Shalem Launches B'nei Moshe, a Peer Collaboration Program for Israel’s Most Innovative and Influential Educators

Thirteen directors of Israeli pre-army preparatory academies have been meeting on a weekly basis at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem as part of the B’nei Moshe program, a year-long leadership initiative designed especially for the country’s most innovative and influential educators. Through lectures by Shalem scholars, readings of select Shalem Press books, and facilitated discussions of topics related to the academies’ curricula, B’nei Moshe offers the dynamic, energetic group—teachers, mentors, spiritual leaders, and life coaches to hundreds of students and alumni—a unique and much-needed opportunity for enrichment and collaboration, the only one of its kind in the country.

Initial feedback from participants has been overwhelmingly positive. “As the head of an army-preparatory program, it’s easy to get sucked into round-the-clock work, which simply doesn’t allow for ongoing learning and intellectual development,” explains participant David Nachman, director of the Ein Prat Leadership Academy. “A weekly meeting with colleagues involved with the same types of issues and challenges is both vital and inspiring, and allows us to shape a common vision.”

Shalem’s ideas-based approach to the study of Zionism, Judaism, philosophy, and the modern Middle East, they relate, enables them to place their knowledge of these subjects into a broader, richer context, as well as to identify the roots of the urgent challenges facing Israeli society today. Equally important, B’nei Moshe addresses these academy leaders’ deeply felt need for a community of their peers, with whom they can exchange insight and experience vital to their own professional development.

Lavi Zamir, head of the Jewish National Fund’s Hugei Sayarut program, agrees, saying that B’nei Moshe “offers the possibility of dedicating a certain amount of time not to the administration and management of the academy—which can take up all of one’s time—but to thinking about the essential principles of education. “

B’nei Moshe also introduces Shalem’s pioneering vision of a “Jewish liberal arts” to these individuals, who are also mentors to the students that make up Shalem College’s potential student body. Israel’s army-preparatory programs traditionally attract the most motivated and idealistic students from across the ideological, religious, and socioeconomic spectrum, those who are interested in challenging themselves personally as well as contributing to society. By reaching out to their role models, B’nei Moshe also reaches the students most likely to seek out and benefit from Shalem College’s rigorous academic program.

As Erez Eshel, director of the B’nei Moshe program and Vice President for Student Affairs at the Shalem Center, stated, “after each session, it’s easy to imagine the heads of these seminaries, army preparatory programs, and leadership academies standing in front of their students or writing to their alumni, fortified in their Zionism and strengthened in their commitment to cultivating young men and women of civic consciousness and moral character."

For an interview with Avishai Berman, director of the Arava Leadership Academy, click here.

For an interview with David Nachman, director of the Ein Prat Leadership Academy, click here.

For an interview with Yuval Cahan, director of the Tel Aviv Leadership Academy, click here.