Hartman Institute in the news

Shalom Hartman Institute has been in the news lately. Here are a few links of interest:

Gil Troy, a member of the Canadian Friends of Shalom Hartman Institute and a noted historian and author, uses Lev Aharon, the Army officers’ Judaic studies training program, and other Institute programs as an example of ways modern Israel is encountering Judaism. The reference came in his analysis of the divide between Israeli and North American Jews he felt at the recent General Assembly:

It is time to move beyond these tiresome clichés of the boorish rich American Jew and the boorish “goyish” Israeli.

By the way, Gil’s comments echo an ongoing theme in the work of Rabbi Dr. Donniel Hartman. See Donniel’s essay on the subject here and download a full-length version here.

Institute scholar Dr. Micah Goodman is quoted at length in this article, an analysis in the Jerusalem Post of the impact of religious political parties in the wake of the recent upheavals and the election of a secular mayor in Jerusalem after five years of haredi (ultra-Orthodox) rule.

Goodman is upbeat on the possibility that Jerusalem can show the way for the rest of Israel as a model of Jewish integration and tolerance, quite the twist on the usual cant of Jerusalem naysayers:

We are facing good news now in Jerusalem. After we witnessed a movement of getting back to Jewish sources in various ways, including a return to religion, now we can see a process of Israelis becoming more Jewish. And Jerusalem is the perfect place for this process and this message for all Israelis: Here, the secular and the religious are not the same as the secular and the religious everywhere else in the country….

We have no ghettos, and the segregation between religious and secular Zionists is the lowest in the country. I firmly believe that we can develop a very particular and successful model here – and education is, of course, the most important way.

More of Micah’s comments here.