The Jewish Federation – Shalom Hartman Partnership

The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington is proud to partner with the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, a premier center of Jewish thought and education, to provide the Greater Washington Jewish Community with thought leadership on the most pressing issues facing the community pertaining to Jewish identity, Jewish values and American democracy, Jewish peoplehood, Israel, and courageous leadership.

Throughout the partnership, we have provided over 170 sessions for hundreds of Greater Washington Jewish community change-agents including executive directors, rabbis, educators, lay leaders, academics, policy leaders, and public officials that introduced frameworks for steering the community through difficult challenges while building a vibrant Jewish future. These initiatives have provided community builders with shared language and ideas, which in turn builds a stronger sense of shared community, connections, and culture throughout the Greater Washington Jewish community—creating conditions for effective work together.

Enjoy the recordings of our past public lectures below as well as information on upcoming programs and opportunities.

The Jewish Federation-Shalom Hartman partnership began in 2018 with a focus on: Our Values, Our Aspirations: A Jewish Communal Conversation. We integrated Jewish tradition, debates, and ideas into a focus on identity, partisanship, and our relationship with Israel. In the spring of 2020, we continued our momentum into year three with a transformational, three-part virtual lecture series, From Election to Inauguration and Beyond: Jewish Identity and Civic Responsibility, which focused on the 2020 U.S. presidential election and the inauguration, and its effects on Jewish communal identity, Jewish values, and the Jewish community’s civic rights and obligations. We simultaneously embarked on a signature partnership initiative that convened DMV leaders to envision together how to build vibrant Jewish life in Greater Washington.

Last year, we focused our learning on three core topics identified by our communal leaders as critical for building Vibrant Jewish Life – particularism vs. universalism, creating a culture of belonging throughout the Jewish community, and our evolving relationship with Israel.

This year, the fifth year of our partnership, we continue to integrate the world of applied scholarship of the Shalom Hartman Institute with the on-the-ground strategic communal work of Federation and will utilize this unique interplay of ideas and action for convening leaders on topics of critical concern for the Jewish community. Topics will include Jewish identity and the American public square, power and vulnerability, and aspirational Zionism, revitalizing a moral conversation about Israel.

Our Values, Our Aspirations By the Numbers

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14 Public Lectures

35 Unique Cohorts

14 Convenings for Jewish Professional and Lay Leaders

Shared Destiny or Separate Paths? A New Perspective on Jewish Peoplehood
Featuring the riveting keynote address by Rabbi Dr. Donniel Hartman, President of the Shalom Hartman Institute, live from Shared Destiny | Separate Paths: A Leadership Forum on American Jewry & Israel. (Recorded March 19, 2023)

Jewish Identity and the Public Square
Featuring Yehuda Kurtzer, president of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, and Emily Tamkin, author and senior U.S. editor of the New Statesman, in conversation with Gil Preuss, CEO of The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington. (Recorded November 28, 2022)

Towards a Community of Belonging
Featuring Dr. Mijal Bitton, Scholar in Residence at the Shalom Hartman Institute, in conversation with Yolanda Savage-Narva, Assistant Vice President of Racial Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion at the Union for Reform Judaism, moderated by Gil Preuss, CEO of The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington. (Recorded May 9, 2022)

Towards a New Zionist Discourse
Featuring Rabbi Dr. Donniel Hartman, President of Shalom Hartman Institute and Gil Preuss, CEO, The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington. Congregation. (Recorded February 9, 2022)

Part 3: Jewish Peoplehood and How We Heal
Featuring Dr. Tal Becker, Senior Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, and Dr. Erica Brown, Director of the Mayberg Center for Jewish Education and Leadership at George Washington University, in conversation with Gil Preuss, CEO of The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington. (March 11, 2021; this lecture was not recorded)

Part 2: From Election to Inauguration and Beyond: Jewish Identity and Civic Responsibility
Featuring Rabbi Dr. Donniel Hartman, President of the Shalom Hartman Institute, Kenneth R. Weinstein, former President and CEO of the Hudson Institute, and Rabbi Lauren Holtzblatt, Senior Rabbi at Adas Israel Congregation. (Recorded January 14, 2021)

Part 1: From Election to Inauguration and Beyond: Jewish Identity and Civic Responsibility
Featuring Dr. Yehuda Kurtzer, President of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, and Dr. Tamara Cofman Wittes, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, moderated by Gil Preuss, CEO of The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington. (Recorded November 24, 2020)

Is There Any Chance for Peace? An Israeli Writer Reaches Out to Palestinians
Featuring Yossi Klein Halevi, Senior Research Fellow and Co-Director of Muslim Leadership Initiative, Shalom Hartman Institute (Recorded March 12, 2020)

The Moral Tribes of the Jewish People: Conflict and Community in an Age of Polarization
Featuring Dr. Tal Becker, Senior Research Fellow, Shalom Hartman Institute (November 19, 2019; this lecture was not recorded)

Politics and Morality: How Separable Are They?
Featuring Dr. Elana Stein Hain, Scholar-in-Residence and Director of Faculty, Shalom Hartman Institute of North America (January 13, 2020; this lecture was not recorded)

The Moral, the Political and the Partisan: Jewish Community and Jewish Values in an Era of Polarization
Featuring Dr. Yehuda Kurtzer, President, Shalom Hartman Institute of North America (Recorded on October 16, 2018)

From Family to Consumer? New Models for the Relationship Between Israel and World Jewry
Featuring Rabbi Dr. Donniel Hartman, President, Shalom Hartman Institute (Recorded on January 13, 2019)

Israelis Go to the Polls: What the Election Campaign Reveals About Israel
Featuring Yossi Klein Halevi, Senior Fellow and Co-Director of Muslim Leadership Initiative, Shalom Hartman Institute (Recorded on March 28, 2019)

Federation is proud to partner with The Shalom Hartman Institute, one of the leading centers of Jewish thought and education serving Israel and world Jewry. Together, we are offering Greater Washington’s Jewish community members meaningful opportunities to explore the most pressing questions facing our communities today around Judaism and democracy, ethics, peoplehood, Jewish identity, and more.

The programs are also presented as part of Ideas for Today, the Shalom Hartman Institute’s virtual learning season with exclusive multi-session seminars, public lectures, and special programs that harness Jewish wisdom for a better future. For more information, please visit the Shalom Hartman Institute website.

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