New Society: Summer at Shalem

July 2007 | Tammuz 5767

Welcome to the July 2007 edition of Shalem E-News. We encourage you to contact us at e-news@shalem.org.il with the email addresses of friends and colleagues who you think would like to receive the Shalem E-Newsletter. We'll send them a copy directly. If at any time you would like to unsubscribe from the E-News list, please follow the instructions below for removal. We'll be back in September.

Defending Democracy: The President, Dissidents Debate in Prague  
The Conference on Democracy and Security organized by the Shalem Center's Natan Sharansky, together with former Czech President Vaclav Havel and former President of Spain Jose Maria Aznar took place in Prague on June 5-6. Held in the presence of President of the United States George W. Bush, the gathering drew dissidents and activists representing Bolivia, China, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, former Eastern bloc countries, as well as the Palestinian Authority. The result? The Prague Charter, adopted by the organizers and the dissidents who took part, encouraging governments in the free world to affirm the fight for democracy in the face of tyranny. The personal heroism of many of those present, reflected U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman, showed that "a single human face can tear down the faceless inhumanity of an entire regime." To read more about the international struggle for political freedom and human rights, click here.

Michael Oren: A Briefing at the White House
More than one hundred senior White House staffers were on hand to hear Shalem Senior Fellow Michael Oren lecture based on his best selling Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present (Norton, 2007). During a recent trip to Washington D.C. Oren was invited to Pennsylvania Avenue where he took questions from the audience on prospects for democratization and state-making in the Middle East, as well as lessons learned from America's past involvement in the region for the conduct of the war in Iraq. Oren's visit ended with a private meeting with Vice President Cheney. An expert on the diplomatic and military history of the Middle East, Oren has written extensively for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The New Republic. To read more about Michael Oren, click here.

Cream of the Crop: on Shalem's Summer Interns 
Students from among North America's most prestigious universities competed vigorously for thirteen places in Shalem's summer intern program. The successful participants include students from Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Columbia universities, UC Berkeley, University of Chicago, Barnard, Wellesley, Rutgers and New York University. During their intense six-week program, these distinguished students will work closely with Shalem fellows and faculty on various departmental projects, attend weekly seminars taught by Shalem scholars, and take guided trips around Israel. Pursuing undergraduate degrees in fields such as economics, Middle East studies, math, philosophy and religion, these are the editors of university journals, organizers of political and social action groups and events on campus, published writers, ranking scholars and we believe, potentially powerful Jewish leaders of the future. To learn more about the internship program, click here.

New Sensation: Harvard's New Society Debuts on Campus
3500 copies of New Society, a journal run in conjunction with Azure magazine's Student Journals Project, were quickly snapped up by eager Harvard students only hours after its launch this past month. Editor-in-Chief Julia Bertelsmann says she "aims to redefine the way in which students encounter Israel and the Middle East, at Harvard and throughout the academic world." New Society was conceived in December 2006 when Bertelsmann visited the Shalem Center in Jerusalem with the Harvard Hillel Israel Leadership Initiative. She returns to the Center this summer as an intern, selected from a remarkable group of applicants. (See above for more on the 2007 Summer Internship program.) Extensive coverage in the Harvard Crimson inspired inquiries from many students who want to become involved in the new initiative. To read select Articles from Harvard's New Society, click here.

Back to the Land: Shalem Scholar Unearths Earliest Aliyah
In 1833, Polish newspapers reported on the bewildering phenomenon of Jews leaving that country by the thousands. Their destination? Palestine. Passport authorities in 1832 issued documents permitting travel from Minsk to the Holy Land to the 'Rivlin family' and in 1830, the Jews of Tzfat sent a message to the Yemen, imploring Jewish leaders there to return to Israel. These previously unknown and remarkable facts discovered during Shalem Senior Fellow Arie Morgenstern's extensive archival research reveal a large-scale Jewish migration to Israel that took place before what is known as the First Aliyah in 1881. The Return to Jerusalem (Shalem Press, 2006, Hebrew) a Shalem project from conception, through research and writing, and finally publication, shatters the prevailing myth that Zionism is a late 19th century movement fashioned after other nationalist groups of that time. To mark the book's publication, Morgenstern participated in a well-attended panel alongside Shalem Senior Fellow Joshua Schwartz and Hebrew University Professor Yehuda Liebes during Israel's recent Book Week. For more information from Shalem Press, click here.

Former Jewish Agency Head Avrum Burg: "I am Beyond Israeli"
After leading Israel and the Jewish people as chairman of the Jewish Agency and Speaker of the Knesset, Avrum Burg's recent and pointed condemnation of the Jewish state and Zionism provoked wide discussion in Israel. In a June 7 interview published in Ha'aretz, Burg compares Israel with Germany before the rise of the Nazis, denounces the Law of Return as an "apologetic law - the mirror image of Hitler," and calls the idea of a Jewish state "the key to its end." Once a rising star here - his father, Yosef Burg was the veteran head of the National Religious Party - he was a founder of Peace Now and a leader within the Labor Party. He rose through the ranks to hold two of the most important positions leading Israel and the Jewish people. Now, reports journalist Ari Shavit, he advises that every Israeli who can get a foreign passport should do so.  Burg himself has taken French citizenship. To read the full text of his lengthy conversation with Shavit, click here.

Leading U.S. Jurist Richard Posner Critiques Former Israeli High Court President Aharon Barak
U.S. Appeals Court Judge and University of Chicago Law School lecturer, Richard Posner's April 23 review of Aharon Barak's The Judge in a Democracy (Princeton University Press, 2006) is an entertaining read. Highlighting countless examples of Barak's "aggressive" conception of judicial authority, Posner accuses Barak of having created a degree of judicial power undreamed of even by America's most venturous courts. The essay was translated into Hebrew in Yediot Aharonot. To read the full text of Posner's review, click here.

An Israeli Defeat in Sderot?
Is the IDF in a military deadlock in Sderot? In one of the last Articles written before his death on June 19, prominent Israeli journalist Ze'ev Schiff certainly thinks so. Published in the June 8 issue of Ha'aretz, Schiff invokes the magnitude of Israel's loss during the 1948 War of Independence to illustrate its current "defeat" in Sderot. Normal life has been brought to a halt, writes Schiff, pointing to the government's failure to defend the bombarded city as an indication of its inability to lead the nation in a major military confrontation. To read the full article, click here.

The West at War: Lt. Gen (Res.) Moshe Ya'alon Calls for the Rediscovery of Israel's Jewish and Zionist values
At a Jerusalem conference on government and leadership on June 11, Shalem Distinguished Fellow Lt. Gen. (Res.) Moshe Ya'alon cautioned Israel's top policy-makers that an improved educational system that gives Israeli youth a "vision based on Jewish-Zionist values" is the most effective way to cure the State's current crises. "Without these values," he said, the Jewish people "will disintegrate." A bloody civil war in Gaza, a nuclear Iran, Hizbollah in the north and rampant global terrorism may be existential threats to Israel, Ya'alon cautioned, but the greatest challenge comes from the "dearth of leadership and its guiding principles." Major educational reforms, he believes, will not only empower the general public but also facilitate a change in Israel's political culture. To read the full text of Ya'alon's speech, click here.

Daniel Polisar: Israel's Unusual Strength
Shalem Center President Daniel Polisar recently addressed the Manhattan Seminar on the challenges inherent in guiding a strong Israeli society with a leadership recently identified in the Winograd Commission's report as full of "flaws and failures." Polisar noted the plentiful good, reflective of the enormous strength of Israeli society: palpable solidarity during the Second Lebanon War and the 120 percent response of IDF reservists to that crisis, and even the appointment of the Winograd Commission itself he deemed a sign of health. Yet, despite these strengths, he added, "a surge in corruption and delinquency at the upper echelons of Israel's government demands institutional reform. A new academia" he proposes, "committed to building a culture that values patriotism and education, will maintain its vision and see its shortcomings." 

Shalem Scholars In Close-Up: R. Yitzhak Lifshitz on the Foundations of a Jewish Economic Theory 
Having joined the Institute for Philosophy, Political Theory and Religion nine years ago, Rabbi Yosef Yitzhak Lifshitz is one of Shalem's longest-standing senior fellows. A distinguished expert in Talmud, Jewish law, history and political theory, he is the author of The Secret of Shabbat (Sadnat Enosh, 1999), which examines the dynamic nature of creation as recounted in Genesis, as well as several Hebrew and English-language Articles exploring Judaism and socialism. Born in Switzerland, Rabbi Lifshitz moved to Israel with his family at age six. He began teaching Talmud at the Hevron Yeshiva at the age of twenty, and continues to teach both at Shalem and the Rabbi Yitzchak Yechiel yeshiva he and his father established in 1987. Rabbi Lifshitz holds an M.A. in Jewish History from Touro College, and received his Ph.D. in Jewish Thought from Tel Aviv University. He is currently working on defining the Jewish idea in welfare and property rights. For more information about Rabbi Yitzhak Lifshitz and to read a selection of his English Articles, click here.

Open Borders, Closed Minds? Immigration and the Israelites
Is an open border immigration policy an ethical one? The universality of human dignity and the biblical call for proper treatment of the stranger appears to lead directly to a utopian vision of borderless states. Yet, argues former Shalem Associate Fellow Joshua Berman, might the nation-state as a bounded community better nurture the relationships of affinity and moral loyalty that maintain the structures so attractive to immigrants in the first place? Can theology provide any insight into globalization's challenges? Berman addresses these issues at the Australia and New Zealand Association of Theological Schools' 2007 conference, in Canberra, July 8-12. He looks at how a narrative in Joshua 2 - the account of Rahab and the two spies - offers a valuable framework to explore how guidelines can be formulated to admit new members into the bounded community. To read more of Berman's biblical scholarship, click here.

Chicago Students Write On for Israel
On June 19, the Shalem Center hosted 25 young Jewish leaders from Chicago high schools participating in the Write On For Israel's 2007 Mission. This program, founded by the New York Jewish Week's editor and publisher Gary Rosenblatt, is an intensive ten day trip that encourages students to think more deeply about Israel, Zionism and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, empowering them to become effective advocates through writing, broadcasting and public speaking. Responding to the issues raised by participants in a lively Q & A session, Shalem Senior Fellow Martin Kramer shared his expert analysis of the current situation in Gaza, Jordan's potential interest in the West Bank, and the possibility of a three-state solution. For more Jerusalem events, click here.

Six Days of War Sweeps Israel's Bookstores
Window shoppers in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and across Israel have been treated to giant displays of the Hebrew edition of Michael Oren's Six Days of War at their local bookstore. The recent publication of the book by the Shalem Press in partnership with Zmora Bitan has received extensive coverage, with Michael Oren appearing on the highest rated news and current affairs shows on television and radio. More than 25 interviews with him have appeared in print. Stores are reordering third printings of the book, and it looks set to become the definitive account of the war in Hebrew, much as it has already become in English. To read more about the Shalem Press' remarkable campaign in Israel, click here.

Forever Engaged, Never Married, to the Land Of Israel
Summer 2007's edition of Azure is steamy reading. Assaf Inbari's "Forever Engaged, Never Married, to the Land Of Israel" likens Diaspora Jewry to the unrequited lover yearning for the Land of Israel, here idealized as the undemanding, boundless object of his affection. It is precisely this yearning, writes Inbari that fueled the success of the Zionist dream. He wonders aloud if the return of the Jewish people to Israel shatters this dynamic - as, he claims, the breaking of the glass under the chuppah (or wedding canopy) marks a shattering of sorts. An acclaimed essayist and literary critic, Inbari explores the complex relationship of the Jews and their homeland - a relationship defined by a tension between yearning and fulfillment. Published extensively in Israeli journals and newspapers and well-known and respected among the Hebrew-speaking public, Inbari, one of Shalem's first three fellows, is just now being introduced to English audiences, as well. To read the full text of Inbari's piece, click here.

Shalem Graduate Fellow, 23, Published in L.A. Times
Shalem graduate fellow Jacob Savage's op-ed advocating a "three-state solution" to the Israeli-Arab conflict was published June 20 in the Los Angeles Times. Savage, who just completed a year of intensive studies at the Center in Jerusalem, argues that the cultural distinctions between Gaza and the West Bank are divisive enough to warrant a bifurcated Palestine. "Separating Gaza from the West Bank," Savage contends, "makes more historical sense than forming a unified Palestinian nation." The publication of the article, originally written for Senior Fellow Martin Kramer's Shalem course "Reading the Map of the Middle East," is a triumph for Savage as well as an indication of the range of interests that mark Shalem's graduate and post-doctorate fellows. To read the opinion editorial by Savage and to learn more about the graduate and post-doctorate fellowship program, click here.

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.tchelet.org.il
Hebraic Political Studies: www.hpstudies.org
Michael Oren: www.michaeloren.com
IDF Lt. Gen.(Res.) Moshe Yaalon: www.mosheyaalon.com

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