The New Normal

Reflections on the start of a new school year

If you’re a paid subscriber to “Listening to the Sirens,” I donate to Shalem College (where I’m the president) whatever you pay, multiplied by 1.25. So even though you don’t get the tax deduction, your gift is magnified as if you did. For those of you who are paying, and for those of you who aren’t (just in case you might want to reconsider), I thought you might want to know a little bit more about Shalem and what we did this year. It’s been a roller coaster of a year. So many highs and so many lows. Looking back, here’s a glimpse of what we experienced and the start of a new year.

The college school year in Israel is dictated by the Jewish calendar and begins just after Simchat Torah, the last holiday of the fall holiday sequence. Last year that day was October 7th, what is now Israel’s day of infamy. Faculty Day, where we welcome faculty to a new year, scheduled for October 8th, didn’t happen. Orientation for the new entering students planned for October 9th didn’t happen.

You should know that the median age of our students is about 24. They come to us after their army service and usually after a gap year of travel. Some of our entering students are in their late 20s or even 30—they come to us after the longer training and service of officers. They come to us because they want to join a community of intellectually curious, intellectually serious people who want to live serious lives when they leave here. They are ambitious about making this country better. That’s our mission. To create the next generation of leadership for this small country that so desperately will need it once this war is over. To create smart, curious, thoughtful people who can speak respectfully to people who don’t agree with them and who learn how to think for themselves.

When the war broke out on October 7, about 60% of our students—about double the rate of other colleges here in Israel—were summoned to reserve duty, alongside 360,000 fellow reservists, some racing home from overseas to serve. Is there another army like this in the world? An army of not just 18 year olds who have been drafted, but a citizen army of reservists—students, fathers, mothers, and even some grandparents who can still fit into their uniforms and who come back to serve whether they are formally called up or not.

With 60% of our students missing, it was impossible to start the year.

We quickly learned that a number of our students, along with hundreds of others, knowing that something terrible had happened at the Gazan border, had headed for that border on October 7 to liberate the communities invaded by Hamas. They knew people were in danger and without hesitation or command, answered the call of duty and of conscience. One of our second-year students who headed south, Amir Sekori, fell in battle that day, leaving behind a wife and two young children. He was 31 years old. That same day, one of our faculty lost her grandson. As the war continued, one of our staff lost a nephew. One of our graduates lost her brother. One of our students lost his brother.

So our community has been broken.

Eventually, the demands on reserves were reduced and there was a chance to start the school year. We ended up starting January 28th with a plan to finish on August 1.

While we waited for our students to return, our hands were not idle. Gila Rockman, our director of service and citizenship, along with faculty and dozens of our students volunteered and ran the Jerusalem Civilian Command Center alongside other non-profits getting vital non-military supplies to our soldiers (socks, raingear, Camelbaks along with mobile medical equipment for battlefield surgery). As the army’s supply crisis eased, the Command Center took care of a good number of the tens of thousands of refugees and evacuees from communities near Gaza and the Lebanese border as Hezbollah bombed those communities in the north. The Command Center worked with over 60 hotels to house them, find food for them, find schools for their children, and offer counseling for the challenges of leaving your home for an unknown time, away.

Tamar Fuks—our Director of Partnerships—got together with seven other volunteers to cook hot meals for the soldiers using donated produce and meat. Three times a week she went with the group and cooked 2000 meals in a kitchen that was evacuated on October 7th near the Gaza border. Doesn’t the army feed them, I asked. Maybe a sandwich, was the answer, then she added—you should have a hot meal if you’re going into battle. Along with the aluminum trays of meatballs and beef stew and rice and potatoes, she added food for thought—articles by Shalem faculty and a request sheet if the soldiers on the base were interested in having Shalem faculty visit their army bases and give a lecture. Our faculty along with some of our graduates have given over 250 lectures to over 10,000 soldiers since the war began.

One of our faculty, Yusri Khaisran, gave more than 75 of those lectures. Criss-crossing the country in his car from the north to the south, Yusri often gave two or three lectures a day and often stayed afterwards for hours, answering questions from curious soldiers. Yusri is a Druze and an expert on Islam and Hezbollah. It was not surprising that soldiers were eager to understand more about who they were fighting.

We opened our building, offering over 20 different mini-courses while the war raged, for students, alumni, and staff who could show up in person. We recorded most of them and made them available to our students and alumni.

At least five of our faculty put their uniforms back on and served. Some of our faculty picked fruit and vegetables or helped elderly neighbors whose foreign caretakers fled the country out of fear of war. And over winter break, we brought 36 mostly American college students to our campus on a study and solidarity mission we called Fear No Evil to read great texts, volunteer, hear lectures from geopolitical experts, to volunteer, and to visit some of the sites of the atrocities of October 7th to bear witness.

Eventually, January arrived and we held the long-delayed orientation for entering students. Sixty of our entering class of 76 were able to make it. I fought off tears as I welcomed them to the start of their educational journey.

Most of our classes involve deep reading of immortal texts in small seminars of fewer than 25 students where the teacher is not the authority but merely the guide who has read the text many times before. Good questions are honored above answers. When I ask students to name their favorite course, they frequently just say “Wow” and pause, struggling to choose just one. I am blessed and grateful to be able to work here.

A Shalem graduate once told me that Shalem is like Noah’s Ark. You come here, the door is closed behind you and you hold the world at arm’s length until you graduate. It’s a haven, a sanctuary from the storms and floods outside. Our Dean of Faculty, the great Leon Kass, tells the new students at orientation that while the world is waiting for them and very much needs what they will have become when they leave here, don’t be in a hurry to leave or to multitask. Let the world wait a little longer. The chance to devote yourself to full-time learning will not come again.

This past year, our students couldn’t completely close the door behind them. They had to face the world over and over again, coming in for a few weeks then back out for reserve duty and then back here again knowing that the storm outside was still raging. But our students repeatedly told us how much they appreciated that Shalem was a place where they could put down the trauma of war and everything else going on and just pretend that they were simply students.

Somehow, almost every one of our students persevered and finished the year. With videos and notes and one-on-one tutoring by faculty members and classmates, our students on the battlefield managed to get through this broken-up year, more or less unbroken. They sometimes struggled to focus. But most of the time, they rose to the occasion and usually with a smile. They savored how precious learning can be, especially in wartime.

A new year of classes starts today. As was the case last year, many students will be in and out of battle as the year continues. As was the case last year, our staff and faculty will do what they can so that students in the reserves keep up with their work as best as they can.

Abnormal is the new normal. Despite all the sorrow of this moment—soldiers dying, our hostages still in captivity, the north still under daily attack and its residents still away from their homes for over a year—we carry on. Our students remain optimistic and dream of a better future for this country. What we do here at Shalem prepares them for the thoughtful leadership this country will desperately need when this war is over.

A few days ago, I ran into the man who helped my wife and I clear a bunch of bureaucratic hurdles in order to move to Israel. I hadn’t seen him in over a year. He sheepishly asked me if I was angry with him. Why would I be angry, I asked. Because I helped you move here and now you’re in the middle of a war, he answered.

I get it. Living here is bittersweet these days, an emotional rollercoaster of sorrow and joy. My week started Sunday night at Har Herzl, Israel’s main military cemetery at 7:15 pm with a funeral for a 43 year-old father of eight children, killed in Lebanon. In despair, we listened to the weeping of his children, family, and friends. The thousands of us in attendance wept with them. Two hours or so later, we streamed out as thousands more streamed in for the next funeral at 9:15pm. Yet another was scheduled for 11:15pm.

The heart breaks. We so want this war to be over. At the same time, most of us understand that going back to October 6 is not an option. That doesn’t make the pain and suffering of our people or the innocent among our neighbors any more bearable.

The next morning, I addressed the incoming first-year Shalem students about the great adventure they have embarked on and that we would do everything we could to keep them on track. How special it was to see their eagerness to get started, the excitement as 70 of the class of 76 newcomers were able to be here, despite the war. As it was last year, many of them will soon be returning to duty. But for a day or a week, they were normal young people going to college.

Many of them have seen things no human being should have to see, the brutality of war, of death, of suffering. Yet somehow, and this is one Israel’s great strengths, young men and women here maintain an exuberance and innocence free of the cynicism that frequently infects young people in other countries these days. The heart soars to be around them. You can’t but be infected by their enthusiasm.

That night, my wife and I danced at a joyous wedding as two young people refused to let the war stop them from uniting and starting a family in the toughest of times. For a few hours, a few hundred of us forgot about the war, forgot about the hostages as best we could, and celebrated with the bride and groom.

Bittersweet. Or as the songwriter Naomi Shemer put it, when you live in Israel you get both the honey and the sting of the bee. That’s the deal. It has more or less been that way since the beginning of this country. And really, that’s the history of the Jewish people. The sweet comes with a pinch of pain, and tragically, too often, much more than a pinch. It’s a package deal, the bitter with the sweet, the joy with the sorrow. It’s a package rich in purpose and meaning. Elsewhere, the focus is on everyday matters. Here, every day matters. Every day, the purpose and the meaning are front and center. So no, I’m not angry I moved here. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.