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Gordis to take leading role in establishing Shalem College
September 2007 | Tishrei 5768
As Rosh Hashanah draws near, Shalem is looking back on a year of achievements--the creation of the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies at the Shalem Center under Natan Sharansky's leadership, Michael Oren's best-selling Power, Faith and Fantasy, and the completion of our second full year of undergraduate and graduate student programming--and we're looking forward to a 5768 filled with more growth, accomplishments and learning. All of us at the Shalem Center wish you and yours a year of health, happiness, prosperity, and peace. Shana tova!
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Author, Scholar Daniel Gordis to take leading role in establishing Shalem College
Daniel Gordis, a leading Jewish educator and author of half a dozen books about Judaism and Israel, is joining the Shalem Center as Senior Vice President and Senior Fellow in the Institute for Zionist History and Thought. Gordis will take a leading role in the efforts to establish undergraduate and graduate degree-granting programs under the Center's auspices. Gordis was the founding dean of the Ziegler Rabbinical School at the University of Judaism. In recent years, he has been Vice President of the Mandel Foundation-Israel and Director of the Mandel Leadership Institute in Jerusalem. He holds a PhD from the University of Southern California and rabbinic ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary.
To read more about Dr. Daniel Gordis, click here.
Scheindlin of Peace Now, Shoah Foundation joins Shalem as VP of Development
Ahavia Scheindlin, whose career in the Jewish world includes six years as National Director of Development and Planning for Americans for Peace Now and three years in Berlin as Vice President for European Operations for the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, has joined the Shalem Center as Vice President for Development. Scheindlin will be based in the Shalem Foundation's new Los Angeles offices.
To read more about Ahavia Scheindlin, click here.
Shalem Press releases Henry Kissinger's Diplomacy in time for Rosh Hashanah
Two new books from Shalem Press will reach Israeli bookstores in time for Rosh Hashanah. Diplomacy, Henry Kissinger's masterful 1994 historical analysis of the art of diplomacy, begins with Napoleon and continues to George H.W. Bush's "new world order." The Shalem Press edition includes a foreword by Shlomo Avineri, one of Israel's foremost political theorists. Also appearing in time for the holidays is the Shalem Press edition of Thomas Paine's classic, Common Sense.
To read more about Shalem Press books, click here.
Jewish Week: American Jews must confront fact that Israel may be "unraveling"
American Jews are devoted to Israel, but sometimes their commitment to the Jewish state blinds them to the real problems facing it, writes Gary Rosenblatt, editor and publisher of the New York Jewish Week: "The prospect of an Israeli society unraveling politically, morally and psychologically is too disturbing to contemplate. But the evidence is all around us, even as most would prefer either to look away or focus on the mix of myth and pride that is Israel's past. ... [American Jews'] confronting the problem is the first step toward solving it."
To read more, click here.
Philanthropy Magazine: Mideast, Jewish Studies use gifts contrary to donor intent
Can charitable giving help fight the war on terror? Can a bequest turn around and terrorize the giver? In a sweeping, comprehensive article in Philanthropy Magazine, journalist John J. Miller looks at how charitable giving to universities and other institutions of higher education can contribute to--or hinder--the war against terror. The article details ways in which many gifts can be used against the donor's original intent--particularly vis-a-vis Israel and Jewish studies programs on campus, and includes comments from Senior Fellow Martin Kramer and a section on Michael Oren's Power, Faith and Fantasy.
To read more, click here
Hebrew U. Prof. Ezrachi: Israeli universities fill public sphere with "technicians" and "fools"
Hebrew University Political Scientist Yaron Ezrachi writes in Ha'aretz that Israel's universities aren't meeting their most basic obligation: Instead of producing educated citizens capable of leadership, they're creating "doctors who were never exposed to a lesson in ethics, but who daily use their authority to make fateful ethical decisions" and "economists never exposed to cultural studies, but who wield the budgetary ax with intolerable ease when it comes to cultural institutions such as orchestras, operas, museums, theaters and universities."
To read more, click here.
Columnist Tobin: Jewish state needs to break from existing academic culture
Though some elites continue to echo former Jewish Agency head Avraham Burg's much-discussed post-Zionist vision of Israel--in some cases, deciding to "just leave" if the century-old conflict isn't resolved soon enough--columnist Jonathan Tobin argues in the Jerusalem Post that ordinary Israelis continue to show strength, optimism and determination in pushing the Jewish national project forward. Seriously challenging those who would give up the country necessitates the "training of a new generation of leaders steeped in Jewish and Zionist values that the critics of Israel's legitimacy have either forgotten or never learned."
To read more, click here.
Moav research plays role in Finance Ministry recommendation on capital investment law
Research prepared by Shalem Center Senior Fellow Omer Moav is sharpening debate in the ongoing discussions over the fate of a 1950 law intended to promote development in peripheral areas, but Moav's research shows Israel has wasted NIS 25 billion without results in the last decade alone. Following Moav's presentation to the Finance Ministry and a debate in the Knesset Economics Committee, the Ministry announced its intention to recommend canceling the law in the 2008 budget.
To read more about Omer Moav's research and the Institute for Economic and Social Policy, click here.
Ya'alon to emissaries: Keep using same formulas, and you will keep failing
In an essay published in the Los Angeles Times, Shalem Center Distinguished Fellow Lt. Gen. (res.) Moshe Ya'alon laid out four key ways that well-intentioned emissaries to the Middle East misunderstand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, thus ensuring that no actual progress is made. The piece, based on an open letter Ya'alon wrote to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, was picked up by nearly every major e-mail distribution list on Israel, as well as the Jerusalem Post, JTA (the Jewish wire service), Aish.com, and dozens of websites and blogs.
Five years on, Kramer takes a look at the state of Middle Eastern studies
Five years after the publication of his seminal Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America, Martin Kramer examined the field's current state in an address at the Manhattan Institute earlier this year. In the lecture, Kramer reviews the discipline's fundamental problems, tracing their history back to the late scholar Edward Said, whose theory of "Orientalism" argued, in essence, that due to inherent prejudices, no Western scholar can authoritatively interpret the Middle East. In the talk, Kramer posits how to create alternatives inside the academy for serious, balanced work.
To listen to Kramer's address, click here.
Suzanne Last Stone to deliver 9th Annual Bernstein Lecture
Jurist Suzanne Last Stone is set to deliver the ninth annual Zalman C. Bernstein Memorial Lecture in Jewish Political Thought later this month in Jerusalem. Stone, who writes and lectures on a wide variety of topics related to the intersection of Jewish legal thought and contemporary legal theory, will discuss "Is There Justice in History? A Jewish View" at the invitation-only event. The director of the program in Jewish Law and Interdisciplinary Studies at Cardozo Law School, Stone has taught Jewish law at the law schools of Columbia, Harvard, Tel Aviv and Hebrew universities.
For more information on Shalem events, click here.
Shalem interns head back to U.S., leaving behind publication trail
Thirteen students from top U.S. universities headed back to the U.S. after a summer spent at Shalem, but some left behind a paper trail. Interns David Feith and Andrew Steinberg played key roles in the research and writing of several op-eds and Articles Michael Oren wrote over the summer while Peter Ganong wrote his own op-ed calling on Jewish and Israeli athletes to use their Olympic berths to call attention to China's human rights abuses. The piece was syndicated by JTA, picked up by the Jerusalem Post, and appared in several Jewish newspapers.
To read Ganong's op-ed click here.
Blogging Shalem: News gatherers meet with Sharansky, Oren, Pollak
Five of the web's leading political and news bloggers met with Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies and Azure staffers during a visit to Israel this summer. The group included Andrew Breitbart of Breitbart.com, who co-founded the Huffington Post; Jeff Emanuel of Redstate.com; Scott Johnson of the Powerline Blog; Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit; and Laurence Solov, Breitbart's partner in the video blog Breitbart TV. The group met with Azure Assistant Editor Noah Pollak, himself a frequent blogger for National Review and Commentary, and heard from Adelson Institute Chairman Natan Sharansky and Senior Fellow Michael Oren.
To read more about the Adelson Institute, click here.
Shalem alum melds high-tech, creativity and Jewish ideas in "Zionist sweatshop"
Establishing and serving as editor of PresenTense Magazine isn't enough for former Shalem intern Ariel Beery, now a grad student at NYU. Together with friend Aharon Horwitz, Beery organized what one participant jokingly likened to a "Zionist sweatshop": the PresenTense Institute for Creative Zionism, which brought together some thirty-odd students, activists, artists and nascent leaders, who spent six weeks this summer living in a shared home in the Rehavia neighborhood of Jerusalem.
To read more about Creative Zionism and see other updates about Shalem interns, click here.
Henkin takes on new book on Lebanon War in Azure
In the upcoming issue of Azure, Shalem graduate fellow Yagil Henkin reviews Ofer Shelah and Yoav Limor's new book Captive in Lebanon: The Truth about the Second Lebanon War, which has been widely reviewed and praised in the Israeli press. Henkin, who is now a doctoral student in military history at Bar Ilan University, argues that, though the book raises some important questions, its analysis is often biased and is ultimately flawed.
For more information on the upcoming issue or to subscribe, click here. To see Henkin's other writing in Azure, 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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