Professor Yehuda Bar Shalom is a captivating scholar and practitioner. His training is extremely broad: he is an educator, counselor and researcher. Within the framework of the Melton Master's program he teaches the courses “Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Jewish Education” (in the Spanish and Portuguese programs) and “Social Sciences and Jewish Identity” (in all three programs). Over the course of many years he has served in different roles at major universities. He is the author of seven books and nearly seventy articles on education, Jewish education, and social entrepreneurship. But most of all, he is passionate about what he does, and that fervor comes through when he speaks.

One of the focuses of his research is the molding of leadership in educational frameworks. He studies the application of the concept of social entrepreneurship to teacher training curricula. The extraordinary thing about Prof. Bar Shalom is that he not only explores these theories academically, but also advocates translating them into the real world in which we live. This is evident throughout his vast bibliography. Both his lectures and his publications convey his concern for achieving real change in today's society. He has that special ability to link profound academic knowledge with personal experiences and anecdotes. For example, in a talk to young Latin American leaders, he mentioned how, in his childhood, one of his teachers changed his perception of his own abilities and strengthened his conviction that he was capable of achieving whatever he would set out to do. With this in mind, he looks for examples of individuals who have managed to make great changes in their environments and communities. Prof. Bar Shalom analyzes and discusses different proactive leaders around the world.

To cite just a sampling of his extensive work, in one of his lectures^[1] he focused on three examples of people who introduced change in their environments. The first is the director of the Keshet school who, being an Orthodox Jewish woman married to a secular man, founded an institution that integrates both worlds. This project turned out to be very successful, and was the stimulus for the establishment of other similar schools around the world. The second example is that of Daniela Berfman, who opened a help center in Jerusalem for people with disabilities, with a view to helping them with employment as well as inclusion at the social level. She also worked to change the perceptions of people with disabilities amongst Israeli society. It is touching that Bar Shalom recognizes himself in the words that Daniela's parents told her when she was a girl: "Daniela, in your life you will be able to do whatever you want."

Bar Shalom's interest in seeking these characteristics in real life people is reflected in his research "Educators as Social Entrepreneurs: A Different Approach to Teacher Training". There he describes social entrepreneurs as individuals who show an ability not only to identify a given social or community problem, but also to seek a solution and to find partners to help implement it. He also examines the creation of the David Yellin Institute in Jerusalem which, together with the Jerusalem Municipality, formed a Social Entrepreneurship program. The three-year training curriculum aims to help future teachers to become educational leaders capable of generating change in organizational and social relationships. In the conclusion he writes: “We believe that the days are gone when teachers can or should expect the walls of the school to protect them from the world 'out there' (...) This program tries to develop some answers to the burning question of how to train teachers in the changing world in which we live” (p. 12).

For  Prof. Bar Shalom, leaders are people who propose innovative solutions; are ambitious and persistent; brainstorm ideas for large-scale change; find what doesn't work and seek a solution to the problem; work to disseminate the solution, and seek to persuade society as a whole to take new steps. The basis for producing new leaders is also allowing the imagination to run wild, and a belief that it is possible to arrive at solutions that no-one ever thought possible.

To continue learning together with Prof. Bar Shalom, we invite you to join his online seminar on "Principles of Transformational Leadership", next Sunday, June 11, at 7:30 pm Israel time. In the lecture, Prof. Bar Shalom will highlight some of the characteristics of transformational leadership. Transformational leadership is relevant to any field, but has particular significance in the field of education. It is a leadership style characterized by inspiring and motivating students to reach their full potential by creating a shared vision, instilling a sense of purpose, and providing individualized attention. Teachers, principals, and community leaders can improve their performance by applying these principles.

Register to the conference following this link: https://huji.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0oce6gpz4iGtwnnZlrYqIPbPThwf3j2abt