by Marilyn Silverstein
NJJN Bureau Chief/PMB

September 11, 2008

An Israeli think tank with roots at Princeton University came home to the Ivy League campus this week to cosponsor a cutting-edge conference on the impact of Jewish ideas on Western political thought.

The Jerusalem-based Shalem Center, which was founded by five Princeton graduates in 1994, joined hands with the university’s Program in Judaic Studies to present an international conference, Political Hebraism: Jewish Sources in the History of Political Thought.

The Sept. 7-9 conference drew some 120 multidisciplinary scholars from around the world for a provocative menu of panels, papers, roundtable discussions, and keynote addresses.

The conference focused on the role played by Jewish sources in the evolution of early modern and contemporary political thought. In the conference spotlight were such subjects as social justice, the uses of power, the imprint of Jewish law on contemporary legal systems, and the political legacy of the Hebrew Bible.

The event marked the Shalem Center’s third international conference and its first in partnership with an American university, noted Yoram Hazony, one of the founders of the institute who now serves as its provost and senior fellow.

“This is kind of an honor to be able to come back to this prestigious place and partner with it so we can contribute to the way things are taught,” said Hazony as he joined Shalem Center associate fellow Joshua Berman at the Nassau Inn on the opening night of the conference.

Hazony, who grew up in Princeton, holds a doctorate in political theory from Rutgers University. Berman, a Princeton graduate who lectures in Bible at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, is author of the recently published Created Equal: How the Bible Broke With Ancient Political Thought (Oxford University Press).

“We’re looking at how to rethink the whole history of Western thought from the perspective of what did the Jewish component contribute to the story,” Hazony said. “One of the most important things a conference like this can do is to bring scholars together from many different fields. They all have to speak English, and that forces them to turn academic stuff into ideas people can understand. A big part of the message is that we need a whole bunch of different perspectives.”

One goal of the conference was to bring those different perspectives to the same table to confront the same Jewish texts, Hazony added.

“There’s an awakening to an understanding that Judaism can constructively engage and inform many academic disciplines — not just Jewish studies,” he said. “Ultimately, we’re hoping to take this model and bring it to many different campuses in the United States.”

Berman said that the relevance of the conference was made manifest by a New York Times article he had read just the day before. The article, which focused on the ways in which religion has influenced the political career of Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin, noted that Palin had consulted her pastor about which biblical sources to read in order to become a better governor.

“He told her to open the Old Testament to the Book of Esther and read how a beauty queen had derived her power to be a real queen,” Berman said. “We can’t avoid how these sources influence our political discourse.”

Political theorist Michael Walzer, professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, said he welcomes the awakening of interest in the subject.

“There’s a wonderful surge of interest in Jewish politics and Jewish thinking about politics,” Walzer told New Jersey Jewish News as he arrived at the Nassau Inn to deliver a keynote address on the elders of the Bible. “There are all kinds of young scholars who come from who knows where who are writing wonderful papers, articles, and books about all this,” he said. “It’s very exciting.”

Shalem’s academic spirit

Daniel Kurtzer, former U.S. ambassador to Israel and Egypt and the S. Daniel Abraham Professor in Middle Eastern Policy Studies at Princeton University, shares in that excitement.

“I think it’s great to have this collaboration between the Program in Judaic Studies and the Shalem Center,” said Kurtzer, who was scheduled to be a discussant in a conference panel that would look at the modern world of nations through Hebraic lenses.

“What the Shalem Center has tried to do is revive the study of the Bible, not only as a religious experience, but in terms of what it has to say about contemporary political thought,” he said. “The Bible represents the history of a society, its economy, and its community, and only during the last 25 years have people tried to draw those lessons out. It’s a new discipline and a very interesting one.”

Peter Schafer, director of Princeton’s Program in Judaic Studies, said he was very happy to see the collaborative conference unfolding at the university.

“I’m a scholar, and so far I’m very happy that it has scholarly significance,” Schafer said. “It is really focusing on a very important subject, Jewish political thought — the broad range of that subject throughout the ages — to bring it to our attention. That’s really fascinating.”

Schafer’s colleague Leora Batnitzky, professor of religion at Princeton, pointed to the conference’s relevance. “What we want to do at Princeton is fully integrate Judaic studies into the humanities, such as political theory, philosophy, and history — really to see how Jewish sources are connected with non-Jewish sources,” Batnitzky said. “And so I think this is very much in keeping.”

The Shalem Center actually grew out of that academic spirit at Princeton, according to Hazony.

“As undergraduates, we already had the idea to set up a Jewish Princeton in Israel,” he said, “and now we’re going to be able to do it.”

In fact, Hazony said, the center is currently in the process of applying to become a degree-granting institution, a move that will transform it into Israel’s first liberal arts college.

“The thing I most want people to know is that somebody is trying to set up a liberal arts college in Israel,” he said. “It would be really great if people could get excited about that.”

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