“For many of the last twenty-five years, I have participated in the Community Leadership Program (“CLP”) offered by the Shalom Hartman Institute for one week each summer in Jerusalem. My relationship to the Institute dates to 1997 when my wife and I sought to consider our life as American Jews through the lens of a year-long family experience in Israel. (That story, another time!) Since then, our nearly once-a-year visit to Israel has played a central role in informing our family’s Jewish identity, with the Hartman Institute providing the enriching intellectual foundation.
This past summer, amidst an environment marked by stark political polarization, CLP provided a particularly welcome haven within which to grapple with the role of Zionism in the life of a pluralistic American Jew.”
