[Russ Roberts] If you’re a paid subscriber to "Listening to the Sirens," I donate to Shalem College| …Israel’s decade-old Great Books college modelled on St. John’s College with a Jewish twist. Oddly enough, Israel never had one of those before… |
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.