Palter Family Makes $2.5 Million Gift to Create New Academic Hub
Long-time Shalem board members and passionate supporters Gilbert and Elisa Palter of Toronto, along with their children Dani, Adam, and Syd, have made a $2.5 million gift to Shalem College. Their generous contribution will be recognized with the renovation and naming of a state-of-the-art, 50-seat smart classroom at the heart of Shalem’s main academic building. Palter Hall, set to be dedicated this June, will serve as the locus of the soon-to-be expanded campus, and will form a backdrop for both formal classroom study and a wide range of extracurricular programming.
Daniel Gordis, Shalem Senior Vice President, Koret Distinguished Fellow, and Chair of the Core Curriculum, describes Palter Hall as “central to our vision of the college as a greenhouse for Israel’s future leaders. It will be the ‘intellectual hub’ where Shalem students will engage, challenge, and debate the ideas and texts that are at the core of Shalem’s singular curriculum. Given the close bonds all the Palters enjoy with so many Shalem students,” he concluded, “it is especially fitting that such a space should bear their family name.”
The Palters, who are Shalem College Founders and the benefactors of Shalem Press’ Great Texts Project, which translates classic works into Hebrew for the first time, are excited to be making their second leadership gift and to be providing Shalem students with an enhanced learning environment.
“The success Shalem has achieved to date has well surpassed even the extremely lofty ambitions we had when we made our first gift six years ago. The quality of the students, faculty, administration, curriculum and extra-curricular activities are all world class,” say the Palters, citing the fact that Shalem’s first three academic classes comprise students of exceptional talent, character, and ambition, many of whom have already established social initiatives that lay the foundation for a better society. They continued, “We want to enable students to think bigger and achieve more than even they imagined they could.”
That, after all, was the real purpose of this gift: “Supporting an institution that we believe will provide inspired, visionary leadership for the Jewish state, and by extension, for the Jewish people everywhere. Shalem represents the best investment of which we are aware in the future of the State of Israel and the Jewish people globally.”
