What's Happening Over at Shalem Center?

Just received their newsletter and read this:-

Scheindlin of Peace Now, Shoah Foundation joins Shalem as VP of Development

Ahavia Scheindlin, whose career in the Jewish world includes six years as National Director of Development and Planning for Americans for Peace Now and three years in Berlin as Vice President for European Operations for the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, has joined the Shalem Center as Vice President for Development. Scheindlin will be based in the Shalem Foundation's new Los Angeles offices.

Moreover, she was for three years chair of Americans for Peace Now’s national executive committee and helped to transform the small volunteer organization into a national advocacy group with offices in New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C.
Scheindlin was also deputy political director and chief Jewish Fundraiser for the 1992 Clinton Presidential Campaign and has been active personally and professionally in California Democratic politics for many years.

Is Shalem planning to reach deep into liberal, progressive Jewish pockets for their neoconservative agenda?

Is Scheindlen turning political colors?

Is Shalem?

Anybody have any idea?


And while we're on the topic, here's another appointment of someone who opposes the idea of a Jewish civilian presence in the territory of the historic homeland of the Jewish people:-

Author, Scholar Daniel Gordis to take leading role in establishing Shalem College

Daniel Gordis, a leading Jewish educator and author of half a dozen books about Judaism and Israel, is joining the Shalem Center as Senior Vice President and Senior Fellow in the Institute for Zionist History and Thought. Gordis will take a leading role in the efforts to establish undergraduate and graduate degree-granting programs under the Center's auspices. Gordis was the founding dean of the Ziegler Rabbinical School at the University of Judaism. In recent years, he has been Vice President of the Mandel Foundation-Israel and Director of the Mandel Leadership Institute in Jerusalem. He holds a PhD from the University of Southern California and rabbinic ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary.

What Money Can Buy

The Shalem Center has a new baby.

Its "Institute of Strategic Studies".

The 'Scholars' in the Institute include: Natan Sharansky, Institute Chairman and Distinguished Fellow; Moshe "Bogie" Yaalon, Distinguished Fellow; Michael B. Oren, Senior Fellow; Martin Kramer, Senior Fellow; Yossi Klein Halevi, Senior Fellow. (*)

To get it off the ground, the Center graciously accepted a $4.5 million gift from the Adelson Family Foundation.

The Institute is intended to advance ideas such as the: Spreading of human rights and democracy; Opposition to totalitarian regimes; and Defense of national sovereignty and a Jewish state.

Its first effort is a briefing this week, one session of which is entitled "One People, Two Countries?" with Ehud Yaari and Bassem Eid. Bassem is the founder and director of the Palestinian Rights Monotoring Group (actually, that should be the Palestinain Human Rights Monoitring Group. They got it wrong).

I have quoted from the PHRMG reports and have no problem with his attendance.

What I do find a bit odd is:

a) why not a title like "Three [or Four] Countries for Two Peoples?"
b) why not a human rights activist from the Jewish camp?

I think Shalem is starting off on the wrong foot.

P.S. By the way, I liked how they simply rearranged themselves. Four of the five fellows of the Institute have been working for Shalem for years. Yossi Klein Halevi is a senior fellow in the Shalem Center's Institute for Zionist History and Thought.
Michael B. Oren is a Senior Fellow at the Shalem Center. Sharansky came to Shalem in May 2005 as a distinguised fellow. Yaalon was at Shalem for almost a year before moving on to Beit Moreshet. As for Kramer, I think he's the only real "new guy on the block".

A Bit Odd

Shalem Center has published a new book, New Essays on Zionism.

After almost 20 years of non-stop academic and pseudo-intellectual post-Zionist attacks, the Center laudably has counter-attacked. I am not complaining here that this was a collection mainly of former Azure essays, making the editor's work quite simple. But I do have a complaint nevertherless.

What irks me is that out of over 400 pages, Ze'ev Jabotinsky is mentioned on three of them. Twice in one article by...Amnon Rubinstein - not quite the Jabotinsky fan even if he is quite fair about Zionist history - and once more in Ze'ev Mahgen's essay. None of Shalem's "new" thinkers seem to consider Jabotinsky worthy of deliberation.

Now, you might say that I am a bit unobjective when it comes to Jabotinsky. Maybe. However, in the past few years, there has been a new, two-volume 1300 + page biography of him, Lone Wolf; his novel, The Five, was published in English translation for the first time; an analysis of his nationalism was recently published, in English; another book, The Trumph of Military Zionism, is out; not to mention his letters, eight volumes so far and a few other books [1] [2] [3] [4]

For example, here's one appreciation:

Often slighted as a marginal or eccentric figure, Jabotinsky emerges from this account as a thinker with a coherent view of nationalism and as an extraordinarily sensitive observer who often correctly foresaw the course of political developments. His fundamental principle of mutual respect nations provides a sound basis for the development of relations among Ukrainians and Jews.

Jabotinsky was a journalist, poet, novelist as well as a politician and a statesman. He worked in the cultural as well as political field. You would think that Shalem could have found some writer who could present the potential impact that Jabotinsky's thought has for today's battles against the post- and anti-Zionists. For these were exactly the battles he fought then 70-90 years ago, with passion, logic and philosophical ethics.

Too bad.