Shalem Hires Director of Department of Culture, Community, and Society

April 17, 2013

Shalem College is delighted to announce that Dr. Stephen Hazan Arnoff will be joining its team as Director of the Department of Culture, Community, and Society in August. Hazan Arnoff will be responsible for shaping the cultural and creative life of the campus, and facilitating collaboration between students, faculty, college leadership, and the larger community. Through intensive volunteer and community-engagement programs, public programs, partnerships with other academic and cultural institutions in Israel and around the world, and a range of special projects, the Department will serve as a hub for transforming the wisdom students gain through their studies into experience and expression.

“I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to bring my interests and experience as an educator and community builder to Shalem at such a formative time for the institution,” says Hazan Arnoff. “I want to make sure students have the space, tools, and resources they need to harness the power of the ideas that animate the campus.”

As Executive Director of New York City’s 14^th Street Y since 2007, Stephen led the institution’s evolution into one of the fastest-growing anchors for Jewish communal life in North America.  Under his leadership, the Y tripled the number of people it serves and launched a range of innovative programs, including LABA: A Laboratory for Jewish Culture. Hazan Arnoff holds a doctorate in Midrash and scriptural interpretation from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, where he was a Wexner Graduate Fellow. He publishes, lectures, and teaches widely on art, religion, music, and Jewish life; most recently, he contributed chapters on Bruce Springsteen and the Bible to Reading the Boss: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Works of Bruce Springsteen (Lexington Books) and on Bob Dylan and religion to Dylan at Play (Cambridge Scholars Publishing). Hazan Arnoff has also been a Tikvah Scholar at NYU Law School (2012-13), where he researched the nexus of myth, religion, and popular music, and a Mandel Jerusalem Fellow at the Mandel Leadership Institute (2005-07), where he developed models for the use of art by legacy institutions to reinvent and sustain themselves in the 21st century.

Dr. Daniel Gordis, Shalem Senior Vice President and Koret Distinguished Fellow, expressed his confidence in Hazan Arnoff’s ability to create a vibrant, peerless campus life. “I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Stephen for many years, and I can honestly say that he is one of the most talented educators with whom I’ve had the privilege of working. In selecting an individual with the abilities, drive, and breadth of knowledge necessary to inspire our students to connect thought and action, and the classroom and the world beyond, Stephen was the natural and best choice.  I’m excited to see him turn his impressive talents to the task of making the Shalem academic community a laboratory for what a truly engaged, public-oriented, and forward-thinking college campus can be like.”

More at http://shalem.ac.il.