Van Leer Jerusalem Institute

The institute brings research in the humanities and social sciences into public discussion about Israeli society and its relationship with the wider region.[4] Its stated mission includes generating bold ideas and creating civic space for an inclusive democracy, engaging students, academics, artists, professionals, and civil society activists through events held both in person and online.[3] Advanced scholarship and public intellectual exchange have been central to its activities since 1959.[1]

Four thematic clusters organize its research: Sacredness, Religion, and Secularization; The Challenge of Shared Life; Science, Technology, and Society; and Israel in the Middle East.[4] These encompass reconsideration of the religious–secular divide, the social consequences of scientific and technological change, Israel’s political and cultural relationships with the region, and approaches to fragmented societies in Israel and elsewhere.[5] A substantial gender-equality project links theoretical work on gender and feminism with efforts toward social and political change.[4][5]

Located at 43 Jabotinsky Street in central Jerusalem, the campus is adjacent to the President’s residence.[4][6] It includes the original institute building and the Polonsky Academy building, as well as premises housing the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the Council for Higher Education, and the Israel Science Foundation.[6] The institute’s facilities combine offices and research libraries with auditoriums, seminar rooms, publishing facilities, and public meeting spaces.[6]

Polly Van Leer arrived in Jerusalem in the late 1940s with the ambition of helping make Israel a world center of humanistic values and science.[7] Her vision linked traditional Jewish wisdom with contemporary thought, placing Jewish intellectual inheritance alongside scientific knowledge as resources for cultural renewal.[3][7] She believed that the Jewish people, the new State of Israel, and the wider world faced a spiritual malaise requiring a new synthesis of biblical wisdom and science.[7]

The Van Leer family agreed to fund and construct the Israel Academy of Sciences in Jerusalem in exchange for 30 dunums, or three hectares, of land for an adjacent institution devoted to advancing human culture.[7] Polly submitted a plan for this center to the government in December 1955.[7] The family subsequently sought special legislation allowing the institute to be established as a completely private institution, and the Knesset passed the legislation in December 1958.[7] The institute identifies 1959 as its founding year and Polly Van Leer as its founder.[3]

The family’s philanthropic relationship with Israel developed from a broader business and charitable history.[1] Bernard Van Leer began his business career in 1919 by establishing a company that sealed oil barrels and later created a foundation for children at risk.[1] His son Oscar developed the foundation’s Israeli connections, including investments in the Weizmann Institute before the Jerusalem institute was established.[1] The family endowed the institute, while Lia van Leer was also involved in its establishment.[8][9]

Wim Van Leer’s career encompassed engineering, wartime flying, playwriting, film production, and industrial activity in Israel.[8] He had settled in Welwyn Garden City in the 1930s and was persuaded by Quakers to help rescue Jews from Nazi Germany.[8] Lia and Wim’s cultural activity also included screening films for friends at their Haifa home and subsequently establishing quality-film clubs in Haifa, Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem.[9] The family foundation supported educational and cultural activity through both the research institute and the separate Van Leer Jerusalem Film Center, which runs the Israel Film Archive, Jerusalem Cinematheque, and Jerusalem International Film Festival.[10]

The institute’s later mission carried this founding emphasis into civic and public work. It describes its role as generating ideas, forging civic space, and bringing research into critical discourse within and beyond academia, with the aim of influencing Israel’s public agenda.[3][5]

By the early 1980s, its conferences were addressing divisions within Jewish Israeli society.[11] A 1983 conference, “Social Inequalities: The Way Out,” examined educational, social, and economic gaps in Ashkenazi–Sephardi relations.[11] At a 1981 Van Leer Foundation conference, Yitzhak Navon expressed optimism about easing Ashkenazi–Sephardi tensions but pessimism about what he believed was a widening religious–secular divide.[11] During the 1980s, the institute also pioneered school texts about Israeli Arabs; by 2006 it had field-tested a civics curriculum concerning students’ responsibilities in a democracy.[12]

The Polonsky Academy for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences provides an international postdoctoral fellowship program within the institute.[3] Its 2023–2024 report describes awards of up to seven fellowships annually, each tenable for as long as four years, for Israeli and international scholars working in any humanities or social-science field.[3] The academy forms part of an institution whose research seeks to introduce new ideas into critical discourse both inside and outside academia and influence Israel’s public agenda.[5]

Jewish thought and identity have supported a sustained sequence of conferences and lectures.[13] Yehoyada Amir served on the board of the institute’s Framework for Contemporary Jewish Thought and Identity from 1997 to 2000.[13] A 1997 annual conference addressed methodological and ideological questions in the study of Jewish thought in honor of Eliezer Schweid’s retirement.[13] In 1998, an international conference examined André Neher and French Jewish thought after the Holocaust, in cooperation with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Mekorot Ha-nahar Association.[13]

Later lectures included Amir’s discussion of Israeli Reform theology in 2007 and his examination of Hebrew as a language for philosophical writing in 2008, including the philosophies of Nachman Krochmal and Shmuel David Luzzato.[13] In a retrospective essay in the Jewish Review of Books, the author recalled a late-winter 1975 memorial evening for Leo Strauss at the institute, with Shlomo Pines, Gershom Scholem, and Werner Dannhauser among the speakers, followed by a gathering at Scholem’s Rechavia apartment.[14]

Yehouda A. Shenhav served as a senior research fellow and codirector of the Forum on Israeli Culture and Society from 1999 to 2006, and also held the position of head of advanced studies.[15] Gabriel Motzkin, a philosophy professor, was identified as the outgoing director in December 2016, when he discussed the relationship between religion and scientific production ahead of an institute event on that subject.[16] Other public programming included the March 2017 event “Heritage, Politics and Everything In-between: UNESCO in Israel and Jerusalem,” featuring Emek Shaveh director Yonathan Mizrachi on archaeology and politics in Jerusalem.[17]

The institute’s statistical undertaking on Arab society in Israel began in 2002 and developed into the series Arab Society in Israel: Population, Society, Economy.[18] Its purpose includes supporting research and social or political action, identifying trends, comparing Arab and Jewish society, and informing discussion of civil society.[18] Six Hebrew-language volumes appeared between 2005 and 2013; the first four were copublished with Hakibbutz Hameuhad, while the fifth and sixth were institute publications.[19]

The eighth volume, edited by Ramsees Gharrah and published by Van Leer Institute Press in 2016, continued this statistical program.[18] Each volume covers five areas in detail: demography, work, standard of living, education and higher education, and local government.[18] The eighth volume presents developmental data in summary tables, compares Arab and Jewish populations, and distinguishes subgroups within the Arab population.[18] Chapter openings provide summaries, tables, and graphs of selected findings, making the material accessible alongside its more detailed statistical presentation.[18]

The series responds to demand among academics, government figures, and the public for information relevant to the Jewish–Arab rift in Israel.[19] More broadly, the institute’s civil-society work supports research and empowerment intended to produce alternative knowledge and bring it into debates among citizens and decision-makers about citizenship and civil policy.[18]

Gender inequality is another area in which the institute has developed quantitative tools for public policy.[20] Its Center for the Advancement of Women in the Public Sphere, known as WIPS, produced a Gender Index whose 2019 edition combined 90 component measures covering employment, education, poverty, and political and economic power.[20] A 2020 account described the index as being published for the seventh time and intended as a policy-setting tool; the overall measure had reached its highest inequality level in 2010 and improved slowly afterward.[20] Political scientist Naomi Chazan served as a WIPS codirector.[21]

The 2016 volume Public Policy and Multiculturalism examined Israeli public policy and proposed alternatives across education, health, migration, welfare, culture, local government, and justice.[22] Its 444 pages addressed whether existing public institutions account for the needs of different groups.[22] The institute was also listed as a partner in the Freedom Protection Council project for 2017–2019, whose stated objective was encouraging civil-society participation in policymaking; the associated 2016 EU award of €365,803 went to the Il’am Arab Center for Media Freedom Development and Research.[23]

Van Leer Institute Press was established in the early 1990s as the principal platform for disseminating the institute’s research.[24] It publishes academic and nonfiction books, journals, and magazines, mostly in Hebrew, in fields including sociology, political history, anthropology, political economy, political science, Jewish studies, literature, and gender studies.[24] From 1991, the institute published Te’oriyah u-Vikoret: Bamah Yisrelit, or Theory and Criticism: An Israeli Forum, promoting reflexive and interdisciplinary discourse among scholars and writers inside and outside academia about society, culture, and their local setting.[25]

Historical scholarship has included Adel Manna’s Nakba and Survival: The Story of the Palestinians Who Remained in Haifa and the Galilee, 1948–1956, published by Van Leer Institute Press and Hakibbutz Hameuhad.[26] Manna, an institute scholar, drew on years of testimonies from Arab inhabitants to examine northern Israel during the War of Independence and the lives of the Arab populations of Haifa and the Galilee through 1956.[26]

The Maktub Arabic-to-Hebrew translation project was founded in 2014 by institute researcher Yehouda Shenhav-Shahrabani and writer Salman Natour.[27] A collaboration involving the institute and the Mifal HaPais Council for Culture and Arts, it seeks to introduce Hebrew readers to literature from the Arab world, encourage familiarity with Israel’s Arab neighbors, and make Arab voices available in Hebrew.[27] The press publishes the series, also styled Maktoob, with Pardes Publishing.[24]

Maktub’s translators’ circle included more than 30 translators and translation scholars, together with Jewish and Arab writers and poets.[27] Its collaborative method pairs Arabic and Hebrew editors, allowing teams to debate interpretations in pursuit of fuller perspectives and richer translations.[27] In an interview, Shenhav-Shahrabani estimated that only six or seven of roughly 1,250 translated books published annually in Israel came from Arabic.[27]

The institute and Mishkenot Sha’ananim established the Israeli Forum for Mediterranean Culture to explore regional culture with experts from neighboring countries, comparing local images, symbols, and myths and seeking shared elements.[28] The Van Leer Forum also developed public dialogue and relationships around the Mediterranean under Shimshon Zelniker and Dorothy Harmon.[29] Israeli–Palestinian engagement included hosting unofficial Track Two diplomacy.[12]

Public scholarship also extended to audio and conference partnerships.[30] The biweekly Tel Aviv Review podcast, produced with TLV1 Radio and the institute, featured Gilad Halpern interviewing scholars about nonfiction writing and research on Israel, the Middle East, and the Jewish world.[30] Coverage of the Association for Israel Studies conference in Jerusalem in June 2016 produced 20 interviews.[30] In 2024, the institute and Shaharit sponsored a conference semi-plenary on Nissim Mizrachi’s Beyond Suspicion: The Moral Clash Between Rootedness and Progressive Liberalism, as well as an open reception on July 2.[31]

Support from the Dutch Van Leer Foundation has been central to the institute’s finances.[1] Its contribution was NIS 18.3 million in 2011, compared with NIS 17.2 million the preceding year.[1] In 2011, the institute invested NIS 20.7 million in projects and ended the year with expenditure exceeding income by NIS 1.5 million.[1]

Financial figures published in 2022 described an annual budget of NIS 24 million, most of it supplied by a private Dutch foundation, alongside NIS 100,000 from the Israeli government and NIS 200,000 from the German government.[32] Those published figures did not identify the budget year to which they applied.[32]

David Resnick and Shimon Povzner designed the original architectural plan as two buildings forming an L.[7] The higher institute building represented wisdom, while the lower Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities building represented science, with a staircase connecting them.[7] The original institute building contains scholars’ offices, the press, a library, a large auditorium, a smaller conference room, and shared areas for meetings and interaction.[6]

The Polonsky Academy building, designed by Chyutin Architects and inaugurated in 2013, provides 7,200 square meters across four levels.[6] Its facilities include 30 fellows’ rooms, five seminar rooms, a research library, and a 145-seat auditorium.[6] It received Israel’s 2015 Design Award in the Public Buildings and Architectural Lighting categories, an Archilovers “Best Project” selection in 2015, and the Rechter Prize in 2018.[6]

Founded in 1970, the institute library holds an interdisciplinary collection of more than 40,000 books and journals, distributed between the historic building and the Polonsky Academy.[33] Its Library Fellows include university researchers, visiting scholars, journalists, intellectuals, and public figures, who participate in institute activities and a monthly seminar.[33]

A 2002 policy paper led by retired General Uri Sagie and attorney Gilead Sher, with Shimshon Zelniker participating, proposed “proactive separation” from the Palestinians in two 18-month phases.[2] Several dozen experts representing a broad range of views contributed in response to an impasse facing Israeli society and leadership.[2] The document was explicitly a draft for comment and critique, not a political position adopted by the institute, its directors, or employees.[2]

In 2015, objections from Im Tirtzu and other critics accompanied a planned event for The Holocaust and the Nakba: Memory, National Identity, and Jewish-Arab Partnership, which the institute copublished.[34] The book’s description invited discussion of the events as traumatic and identity-constructing while explicitly saying they were neither identical nor even similar.[34] Director Gabriel Motzkin defended open discussion and invited critics to attend and present their arguments.[34] Online workshops convened by the institute from June 2020 also provided the setting for development of the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, addressing distinctions between antisemitic speech and legitimate criticism of Israel and Zionism.[35]

A broader dispute over political orientation surfaced publicly in 2022: sociologist and historian Uri Cohen characterized the institute as far-left and post-Zionist, while Motzkin said it was already left-wing when he became director in 2007.[32] The institute responded that it supported a plurality of opinions and voices and regarded researchers’ political outlooks as their personal business.[32]