Shalem Center

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The Shalem Center is an academic research institute in Jerusalem, Israel, established in 1994. The Shalem center runs six research institutes and its own press, and its senior fellows include best-selling author and historian Michael Oren, former Knesset member Natan Sharansky and former Israeli Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon. Founded by scholars and public figures from Israel and the Diaspora, the Center advances original research, publication, and teaching in the areas crucial to the public life of the Jewish people, including Jewish moral and political thought, Zionist history and ideas, Biblical archaeology, democratic theory, and economic and social policy.

Contents 1 History 2 Research fellows 3 Academic programs 4 Publications 4.1 Funding 5 References 6 External links

[edit] History

Shalem Center is located in Beit Nativ in the German Colony neighborhood of Jerusalem. The centre was founded by Yoram Hazony, Daniel Polisar and Joshua Weinstein, who knew each other from their student days at Princeton University. Hosting historians and writers from all over Israel's political and cultural spectrum, Shalem's critiques of what they see as a shallow intellectual life on campus, their critiques of the tendency to put economic goals before cultural aims, and their hard-to-discern relation with traditional Judaism amidst allegations of atheism have led to criticism from Israel's religious and nationalist right as well as the establishment left.

According to Haaretz newspaper, "One of the galvanizing events in Hazony's life was an encounter with the Rabbi Meir Kahane in the fall of 1984. Seven years ago, Haaretz correspondent Akiva Eldar published excerpts from a eulogy Hazony wrote in 1990 after Kahane's assassination in New York. 'We were mesmerized,' Hazony wrote about the meeting with Kahane at Princeton. Most of his friends, he noted, had never before spoken with a Jewish 'believer' and were amazed to discover that an Orthodox Jew could be an intelligent person, capable of defending his opinions against a group of Princeton students. They had all entertained an image of Judaism as something primitive. 'We listened in astonishment, and finally in shame, when we began to realize that he was right.'" Hazony has been described as a former confidant of Benjamin Netanyahu and preceded Polisar as president. The institution's current president is Polisar, who is described as its operational head. The Shalem Center has educational programs for graduate and undergraduate students from Israel and abroad, scholars writing books about Zionist history and ideas, the history of the Jewish people, Biblical archaeology, Jewish moral and political thought, and strategic studies. It is also houses an institute promoting a free market agenda in Israel.

[edit] Research fellows

Natan Sharansky, Michael Oren, Yossi Klein Halevi, Yoram Hazony, Daniel Gordis, Moshe Ya’alon (on leave), Dan Polisar, Meirav Jones and Ehud Ya’ari are some of the leading thinkers researching in Shalem's institutes, writing books, teaching hundreds of students and addressing thousands at conferences. The Shalem Center has built an intellectual community dedicated to exploring the most important questions facing the Jewish people, the state of Israel and the world beyond.

[edit] Academic programs

Shalem’s student programs include the Undergraduate Program in Statecraft, Graduate and Post-Graduate Fellowships, and the Shalem Summer Interns Program to which hundreds of students apply each year. Shalem Liberal Arts College, which will be open to outstanding students from Israel and from abroad, is planned to be Israel’s first liberal arts college, and will feature innovative programs in its core curriculum along with options for majors in philosophy and Middle East studies. In April 2009, the Shalem Center filed an application with the Council for Higher Education in Israel for the opening of an institution of higher learning that would be authorized to grant B.A. degrees in liberal arts. The academic degree would be a multi-disciplinary program in the humanities and economics. The list of intended lecturers include Yoav Gelber, Martin Kramer and Yosef Gorny. Shalem plans to accept a select group of candidates every year, who would be selected on the basis of exams, intellectual capabilities and motivation to influence. The four-year program would require writing a thesis, and offer majors in Middle East studies, philosophy and political science. The program is to have core requirements in philosophy, history, social studies, economics, religion and Zionist history.^[1]

[edit] Publications

The Center publishes Azure and Hebraic Political Studies, the latter a peer-reviewed scholarly journal.

The Center's publishing house, Shalem Press, publishes classic Western democratic thought in Hebrew translation, as well as Jewish thought in English, which include new editions of classic works, as well as the works of theologian Eliezer Berkovits.

Best-known for books like Michael Oren's best-selling history books Power, Faith and Fantasy^[2] and Six Days of War^[3] and Yoram Hazony's The Jewish State: The Struggle for Israel's Soul^[4], and publishing Natan Sharansky's A Case for Democracy in Hebrew. Azure (published in Hebrew as Techelet) is the largest-circulation general interest journal in Israel. ^[5][6]

[edit] Funding

In 1991 Hazony, Polisar and Weinstein obtained the initial funding of a few thousand dollars, from Barry Klein, to set up the Shalem Center Association.^[7]In May 2005 the Las Vegas-based Adelson Family Foundation announced that the Shalem Center in Jerusalem was to receive a $4.5 million grant to enable creation of the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies, which Sharansky heads and in which Ya'alon is a "distinguished fellow."^[8][9]Klarman Family Foundation of Boston and George and Pamela Rohr of New York each made a commitment of $1 million in support of establishing a liberal arts college at the Shalem Center.^[10]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• The Shalem Center Homepage
• Haaretz article on Shalem Center
• Yoram Hazony's eulogy for Meir Kahane in the Jerusalem Post