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 [...]

Read Full Post »

Hartman Institute scholar in the news – Ariel Picard on ‘unorthodox’ marriage in Israel

Haaretz reports on a conference on Judaism at Israel’s far north Kfar Blum, in which Shalom Hartman Institute scholar Rabbi Dr. Ariel Picard, director of the Institute’s Be’eri program of Judaic studies for secular Israeli high schools,  offered an innovative way to break the deadlock for those Israelis who cannot marry under current rabbinical law [...]

Read Full Post »

Charles Krauthammer: David Hartman & Maimonides ‘big influence on me’

Charles Krauthammer – you know him as the acerbic, neoconservative, pro-Israel columnist for the Washington Post and other newspapers – has another side. According to this interview in the Jerusalem Post, he and his wife have  “started to try to revive and preserve Jewish music that has been lost to the masses” with a program [...]

Read Full Post »

David Hartman on communal v. narrow interests in Israel

David Hartman’s latest blog says it all: Israel will never have a government worthy of helping create the Jewish renaissance as long as narrow parochial interests and political expediency are the two key factors in forming governments:
Family is an important Jewish value, [but] narrow, parochial interests can destroy a national consensus and the building of [...]

Read Full Post »

Israel Knohl exclusive interview on video about Gabriel Revelation

Israel Knohl’s new book on his controversial interpretation and analysis of the stone monument with fragmentary Hebrew writing in ink (not engraved) on it: Messiahs and Resurrection in the Gabriel Revelation, will be published May 7, 2009, by Shalom Hartman Institute and Continuum Books.
Prof. Knohl sat down with me the other day to [...]

Read Full Post »

God Narratives in the Torah – Donniel Hartman

God Narratives in the Torah by Donniel Hartman. This special lecture is now available online for the first time. It was given July 10, 2008, at Shalom Hartman Institute, Jerusalem, Israel.

Read Full Post »

Hartman ‘represented’ on Newsweek top rabbis, synagogues list

The value and virtues of Top 10, 25 or 50 lists are endlessly debatable. But what is indisputable is that they start discussions – and disputes. The publication this week of the new “Top 50 (U.S.) Rabbis” compiled by Sony Pictures Entertainment Chairman & CEO Michael Lynton, News Corporation Executive Vice President Gary Ginsberg and [...]

Read Full Post »

David Hartman laments rise of extremism, irrationality in Jewish world

I don’t want this one to slip away unnoticed, even though it is off the main Hartman website homepage for now: David Hartman’s new column on the rise of extremism in the Jewish world. The essay is adapted from one of his recent lectures in the Pomrenze Lecture Series: Challenges Facing Modern Jewry in Israel [...]

Read Full Post »

David Hartman: The rise of religious extremism

David Hartman talks about how Jewish religious extremism, and even “mainstream” Orthodoxy have grown in modern times as more modern, rational movements have struggled.

Read Full Post »

Invitation to Summer 2009 Rabbinic Study Seminar at Hartman Institute, Jerusalem

Rabbi Bill Berk, Director, Center for Rabbinic Enrichment, invites rabbis the world over to attend the Summer 2009 Rabbinic Torah Study Seminar at Shalom Hartman Institute, Jerusalem

Read Full Post »