Say hi to Hartman Institute at the UJC General Assembly in Washington, Nov. 8-10, 2009

Shalom Hartman Institute will be at the United Jewish Communities (soon to be Jewish Federations of North America) annual General Assembly from November 8-10, 2009, in Washington, D.C. (Booth 311). First, and foremost, I invite you to stop by for a chat. I plan to have some goodies from Israel with me to entice people [...]

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Global warming warning straddles Dead Sea, three peoples (see the cool picture)

This isn’t directly germane to the Shalom Hartman Institute, but I haven’t seen this picked up by any Jewish or Israeli media today, so I thought I would post it: Groups of Israeli, Palestinian and Jordanian environmentalists gathered in the Dead Sea basin in three groups on Saturday, October 24, 2009, to participate in a [...]

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Comments on the news of the day: Jewish peoplehood, for one thing

A controversial new book, The Invention of the Jewish People, by Tel Aviv University historian Shlomo Sand, is now in English, after kicking up a dust storm of controversy in its original Hebrew incarnation. This is a summary of the book’s thesis, as explained in a recent review on Tablet, an online Jewish cultural magazine:
Sand… [...]

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Iran awaits ayatollah’s order to build nukes – gulp! or not?

The London Times (sorry, Times of London) is reporting that – according to Western intelligence sources – Iran has:
perfected the technology to create and detonate a nuclear warhead and is merely awaiting the word from its Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to produce its first bomb
Leaving aside whether we can actually believe that story – [...]

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Shooting of gay teens in Tel Aviv, Israel, a shocking attack

Israel – parts of it at least – promotes itself as the most tolerant country in the Middle East. Gays and lesbians have a freedom to live openly unheard of in the Arab world. Transsexual singer Dana International is a popular entertainer and TV personality. Yet… Yet… Late Saturday an unidentified shooter opened fire in [...]

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Here’s why Hartman Institute’s Be’eri program is so important:.Israelis’ low knowledge of Judaism

A new survey reported here has found that the current generation of Israelis has a weak – to be charitable – knowledge of Judaism. According to the article:
The survey revealed that 80% of secular Israelis and 59% of Israelis overall define their level of Judaic knowledge and Jewish heritage as mediocre [...]

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Israel and North American Jews – Do we need each other? Do we understand each other?

Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic Monthly interviewed Michael Oren, a New York state native who is now Israel’s ambassador to the United States in Aspen, CO, recently. In the interview (click here to see the entire interview on video; click here to read the Israel-Diaspora relations segment edited down for you), Oren discusses the need [...]

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Hartman Institute creating ‘North American Scholars Circle’

This is a new program designed to draw 15-16 North American scholars out of their universities and into larger, deeper projects on top-level Jewish, Israeli, and continuity issues, among others. Invites are going out soon to potential participants. Details of the program here.

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New video from Hartman Rabbinic Fellow Steve Moskowitz

Rabbi Steven Moskowitz, who is here in Israel for the summertime residency of the Shalom Hartman Institute Rabbinic Leadership Initiative, has been carrying around a little Flip video camera, showing that not only Chabad rabbis can make good use of high-tech gadgets. His video shows a sampling of Ben Yehuda Street [...]

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Yet another summertime blogger at Hartman Institute – Rabbi Dan Fink

Nice post here summarizing some of the lectures Rabbi Dan Fink attended as part of the Rabbinic Torah Study Seminar:
Rabbi (David) Hartman finished with an important charge, which I have been thinking about a great deal as this two week seminar draws to an end. The question, of course, is: how do we take the [...]

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