INSIDE THE SHALOM HARTMAN INSTITUTE The Shalom Hartman Institute (SHI) is a center of transformative thinking and teaching that addresses the major challenges facing the Jewish people and elevates the quality of Jewish life in Israel and around the world. At the forefront of sophisticated, idea-based Jewish education for community leaders and change agents, the Institute is committed to the significance of Jewish ideas, the power of applied scholarship, and the conviction that great teaching contributes to the growth and continual revitalization of the Jewish people.

The Institute consists of three divisions:

The Kogod Research Center for Contemporary Jewish Thought generates ideas and research on contemporary issues central to Jewish life in Israel and around the world. The Institute’s independent, multidenominational think tank, draws on thousands of years of Jewish intellectual thought to develop new ideas that shape and enrich modern Jewish life.

The Center for Israeli- creates educational models and infrastructure aimed at nurturing pluralistic Jewish identity among educators and senior (IDF) officers. Introducing present and future Israeli change agents to a multifaceted approach to Judaism that is meaningful and relevant to their lives creates a ripple effect in the communities in which they operate.

The Shalom Hartman Institute of North America partners with North American Jewish change agents—rabbis, lay leaders, scholars, educators, and professionals—to leverage unique models of pluralistic, in-depth, text-based teaching, scholarship, and program development that address the challenges facing contemporary North American Jewry. KOGOD RESEARCH CENTER FOR CONTEMPORARY JEWISH THOUGHT

Center Fellows At the core of the Center are its fellows, tasked with producing innovative and transformative thinking that renders Judaism relevant; transmitting the results of this thinking to a wide audience through the Institute’s publication platforms; and working with the Institute’s program directors to develop new initiatives and programs based on this thinking. Drawn Department of Beit Midrash Programs from the faculties of Israel’s Publications Leveraging the strength of leading institutions of higher Our publications serve as one of communal beit midrash- education, fellows participate the main avenues by which the style learning, the Institute’s in research groups that explore Institute disseminates ideas that thought-provoking, text-based contemporary challenges facing are developed and cultivated in study programs are aimed Judaism and the Jewish people the hallways of academia to the at expanding the intellectual and reinvestigate tradition in public, in the aim of sparking horizons of participants and their goal of creating original new conversations on Jewish providing them with tools to responses to these challenges. values in Israeli society and the respond more meaningfully wider Jewish world. to contemporary issues and challenges facing and KOGOD CENTER Jewish life. The supportive RESEARCH THEMES Engaging Israel Project intellectual environment of > Israeli-Zionist identity The goal of the Engaging Israel the beit midrash encourages the sharing of ideas that assist > Foundations of project is to create a new narrative participants in sharpening their contemporary Judaism regarding the significance of Israel for Jewish life. This narrative will skills and reaching new levels > Contemporary constitute the foundation of a new of understanding. > Value dilemmas in covenant between Israel and world contemporary Judaism Jewry by elevating the existing > Foundations of religious discourse from one with a crisis Zionism based focus to one rooted in > Relationship of world Jewish values and ideas. Led Jewry to the Jewish State by an international research team, (Engaging Israel Project) the Engaging Israel project generates this conversation, which will enable a relationship with Israel for what it is and, more importantly, for what it can become. CENTER FOR ISRAELI-JEWISH IDENTITY

Be’eri Jewish-Israeli leaders are better able to instill Identity Education in their soldiers the importance of Jewish-Israeli identity to t The Be’eri Initiative for Pluralistic he ethos and operations of the Jewish Education introduces tens IDF. Lev Aharon seminars for of thousands of secular Israeli majors, lieutenant-colonels, high school students, from a range and colonels endow over one of socioeconomic and geographic thousand officers a year with a backgrounds, to a multifaceted mission that arises from the core approach to Judaism that helps values of Jewish culture and them reclaim ownership of their heritage, not external threats. Jewish identity. Serving as a The program strengthens the resource center, Be’eri partners sense of purpose, belonging, with dozens of secular high schools and solidarity that helps the across Israel and trains hundreds officers better serve the Jewish of leading educators in the skills state while strengthening required to nurture Jewish-Israeli their connection with the identity in their communities. Jewish community, the Bible, and . The high school for boys provides its students with an innovative Model Orthodox Modern Orthodox education, connecting Jewish tradition High Schools to the world of contemporary Hartman Institute Model culture and science, while Orthodox High Schools nurture encouraging a combination a generation of future leaders of academic excellence and within Israel’s Orthodox social involvement. community. Equipped with a unique education, these leaders The girls’ high school will be committed to democratic implements an authentic and values, open to new ideas, coherent educational vision and respectful of the diversity that fuses respect for Jewish in Israeli and Jewish life. The tradition and learning with Lev Aharon Charles E. Smith High School an obligation to halakha and The mission of the Lev Aharon for Boys and the feminist ideology, seeking to program is to cultivate a strong, Midrashiya High School for instill its students with self- positive Jewish-Israeli identity Girls feature rigorous Jewish confidence and to provide a in senior IDF officers that will and general studies programs holistic environment in which to inform and guide the style of that promote critical thinking, advance spiritually, physically, their military leadership and tolerance, individual creativity, and intellectually. The Midrashiya service. By understanding the community leadership, and has been given a mandate by relevance of Jewish values and social responsibility. the Israeli Ministry of Education heritage to their role, these to develop its Orthodox feminist curriculum for the state religious school system. SHALOM HARTMAN INSTITUTE OF NORTH AMERICA

Community Leadership study opportunities for rabbis The members of these two teams Programs of all denominations, the are leading thinkers, scholars, Shalom Hartman Institute and educators who gather to The Community Leadership sees the advancement of develop pluralistic, inspiring, Programs offer a range of rabbinic leadership as one of and intellectually sophisticated text-based courses and its core missions. The goal Jewish ideas and to translate seminars with Hartman of the Rabbinic Leadership them into action for the North Institute faculty to hundreds of Programs is to invigorate and American Jewish community. Jewish professionals and lay revitalize the hundreds of leaders of all denominations rabbis by offering them regular across North America. The opportunities to enrich their Christian Leadership programs strengthen and knowledge in the foundations of Initiative expand the intellectual Jewish thought and by providing In a comprehensive year-long horizons of community leaders, the empowerment tools that study program with renowned enabling them to respond more they need to impart this Jewish-studies scholars, the meaningfully to contemporary knowledge to the communities Christian Leadership Initiative issues and challenges facing whose lives they influence and introduces prominent Christian Jews in their communities. stimulate on a daily basis. leaders and change agents The programs include year- from North America to the long community based study; central ideas of Jewish ethics summer and winter study Research Team for and faith, the diverse ideologies retreats in North America; Applied Jewish Thought and practices of contemporary and a 10-day summer study The Research Team for Applied world Jewry, the meaning of retreat at the Hartman Institute Jewish Thought, the North Israel for world Jewry, and campus in Jerusalem. American division of the the foundations of religious Jerusalem-based Kogod pluralism and interreligious Rabbinic Leadership Research Center for study. Through exposure to Programs Contemporary Jewish Thought, Jewish textual tradition and the comprises the: underlying ideologies, nuances, Widely recognized as a North American Scholars and diversities of contemporary world leader in providing Circle and the Jewish life, Christian change intensive pluralistic, thought- North America-based agents gain a more comprehensive provoking, and challenging Engaging Israel team. understanding of Judaism and the Jewish people and are thus primed to facilitate a strengthening of Christian- Jewish relations. Shalom Hartman Institute 11 Gedalyahu Alon Street Jerusalem 93113 Israel Tel: +972 2 567 5320 Fax: +972 2 561 1913

Shalom Hartman Institute of North America One Pennsylvania Plaza, Suite 1606 New York, NY 10119 Tel: +1 212 268 0300 Fax: +1 212 239 4550 www.hartman.org.il