With the launch of the new 2013-14 academic year, four new faculty members have joined MLI, two of them visiting faculty members.
The new faculty members are Ruth Lehavi and Dr. Vered Sakal, and the new visiting faculty members this year are Prof. Ariel Hirschfeld and Bambi Sheleg.
Ruth Lehavi runs the school principals training program at the David Yellin Academic College of Education. She founded the Keshet school in Jerusalem, serving as its principal for 12 years, and was previously the principal of the Jerusalem Experimental High School. Ruth holds an MA in history from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and is a doctoral student in history at Bar-Ilan University. She gained her teaching certificate in history and bible from the Kerem Institute in Jerusalem. Ruth is a graduate of the first cohort of the Mandel School for Educational Leadership.
Dr. Vered Sakal received rabbinic ordination from Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem, and served as the artistic director of the Hakhel Festival of Jewish Learning. She holds a doctorate in Jewish thought from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and completed a post-doctorate at the Tikva Center for Law and Jewish Civilization at NYU. Her fields of research are modern Jewish thought and liberal theory.
Prof. Ariel Hirschfeld is a researcher and cultural critic. He is a professor of Hebrew literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he studied musicology and Hebrew literature, and where he served as the head of the faculty of Hebrew literature from 2008 to 2012. He has also taught in a Jerusalem high school for over 25 years. Ariel publishes essays and articles in Israel and around the world, and for many years wrote a weekly column in Haaretz. Among his books: “Voi, Che Sapete – the Dialogue of Love in Mozart’s Operas” (1994), “Notes on a Place” (2000), “Toward the Last of the Gods: The Fountains of Rome” (2003), “Notes on Epiphany” (2006), “The Tuned Harp – The Language of Emotions in the Poetry of H. N. Bialik” (2011), “Reading S. Y. Agnon” (2011).
Bambi Sheleg is a journalist, publicist and editor, who champions a Jewish and Israeli public discourse, both deep and broad in scope, that focuses on social justice and identity. To further these goals, in 1999 she established the "Eretz Acheret" non-profit (literally, A Different Land), which publishes the "Eretz Acheret" magazine. The magazine examines and analyzes social, cultural and economic processes in Israeli society and the Jewish world. In recognition of her efforts to foster relations between Jews of differing world-views Bambi was awarded the 1998 Liebhaber Prize for the Promotion of Religious Pluralism and Tolerance in Israel, awarded by the Masorti Movement of Israel; the 2011 B’nai B’rith World Center Award for Journalism Recognizing Excellence in Diaspora Reportage; and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's 2012 Simon Ethel Flegg Award, for promoting mutual acceptance between the different factions in the contemporary Jewish world. Bambi is a columnist for Yediot Aharonot, and a board member of Yad Vashem.
The faculty and staff of the Mandel Leadership Institute wish their new colleagues every success in their new positions, and a productive year of learning and teaching.
