NEWS

Shalem College is pleased to announce an essay contest in the field of Jewish thought. Preference will be granted to essays that explore aspects of Jewish thought in the contemporary world, or the implications of classic Jewish texts for contemporary philosophical, theological, or spiritual problems facing the Jewish people.

This October, the eminent political scientist Shlomo Avineri inaugurated the Shalem Forum, a weekly series of guest lectures, panel discussions, film screenings, and live musical performances aimed at enriching campus life and complementing classroom learning with unique encounters and diverse points of view.

A delegation from Yale-NUS College, the newly established liberal arts college in Singapore, arrived at Shalem in November to trade insights on the process of adapting the liberal-arts model to new and diverse contexts. One of two international institutions visited by Yale-NUS as part of its ongoing research into the global liberal-arts movement, Shalem shares the highly selective college’s goal of enabling students to converse with multiple traditions as preparation for lives of influence in a complex, interconnected world.

Daniel Gordis, Shalem Senior Vice President and Koret Distinguished Fellow, has been appointed Head of the Core Curriculum Department at Shalem College. Himself a graduate of Columbia College, Gordis will be responsible for defining the Shalem College experience through a unique course of study that combines the great texts of the Western and Jewish traditions.

This fall, the Shalem Core teaching faculty visited two of America’s leading institutions of higher education as part of the college’s ambitious goal of bringing the liberal-arts model to Israel. After nearly a year spent studying and debating diverse pedagogies and approaches to the study of classic texts, as well as determining the final look of Shalem’s unique core curriculum, faculty “saw theory come alive in the classroom,” said Ido Hevroni, Shalem Educational Director.

Government ministers and renowned scholars, Israel-Prize laureates and philanthropists, and the members of Israel’s Revolution Orchestra joined Shalem’s first class of students and their families for the college’s opening ceremonies at its Jerusalem campus on October 6, 2013.

“Poverty,” declared Shalem student representative Tal Eitan at the college’s October 6 opening event, “is not just financial. The most debilitating kind of poverty is actually cultural. Without education—political, economic, social; the kind that goes beyond mathematical equations and report cards—there can be no genuine freedom.”

David Messer, Chairman of the International Board of Governors of Shalem College, addressed the inaugural class of fifty students at Sunday night’s opening ceremonies, telling them that they are providing “an investment return that is essentially infinite: a vibrant future for the Jewish people and the State of Israel.”

A message from Martin Kramer, President of Shalem College:
This evening, I will have the privilege of presiding over the very first opening exercises of the newly-established Shalem College. Tonight’s event is first and foremost a warm embrace of the fifty undergraduate students enrolled into our inaugural class. They come from the length and breadth of Israel, from a wide range of social backgrounds and traditions. Also in attendance will be hundreds of well-wishers, who have offered moral and material support for what has been an enormously challenging endeavor.

A dose of nuance I never imagined, as a Columbia College student in the late ’70s, that some 35 years hence I’d return to campus…