Shalem Center

The Shalem Center combined research, fellowships, publishing, translation, and educational planning. Its work focused on Zionist Jewish thought, philosophy, democratic thought, and Jewish history, while its scholars came primarily from Israel and the United States.[2] Its ventures included intellectual journals and Hebrew translations of major works in political philosophy.[4]

The center became the institutional basis for Shalem College. Reporting about the transition uses overlapping names and dates: a 2023 account places the think tank's closure in 2009, while financial statements and academic-approval reporting continued to use the Shalem Center name during the following years.[6][2]

Most reporting dates the Shalem Center's establishment in Jerusalem to 1994 and identifies Yoram Hazony as its founder.[1][6] Other accounts also identify Daniel Polisar, Ofir Haivry, and Joshua Weinstein as founders, with Hazony serving as president during the center's early years.[2][1] Original financial backing came from philanthropists Ronald Lauder and Zalman Bernstein, founder of the Tikvah Fund, which became the center's leading long-term supporter.[3]

Hazony described the founding objective as "to shore up Zionism," arguing that the Israeli intellectual atmosphere of the 1990s was "one of post-Zionism and of debunking national myths."[4] The center's stated mission was "to strengthen the intellectual foundations necessary for the flourishing of the State of Israel and the Jewish people," with work concentrated on Zionist Jewish thought, general philosophy, democratic thought, and Jewish history.[2] Polisar and Weinstein were Princeton acquaintances of Hazony, and the center drew scholars from Israel and the United States.[4][2]

Globes reported that the center was influenced by the American neoconservative movement.[2] A 2006 Jerusalem Post profile characterized it as a "conservative education center" rather than a conventional think tank, noting that its activities went beyond policy analysis into publishing and curriculum development.[7]

Publishing was central to the Shalem Center's work. Its press focused on original and translated scholarly books in history, philosophy of science and religion, society, and economics, issuing works in Hebrew and English.[8] A 2001 review described the center as a policy institute that issued position papers regularly.[9]

The center produced the quarterly political journal Azure: Ideas for the Jewish Nation, which ran for sixteen years and combined right-wing, Zionist, and intellectual writing.[7][4] Beginning in 2005, it also published Hebraic Political Studies, a peer-reviewed journal examining early republican thinkers who drew on the Hebrew Bible.[7] Yoram Hazony's essay "Did Herzl want a 'Jewish' state?" appeared in Azure in 2000 and was later reprinted in New Essays on Zionism, published in 2007 by Shalem Press and co-edited by David Hazony, Yoram Hazony, and Michael Oren.[10]

The center undertook Hebrew translations of canonical works in political philosophy, including texts by Leo Strauss, Karl Popper, and Edmund Burke.[7][4] Shalem Center Press also issued a Hebrew edition of Robert Heilbroner's The Worldly Philosophers.[11] Hebrew University lecturer Omer Moav contributed newspaper opinion pieces on economics from a free-market perspective, and center director Hazony led a campaign against a 1999 junior-high-school textbook that, in the center's view, gave insufficient attention to David Ben-Gurion and Zionist history.[7]

During its think-tank years, the Shalem Center attracted a notable roster of scholars and public intellectuals. Michael Oren served as a senior fellow and headed the center's Middle East history project, with offices at 13 Yehoshua Bin-Nun Street, Jerusalem.[12] He addressed the Washington Institute for Near East Policy's Special Policy Forum as a Shalem representative on multiple occasions, including May 2002 and March 2007.[13][14]

Daniel Gordis held the title of senior vice president and senior fellow.[15] Yossi Klein Halevi was associated with the center for at least six years, and a 2010 roundtable identified Gordis as his colleague at the institution.[16] After resigning from the Knesset in November 2006, Natan Sharansky became chairman of the newly established Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies within the Shalem Center. He left the institute in 2009 to chair The Jewish Agency for Israel.[17][18] Sheldon Adelson provided the initial support for Sharansky's institute within Shalem.[3]

Martin Kramer was named the first president of Shalem College and held a senior fellowship at the center's Adelson Institute.[19] Michael Widlanski served as a research fellow in 2008–2009.[20] David Hazony and Michael Oren participated from the center's Jerusalem base on the advisory board of the Yale Israel Journal from its first issue in April 2003.[21] The center also recruited scholars associated with the Zionist left, including legal scholars Ruth Gavison and Amnon Rubinstein, alongside its predominantly conservative intellectual orientation.[4]

The Shalem Center was financed almost entirely by overseas donations; domestic Israeli donations were described as negligible. Its 2011 financial statements recorded 19.5 million shekels in overseas donations, up from 14.8 million shekels the previous year, with total income of 26.6 million shekels and operating costs of 17.4 million shekels.[2]

The Tikvah Fund, founded by Zalman Bernstein, was identified as the center's leading supporter, while a 2023 account reported that millions of dollars were allocated annually to the center during the fund's early years.[3][6]

A major institutional legacy of the Shalem Center was its transformation into a liberal-arts college. Martin Kramer described the center as an interim framework intended to build the "critical mass and reputation" required to establish a college, with the concept credited to Hazony, Polisar, Ofir Haivry, and Josh Weinstein.[3] Zalman Bernstein had supported the center in the late 1990s with the specific intention of helping turn it into a college for developing future Israeli leadership.[5]

The academic-approval process began in 2009. In January 2013, the Israeli cabinet approved permission for the Academic Center of Shalem to open after the Council for Higher Education approved programs in humanities with philosophy and Jewish thought, and humanities with Middle Eastern and Islamic studies.[1] At that initial stage, the institution was not state-funded and was not yet finally authorized to award bachelor's degrees. Its studies were to remain under higher-education supervision, and students were required to acknowledge the provisional status.[1]

The project had received donations totaling 125 million shekels, mostly from Jewish families in the United States and Canada.[1] The Tikvah Fund supplied an initial $12.5 million to the college in 2013.[5] The first cohort matriculated in October 2013 and completed a four-year program; the college graduated its inaugural class in the summer of 2017, by which point it held full accreditation from the Council of Higher Education.[5]

Martin Kramer, named the college's first president, described the planned curriculum as spanning "from Plato to Keynes, from the Hebrew Bible to Hobbes."[19][3] The program was intended to provide a broader education in Jewish and Western history and philosophy and to emphasize teaching over a research-university-style "publish-or-perish" culture.[3]

By 2022, the Academic Center of Shalem was accepting approximately 50 undergraduates per year and maintaining a liberal-arts core curriculum drawing on Jewish and Western texts. Academic Center president Russ Roberts stated that "a good college cannot have an ideology."[22]

Sources describe the center's political orientation in varying terms. A 2006 Jerusalem Post profile called it a "conservative education center," while a 2023 Jerusalem Post article characterized it as a "right-wing Zionist research and program center."[7][6] A 2013 Ynet report described it as "very right-wing."[11] Globes reported that the center was influenced by the American neoconservative movement.[2]

Critics questioned the timing of the Academic Center's government approval, which came about a week and a half before a national election, and characterized its curriculum as having a conservative-right spirit. Supporters and signatories to the application, including then-Education Committee chairwoman Einat Wilf, said the program aimed to develop general education and leadership and did not appear to be either right- or left-wing.[1]

The Jewish Review of Books, reviewing Hazony's book The Jewish State, noted that he accused post-Zionists in Israeli academia of a "systematic struggle" against the idea of the Jewish state and controversially traced the trend to Martin Buber and intellectuals associated with Brit Shalom. The reviewer argued that Hazony "neither portrayed these people very accurately nor proved that they had the influence that he attributed to them."[23]

Sources also differ on institutional dates and leadership. Calcalist and a 2023 Jerusalem Post account date the center's founding to 1994.[1][6] A February 2013 Globes article instead said it had been established eight years earlier, perhaps referring to a differently defined institutional entity; the available sources do not resolve the discrepancy.[2] Calcalist identified Hazony as president until 2002, whereas Israel Hayom said he served as president for eighteen years.[1][4] Calcalist also noted that the Academic Center of Shalem stated that Hazony was no longer part of it at the time of its 2013 report.[1]