Shabtai (formerly known as Eliezer and Chai Society) is a global Jewish leadership society based at
Yale University
Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...
.
Shabtai's exclusive membership boasts a diverse group of Yale students, alumni, and current and former faculty.
Time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, ...
magazine has referred to Shabtai as Yale's "modish club du jour" and the campus' "
secret society of a different stripe," In 2019, Shabtai co-founder and
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...
Senator Cory Booker
Cory Anthony Booker (born April 27, 1969) is an American politician and attorney who has served as the junior United States senator from New Jersey since 2013. A member of the Democratic Party, Booker is the first African-American U.S. se ...
ran for
President of the United States
The president of the United States (POTUS) is the head of state and head of government of the United States of America. The president directs the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States ...
."
History
Founded in 1996 by graduate students Ben Karp,
Noah Feldman
Noah R. Feldman (born May 22, 1970) is an American academic and legal scholar. He is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and chairman of the Society of Fellows at Harvard University. He is the author of 10 books, host of ...
,
Cory Booker
Cory Anthony Booker (born April 27, 1969) is an American politician and attorney who has served as the junior United States senator from New Jersey since 2013. A member of the Democratic Party, Booker is the first African-American U.S. se ...
, and
Michael Alexander and Rabbi Shmully Hecht, the society aims to attract Jewish and non-Jewish leaders on Yale's campus in order to create dialogue between various branches of Judaism and between the secular and religious worlds in an intellectual salon setting. The society's Friday night meetings, discussion-based format and ethos of mutual improvement have drawn comparisons to Benjamin Franklin's
Junto Club. As one journalist described it, "like Yale's famous
secret societies
A secret society is a club or an organization whose activities, events, inner functioning, or membership are concealed. The society may or may not attempt to conceal its existence. The term usually excludes covert groups, such as intelligence a ...
, Shabtai is elite and exclusive, but unlike the infamous
Skull & Bones or
Scroll & Key
The Scroll and Key Society is a Collegiate secret societies in North America, secret society, founded in 1842 at Yale University, in New Haven, Connecticut. It is one of the oldest Collegiate secret societies in North America#Yale University, Y ...
or
Book & Snake, it is not clandestine."
Another described it as facilitating "the kind of conversations around the Shabbat table that bring together secular and sectarian, poor and rich, Muslim and Jew, student and scholar, Mormon and pagan and jock and genius." In 2014, a gift by
Benny Shabtai and family facilitated the purchase of the Anderson Mansion, a late-nineteenth century mansion in New Haven's
Orange Street Historic District.
Yale 300
In celebration of Yale's tercentennial in 2001, the society created the Yale 300 project, a series of recorded interviews with 300 prominent Jewish alumni of Yale from various disciplines and walks of life. Participants included
Stephen A. Schwarzman,
Henry Winkler,
Alan Dershowitz
Alan Morton Dershowitz ( ; born September 1, 1938) is an American lawyer and former law professor known for his work in U.S. constitutional law and American criminal law. From 1964 to 2013, he taught at Harvard Law School, where he was appoin ...
,
Floyd Abrams
Floyd Abrams (born in July 9, 1936) is an American attorney at Cahill Gordon & Reindel. He is an expert on constitutional law and has argued in 13 cases before the Supreme Court of the United States.
Abrams represented ''The New York Times'' ...
,
Peter Beinart
Peter Alexander Beinart (; born February 28, 1971) is an American liberal columnist, journalist, and political commentator. A former editor of ''The New Republic'', he has also written for ''Time'', ''The New York Times'', and ''The New York Revie ...
,
Dan Rose,
Steven Brill,
Susan Crown,
Rob Glaser
Robert Denis Glaser (born January 16, 1962 in New York City, New York) is the founder of RealNetworks, which produces RealAudio, RealVideo, RealPlayer, and Helix, among other products and services. Before founding RealNetworks, he had become a m ...
,
Paul Goldberger
Paul Goldberger (born in 1950) is an American author, architecture critic and lecturer. He is known for his "Sky Line" column in ''The New Yorker''.
Biography
Shortly after starting as a reporter at ''The New York Times'' in 1972, he was assign ...
,
Jeff Greenfield
Jeffrey Greenfield (born June 10, 1943) is an American television journalist and author.
Early life
He was born in New York City, to Benjamin and Helen Greenfield. He grew up in Manhattan and graduated in 1960 from the Bronx High School of Sci ...
,
Samuel Heyman,
Donna Dubinsky
Donna Dubinsky is an American business leader who played an integral role in the development of personal digital assistants (PDAs) serving as CEO of Palm, Inc. and co-founding Handspring with Jeff Hawkins in 1995. Dubinsky co-founded Numenta in ...
,
Richard Levin
Richard Charles Levin (born April 7, 1947) is an American economist and academic administrator. From 1993 to 2013, he was the 22nd President of Yale University. From March 2014 to June 2017, he was Chief Executive Officer of Coursera.
Early lif ...
,
Robert Pozen
Robert Charles Pozen known as "Bob" (born 1946) is an American financial executive with a strong interest in public policy. Pozen currently teaches executives about how to be more productive and serves as an executive coach and mentor, www.bobpozen ...
,
Gideon Rose
Gideon Rose is a former editor of ''Foreign Affairs'' and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He served as Associate Director for Near East and South Asian Affairs on the staff of the National Security Council from 1994 to 1995 under the ...
,
Robert Baker,
Jonathan F. Rose,
Jonathan Rothberg,
Joshua Bekenstein
Joshua Bekenstein is an American businessman and co-chairman of Bain Capital.
Education and personal life
Bekenstein graduated from Yale University in 1980 with a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.).
He then graduated from Harvard Business School with a Ma ...
,
Robert Stern,
Stephen Susman
Stephen Daily Susman (January 20, 1941 – July 14, 2020) was an American commercial litigation, commercial plaintiffs attorney and founding and name partner of Susman Godfrey LLP. He won more than $2 billion in damages and settlements in jus ...
,
Calvin Trillin
Calvin Marshall Trillin (born 5 December 1935) is an American journalist, humorist, food writer, poet, memoirist and novelist. He is a winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor (2012) and an elected member of the American Academy of Arts ...
, and
Wendy Wasserstein
Wendy Wasserstein (October 18, 1950 – January 30, 2006) was an American playwright. She was an Andrew Dickson White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University. She received the Tony Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1989 ...
, among many others.
Shabtai TV
After 25 years of operating primarily in private, in 2020 the members launche
Shabtai TVin order to share the benefits of its talks and events with a wider audience. The site showcases videos of Shabtai public events and, where discretion permits, excerpts from private talks, dinners and
farbrengen
A ''farbrengen'' (, yi, פארברענגען, lit= oyousgathering; german: verbringen "to spend ime/solidarity/festivity together) is a Hasidic gathering. This term is only used by Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidim, as other Hasidim have a '' tish'' or ...
s.
Social justice activism
In reflection of its Jewish values, the society has held events to highlight social justice issues and promote interfaith dialogue and connectivity. In 2018, it held a screening of Academy Award-nominated ''
Knife Skills'', a film about EDWIN's restaurant in
Cleveland
Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...
, which employs and trains former prisoners to help them readjust and lead successful lives. The screening was attended by New Haven Mayor
Toni Harp
Toni Nathaniel Harp (born August 6, 1947) is an American politician who served as the 50th Mayor of New Haven, Connecticut. Harp, a Democrat, was previously a state senator in Connecticut from 1993 to 2013. A resident of New Haven, Harp represente ...
.
In 2012, the society hosted Israel soldier
Gilad Shalit
Gilad Shalit ( he-a, גלעד שליט, Shalit.ogg, ''Gilˁad Šaliṭ'', born 28 August 1986) is a former MIA soldier of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) who on 25 June 2006, was captured by Palestinian militants in a cross-border raid via tu ...
in an event celebrating his release from five years of
Hamas
Hamas (, ; , ; an acronym of , "Islamic Resistance Movement") is a Palestinian Sunni-Islamic fundamentalist, militant, and nationalist organization. It has a social service wing, Dawah, and a military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam ...
captivity the year before. Hundreds of students attended and were addressed by Prof. Charles Hill and dignitaries from the government of Israel.
The society hosted
Tony Schwartz, ghostwriter of ''
The Art of the Deal'', in 2017 to discuss
Donald Trump
Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.
Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of P ...
's psychology, motivations, and character, as observed from shadowing him to write the book.
In November 2018, Shabtai hosted criminal justice reform advocate
Anthony Ray Hinton at a
Yud Tes Kislev event commemorating the anniversary of the release of
Shneur Zalman of Liadi
Shneur Zalman of Liadi ( he, שניאור זלמן מליאדי, September 4, 1745 – December 15, 1812 O.S. / 18 Elul 5505 – 24 Tevet 5573) was an influential Lithuanian Jewish rabbi and the founder and first Rebbe of Chabad, a branch of ...
from imprisonment by the
tsarist Russian police. Hinton discussed the 30 years he spent on death row in Alabama before being freed by forensic evidence that his court-appointed lawyer had failed to request.
In December 2018, Shabtai hosted attorney
Kristen Gibbons Feden to discuss her prosecution of
Bill Cosby
William Henry Cosby Jr. ( ; born July 12, 1937) is an American stand-up comedian, actor, and media personality. He made significant contributions to American and African-American culture, and is well known in the United States for his eccentric ...
on charges of rape. Feden said that the success of the prosecution proved that, increasingly "victims of rape and sexual assault can find justice in our legal institutions, as well as society."
Business ethics and leadership and philanthropy
Corporate leaders lecture regularly at Shabtai in an effort to inspire morals ethics and values in the financial world. These have included
Jonathan Klein,
Robert Rosenkranz
Robert Rosenkranz (born August 5, 1942) is an American philanthropist and the chairman of Delphi Capital Management, an investment concern with over $35 billion in assets under management, and the founder of a group of investment and private equit ...
,
Robert Reffkin
Robert L. Reffkin is an American entrepreneur who co-founded the online real estate brokerage Compass, Inc. and serves as the company's CEO.
Biography
Reffkin is African American and Jewish and grew up in Berkeley, California. His father was a ...
, David Messer,
Vivek Ramaswamy
Vivek Ramaswamy (born August 9, 1985) is an American entrepreneur in the healthcare and technology sectors, a political commentator, and a ''New York Times'' bestselling author. In 2022, he founded Strive Asset Management and currently serves as t ...
,
Mark Gerson
Mark Gerson is an American investor, businessman, and philanthropist. He co-founded the Gerson Lehrman Group (GLG) and Thuzio. Gerson is also involved in philanthropic organizations African Mission Healthcare Foundation and United Hatzalah.
Ge ...
,
Tal Keinan,
Michael Shvo, Slava Rubin, David Kramer,
Sharif El-Gamal
Sharif El-Gamal (born December 23, 1973) is an American real estate developer. He is the chairman and chief executive officer of Soho Properties, a Manhattan-based real estate company. El-Gamal came to international attention in 2010 for his role ...
,
Michael Steinhardt
Michael H. Steinhardt (born December 7, 1940) is an American billionaire hedge fund manager, philanthropist, and former antiquities collector. In 1967, he founded a hedge fund, Steinhardt Partners which he ran until he closed it in 1995. After a ...
,
Alex Karp
Alexander Caedmon Karp (born 2 October 1967) is an American billionaire businessman, and the co-founder and CEO of the software firm Palantir Technologies. As of April 2022, his estimated net worth is US$1.1 billion.
Early life
Alexander Caedmon ...
, Richard Paul Richman, Emary Aaronson, Jonathan Newhouse,
Joseph Cayre,
Roman Weil, Arthur J. Mirante II, Elliot Badzin, and Robert Mendy Klein, Brian Kreiter, Jake Katz, Judah Taub
Richard Hurowitz Scott Shay,
Tal Keinan and Vance Serchuk among many others.
Academic and literary fora
Leading academics, writers and editors of varied disciplines join Shabtai for intimate conversation, often exploring groundbreaking theories and ideas. These have included
David Brooks,
Timothy Snyder
Timothy David Snyder (born August 18, 1969) is an American historian specializing in the modern history of Central and Eastern Europe. He is the Richard C. Levin Professor of History at Yale University and a permanent fellow at the Institute ...
,
Anne Applebaum
Anne Elizabeth Applebaum (born July 25, 1964) is an American journalist and historian. She has written extensively about the history of Communism and the development of civil society in Central and Eastern Europe.
She has worked at ''The Econ ...
,
James Kirchick
James Kirchick (; born 1983) is an American reporter, foreign correspondent, author, and columnist. He has been described as a conservative or neoconservative.
Career
Kirchick was raised in a Jewish family and attended Yale University, whe ...
,
Bret Stephens
Bret Louis Stephens (born November 21, 1973) is an American conservative journalist, editor, and columnist. He began working as an opinion columnist for ''The New York Times'' in April 2017 and as a senior contributor to NBC News in June 2017.
...
,
Bari Weiss
Bari Weiss (born March 25, 1984) is an American journalist, writer, and editor. She was an op-ed and book review editor at ''The Wall Street Journal'' (2013–2017) and an op-ed staff editor and writer on culture and politics at ''The New Yor ...
,
Elizabeth Wurtzel
Elizabeth Lee Wurtzel (July 31, 1967 – January 7, 2020) was an American writer, journalist, and lawyer known for the confessional memoir ''Prozac Nation'', which she published at the age of 27. Her work often focused on chronicling her persona ...
,
Leslie Epstein
Leslie Donald Epstein (born May 4, 1938 in Los Angeles) is an American educator, essayist, and novelist. Epstein is currently Professor of English and Director of the Creative Writing Program at Boston University.
Career
Epstein was born to an A ...
,
Dovid Katz
Dovid Katz (Yiddish: , also , Hirshe-Dovid Kats, , born 9 May 1956) is an American-born, Vilnius-based scholar, author and educator, specializing in Yiddish language and literature, Lithuanian Jewish culture, and the Holocaust in Eastern Europe. ...
,
Ed Rothstein,
Joshua Safran
Joshua Safran is an American television screenwriter and executive producer.
Education
Safran attended the Horace Mann School prior to graduating from NYU Tisch with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in playwriting. He has stated he is Jewish.
C ...
,
Peter Salovey
Peter Salovey (; born February 21, 1958) is an American social psychologist and current President of Yale University. He previously served as Yale's Provost, Dean of Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and Dean of Yale College. Salovey i ...
,
Adam Gopnik
Adam Gopnik (born August 24, 1956) is an American writer and essayist. He is best known as a staff writer for ''The New Yorker,'' to which he has contributed non-fiction, fiction, memoir, and criticism since 1986.
He is the author of nine books ...
, Joseph Klein,
Jeremy England,
Eben Alexander,
Scott J. Shapiro,
Lara Vapnyar
Lara Vapnyar (born 1975) is a Russian-American writer currently living in the United States. She studied comparative literature at CUNY and worked with André Aciman and Louis Menand.
Vapnyar has published four novels and two collections of shor ...
,
Andre Aciman,
Christine Hayes
Christine Hayes is an American academic and scholar of Jewish studies, currently serving as the Sterling Professor of Religious Studies in Classical Judaica at Yale University, specializing in Talmudic and Midrashic studies and Classical Jud ...
, Kathryn Lofton,
Graeme Wood, James Dao,
Trish Hall,
Stephen Carter, Hal Boyd,
Keith Urbahn,
Steven B. Smith,
Jack Balkin
Jack M. Balkin (born August 13, 1956) is an American legal scholar. He is the Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment at Yale Law School. Balkin is the founder and director of the Yale Information Society Project (ISP), a r ...
,
Laurie R. Santos,
Charles Hill,
Kate Stith
Kate Stith, also known as Kate Stith-Cabranes, is the Lafayette S. Foster Professor of Law and the former acting dean of Yale Law School. Her appointment was announced on March 23, 2009, by Yale University President Richard Levin, when former dean ...
,
Louis Begley
Louis Begley (born Ludwik Begleiter; October 6, 1933) is a Polish-born Jewish American novelist. He is best known for writing the semi-autobiographical Holocaust novel ''Wartime Lies'' (1991) and the ''Schmidt'' trilogy: ''About Schmidt'' (1996 ...
and
Jay Winter
Jay Murray Winter (born May 28, 1945) is an American historian. He is the Charles J. Stille Professor of History at Yale University, where he focuses his research on World War I and its impact on the 20th century. His other interests include r ...
, Mark Weitzman,
Dave de Jong, Nikolay Kapasov,
David Marwell
David G. Marwell (born 1951) is an American historian and the former director of the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City. Marwell received a BA from Brandeis University and a Ph.D. in modern European history from Binghamton University.
...
,
Joyce Maynard
Daphne Joyce Maynard (born November 5, 1953) is an American novelist and journalist. She began her career in journalism in the 1970s, writing for several publications, most notably '' Seventeen'' magazine and ''The New York Times''. Maynard contr ...
,
Jessica Roda,
Zvi Kolitz
Zvi Kolitz ( he, צבי קוליץ; December 14, 1912 – September 29, 2002) was a Lithuanian-born Jewish film and theatrical producer and a writer whose short story '' Yosl Rakover Talks to God'' became a classic of Holocaust literature.
Life
Z ...
,
Sherwin B. Nuland
Sherwin Bernard Nuland (born Shepsel Ber Nudelman; December 8, 1930 – March 3, 2014) was an American surgeon and writer who taught bioethics, history of medicine, and medicine at the Yale School of Medicine, and occasionally bioethics and hist ...
, Nir Navon
Brad Innwood Will Eisner
William Erwin Eisner (March 6, 1917 – January 3, 2005) was an American cartoonist, writer, and entrepreneur. He was one of the earliest cartoonists to work in the American comic book industry, and his series '' The Spirit'' (1940–1952) was no ...
and
Beth Kobliner.
Legal fora and debates
Contemporary issues facing the Jewish Community and Society at large are often debated at Shabtai with the participation of legal scholars, judges, public intellectuals and critics. Guests have included
Richard Goldstone
Richard Joseph Goldstone (born 26 October 1938) is a South African former judge. After working for 17 years as a commercial lawyer, he was appointed by the South African government to serve on the Transvaal Supreme Court from 1980 to 1989 and ...
,
Guido Calabresi
Guido Calabresi (born October 18, 1932) is an Italian-born American legal scholar and Senior United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He is a former Dean of Yale Law School, where he has been a pr ...
,
Danny Julian Boggs
Danny Julian Boggs (born October 23, 1944) is an American attorney and a Senior United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He was appointed to the court in 1986 and served as its Chief judge from S ...
,
Thomas B. Griffith,
José A. Cabranes,
Stephen Reinhardt
Stephen Roy Reinhardt (born Stephen Roy Shapiro; March 27, 1931 – March 29, 2018) was a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, with chambers in Los Angeles, California. He was the last federal ...
,
Alan Dershowitz
Alan Morton Dershowitz ( ; born September 1, 1938) is an American lawyer and former law professor known for his work in U.S. constitutional law and American criminal law. From 1964 to 2013, he taught at Harvard Law School, where he was appoin ...
,
Amy Chua
Amy Lynn Chua (born October 26, 1962), also known as "the Tiger Mom", is an American lawyer, legal scholar, and writer. She is the John M. Duff Jr. Professor of Law at Yale Law School with an expertise in international business transactions, law ...
and
Jed Rubenfeld,
Floyd Abrams
Floyd Abrams (born in July 9, 1936) is an American attorney at Cahill Gordon & Reindel. He is an expert on constitutional law and has argued in 13 cases before the Supreme Court of the United States.
Abrams represented ''The New York Times'' ...
,
Steven D. Ecker,
John Durham
John Henry Durham (born March 16, 1950) is an American lawyer who served as the United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut (D. Conn.) from 2018 to 2021. By April 2019, he had been assigned to investigate the origins of the Federal ...
,
Heather Gerken, John Morley,
William Kristol
William Kristol (; born December 23, 1952) is an American neoconservative writer. A frequent commentator on several networks including CNN, he was the founder and editor-at-large of the political magazine ''The Weekly Standard''. Kristol is now ...
,
William Schabas
William Anthony Schabas, OC (born 19 November 1950) is a Canadian academic specialising in international criminal and human rights law. He is professor of international law at Middlesex University in the United Kingdom, professor of internation ...
, Anne Dailey,
Norman Finkelstein
Norman Gary Finkelstein (; born December 8, 1953) is an American political scientist, activist, former professor, and author. His primary fields of research are the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the politics of the Holocaust. He is a g ...
, Morris Feldman, Kent Yalowitz, Shaya Rochester,
Anthony T. Kronman,
Linda Greenhouse,
Philip Weiss
Philip Weiss is an American journalist who co-edits '' Mondoweiss'' ("a news website devoted to covering American foreign policy in the Middle East, chiefly from a progressive Jewish perspective") with journalist Adam Horowitz. Weiss describes h ...
,
Philippe Sands
Philippe Joseph Sands, KC (born 17 October 1960) is a British and French writer and lawyer a11 King's Bench Walkand Professor of Laws and Director of the Centre on International Courts and Tribunals at University College London. A specialist in ...
,
Oona Hathaway,
Jeremy Ben-Ami
Jeremy Ben-Ami (born 1962) is the President of J Street, a liberal advocacy organization in the United States dedicated to promoting American leadership to end the Arab-Israeli and Israel-Palestinian conflicts peacefully and diplomatically. He ...
, and Attorney General
William Tong
William Morten Tong (born May 2, 1973) is an American lawyer and politician who is the 25th and current Attorney General of Connecticut. Born in Hartford, Connecticut, Tong attended Brown University and the University of Chicago Law School. He b ...
.
Political leadership
National Political leaders often share intimate conversation and personal reflections of their successes and failures at the Shabtai table. Guests with political careers include
Richard Blumenthal
Richard Blumenthal (; born February 13, 1946) is an American lawyer and politician who is the senior United States senator from Connecticut, a seat he has held since 2011. A member of the Democratic Party, he is one of the wealthiest members of ...
,
Russ Feingold
Russell Dana Feingold ( ; born March 2, 1953) is an American lawyer and politician who served as a United States Senator from Wisconsin from 1993 to 2011. A member of the Democratic Party, he was its nominee in the 2016 election for the same U ...
,
Joseph Lieberman
Joseph Isadore Lieberman (; born February 24, 1942) is an American politician, lobbyist, and attorney who served as a United States senator from Connecticut from 1989 to 2013. A former member of the Democratic Party, he was its nominee for V ...
,
Dannel Malloy
Dannel Patrick Malloy (; born July 21, 1955) is an American politician, who served as the 88th governor of Connecticut from 2011 to 2019. A member of the Democratic Party, he chaired the Democratic Governors Association from 2016 to 2017. On Jul ...
,
Susan Bysiewicz
Susan Bysiewicz ( ; born September 29, 1961) is an American politician and attorney who is the 109th lieutenant governor of Connecticut, serving since January 9, 2019. She previously served as the 72nd secretary of the state of Connecticut from ...
,
Matt Brown,
R. James Woolsey, Jr.,
Toni Harp
Toni Nathaniel Harp (born August 6, 1947) is an American politician who served as the 50th Mayor of New Haven, Connecticut. Harp, a Democrat, was previously a state senator in Connecticut from 1993 to 2013. A resident of New Haven, Harp represente ...
,
Joe Ganim
Joseph Peter Ganim (born October 21, 1959) is an American Democratic politician, former attorney, and convicted felon who is currently serving as the mayor of Bridgeport, Connecticut. He was elected mayor of the city six times serving from 19 ...
,
Josh Mandel
Joshua Aaron Mandel (born September 27, 1977) is an American far-right politician who served as the 48th treasurer of Ohio from 2011 to 2019. A member of the Republican Party, he previously was the Ohio State Representative for the 17th dist ...
,
Adam Schiff
Adam Bennett Schiff (born June 22, 1960) is an American lawyer, author, and politician who has served as a United States House of Representatives, U.S. representative since 2001. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Par ...
,
Ted Deutch
Theodore Eliot Deutch ( ; born May 7, 1966) is an American lawyer and politician who served as the U.S. representative from Florida's 22nd congressional district from 2010 to 2022. His district, numbered as the 19th district from 2010 to 2013 a ...
,
Nick Muzin, Noah Pollak,
Larry Obhof
Larry J. Obhof (born November 26, 1977) is an American attorney and politician, who served as a member of the Ohio Senate from 2011 to 2020. He also served as the President of the Senate from 2017 to 2020.
Early life and education
Larry Obhof w ...
, Joseph Klein and others.
Film and television
A number of actors, writers, directors, and producers have been known to attend Shabtai to discuss and showcase their work, as well as converse with the Shabtai community, including
Charles Grodin
Charles Sidney Grodin (April 21, 1935 – May 18, 2021) was an American actor, comedian, author, and television talk show host. Grodin began his acting career in the 1960s appearing in TV serials including '' The Virginian''. After a small part ...
,
Elliott Gould,
Deborah Oppenheimer, Peter Benedek,
Lloyd Kaufman
Stanley Lloyd Kaufman Jr. (born December 30, 1945) is an American film director, screenwriter, producer and actor. Alongside producer Michael Herz, he is the co-founder of Troma Entertainment film studio, and the director of many of their featur ...
,
Zvi Howard Rosenman, Peter Rosen,
Thomas Lennon
Thomas Patrick Lennon (born August 9, 1970) is an American actor, comedian, screenwriter, producer, director, and novelist. He plays Lieutenant Jim Dangle on the series ''Reno 911!''
Lennon is an accomplished screenwriter of several major st ...
,
Bruce Cohen, Alan Nierob,
Richard Edelman, Bob Bookman and others.
Israel briefings
Shabtai has deep connections to Israeli political, military, and judicial figures and hosts regular off-the-record meetings and briefings on Israeli developments. Participants, many of whom have also been speakers and guests at Shabtai, include
Aharon Barak
Aharon Barak ( he, אהרן ברק; born Erik Brick, 16 September 1936) is an Israeli lawyer and jurist who served as President of the Supreme Court of Israel from 1995 to 2006. Prior to this, Barak served as a Justice of the Supreme Court of Is ...
,
Elyakim Rubinstein
Elyakim Rubinstein ( he, אליקים רובינשטיין, born June 13, 1947) is a former Vice President of the Supreme Court of Israel. Beforehand, he served as the Attorney General of Israel from 1997 to 2004. Rubinstein, a former Israeli dipl ...
,
Hanan Melcer
Hanan Melcer (, born April 1951) is an Israeli judge who served as a justice on the Supreme Court of Israel and Deputy Chief Justice.
Biography
Hanan Melcer was born in Tel Aviv to Holocaust survivors from Poland. He attended high school at the ...
,
Ehud Barak,
Yuval Steinitz
Yuval Steinitz ( he, יוּבַל שְׁטַיְינִיץ; born 10 April 1958) is an Israeli politician who currently serves as a member of the Knesset for the Likud party. He also held several ministerial posts, including Minister of Finance, ...
,
Alex Lubotzky,
Yoav Gallant
Yoav Gallant (; born 8 November 1958) is an Israeli politician and former military officer. A member of the Knesset for Likud, he has served as Ministry of Defense (Israel), Minister of Defense since 2022. He is a former commander of the Southe ...
,
Daniel Taub,
Ron Prosor
Ron Prosor ( he, רון פרושאור; born 11 October 1958) is an Israeli diplomat, writer, and columnist. He is the Head of thAbba Eban Institute for International Diplomacyin IDC Herzliya Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy & Strategy. On ...
,
Danny Dayan,
Ido Aharoni,
Gideon Meir
Gideon Meir ( he, גדעון מאיר; 1947 – 15 February 2021) was an Israeli diplomat. He served as its ambassador to Italy from 2006 until 2012. He was noted for being part of the negotiating team that drafted the Egypt–Israel peace ...
, and
Yaakov Amidror
Yaakov Amidror ( he, יעקב עמידרור; born 15 May 1948) is a former major general and National Security Advisor of Israel, and was also the head of the Research Department of Israeli military intelligence. Today, he is the Anne and Greg Ro ...
, as well as other individuals like
Gilad Shalit
Gilad Shalit ( he-a, גלעד שליט, Shalit.ogg, ''Gilˁad Šaliṭ'', born 28 August 1986) is a former MIA soldier of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) who on 25 June 2006, was captured by Palestinian militants in a cross-border raid via tu ...
.
Global Jewish leadership
International Jewish leaders meet regularly with Shabtai members to inspire their participation and receive their guidance on critical issues facing global Jewry. These have included
Adin Steinsaltz
Rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz (11 July 19377 August 2020) ( he, עדין אבן-ישראל שטיינזלץ) was an Israeli Chabad Chasidic rabbi, teacher, philosopher, social critic, author, translator and publisher.
His '' Steinsaltz edi ...
,
Ephraim Mirvis
Rabbi Sir Ephraim Yitzchak Mirvis (born 7 September 1956) is an Orthodox rabbi who serves as the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth. He served as the Chief Rabbi of Ireland between 1985 and 1992.
Early life a ...
,
Yanki Tauber, Tzvi Freeman,
Emanuel Rackman
Rabbi (Menachem) Emanuel Rackman ( he, מנחם עמנואל רקמן ''Menachem 'immanuel Raqman''; June 24, 1910 in Albany – December 1, 2008) was an American Modern Orthodox Rabbi, president of the RCA, vice-president of Yeshiva University. P ...
,
Sholom Dovber Lipskar, David Lincoln, James Ponet
Levi and Bassie Shemtov Jacob Immanuel Schochet
Jacob Immanuel Schochet (August 27, 1935 – July 27, 2013) was a Swiss-born Canadian rabbi who wrote on Hasidism. He was a member of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement.
Biography
Schochet's parents were Dov Yehuda and Sarah Schochet. Shortly after ...
,
Harry Ballan,
Asher and Sarah Esther Crispe, Mark Oppenheimer, Matt Nosanchuk, Yitzchok Kogan, Y.Y. Jacobson, and Faivish Vogel, as well as many others.
Shabtai Global
In addition to its dinners and events in New Haven, the society hosts regular, intimate discussions in homes of members and friends around the world, in such cities as New York, Los Angeles and Tel Aviv. Attendees are drawn from leaders across industries and professions, as well as artists, public intellectuals, and recent alumni. The society is building a video archive of such discussions to make the insights and ideas shared at such events available to a wider audience.
In Published Works
In Israeli Ambassador
Michael Oren
Michael Bornstein Oren (Hebrew: מיכאל אורן; born Michael Scott Bornstein; May 20, 1955) is an American-born Israeli historian, author, politician, former ambassador to the United States (2009–2013), former member of the Knesset for ...
's memoir ''Ally'', he describes Shabtai's role in
Richard Goldstone
Richard Joseph Goldstone (born 26 October 1938) is a South African former judge. After working for 17 years as a commercial lawyer, he was appointed by the South African government to serve on the Transvaal Supreme Court from 1980 to 1989 and ...
's decision to recant the
Goldstone Report
Goldstone may refer to:
Places
* Goldstone, Shropshire, a small village in Shropshire, England
*Goldstone, California, a ghost town near the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex
* Goldstone Lake, a dry lake in the Mojave Desert of San Bern ...
, which had alleged that Israel deliberately targeted civilians in the
2009 Gaza War. Goldstone's introspection began after meeting Shabtai's Rabbi Hecht at an event on Yale's campus.
''New York Times'' editor Trish Hall describes being persuaded to attend, and then enjoying, a night with Shabtai in her memoir ''
Writing to Persuade''.
A fictionalized version of Shabtai and the Anderson Mansion are featured prominently in the Yale-themed occult novel ''
Ninth House
''Ninth House'' is a paranormal fantasy novel by American author Leigh Bardugo, published by Flatiron Books in 2019.
Premise
The novel follows unlikely Yale University freshman 20-year-old Galaxy "Alex" Stern, a high school drop out and homicid ...
'' by
Leigh Bardugo
Leigh Bardugo ( he, לי ברדוגו) is an Israeli-American fantasy author. She is best known for her young adult Grishaverse novels, which include the ''Shadow and Bone'' trilogy, the ''Six of Crows'' duology, and the '' King of Scars'' duolo ...
.
References
{{Reflist
External links
Shabtai website
Cory Booker
Culture of Yale University
Organizations established in 1996
Student societies in the United States
Jewish organizations based in the United States