated in Jerusalem
Azure: Ideas for the Jewish Nation, in cooperation with Yakar’s Center for Social Concern in Jerusalem held a public event on December 6 to discuss Asa Kasher’s recent Azure article, “Operation Cast Lead and the Ethics of Just War.” The evening, entitled “Was the War Against Hamas Morally Justified?” attracted several dozen people. Kasher is professor emeritus of professional ethics and philosophy of practice at Tel Aviv University. A lengthy and important debate between Kasher and veteran peace activist Uri Avnery has taken place in the letters pages of the journal. Click here to read the correspondence.

Adelson Institute’s David Keyes in the Wall Street Journal
David Keyes, director of cyberdissidents.org and the coordinator for democracy programs at the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies at the Shalem Center, published an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal on December 1, 2009 in which he reports on draconian sentences recently passed against Iranian bloggers as part of the regime’s campaign to drown dissent. He notes that while President Ahmedinajad himself has a blog, “on Nov. 18, two Iranian Internet activists, Ali Behzadian Nejad and Omid Lavassani, were sentenced to six years in prison. Their crimes? Mr. Lavassani had the audacity to design a web site for the leading opposition figure Mir Hossein Mousavi. Mr. Nejad is being jailed for ‘published comments’ written by others on his blog, and ‘propaganda against the system.’” Click here to read the op-ed.

Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Philosopher and Scholar of Jewish History
The Shalem Press and the Shalem Center's board and management mourn the loss of Yosef H. Yerushalmi, z’l. Yerushalmi was the author, among other books, of Freud’s Moses: Judaism Terminable and Interminable, which was published in Hebrew translation in 2006 by Shalem Press. The book was awarded the 1992 National Jewish Book Award in the category of Jewish Thought and was hailed by Irving Howe as “a dazzlingly brilliant book…. This book is an extraordinary achievement, one that will be discussed and debated for many years." Click here to read The New York Times obituary for Yerushalmi.

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
Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies: www.adelsoninstitute.org.il
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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