In 2010, the theologian Michael Wyschograd published " A King in Israel ," a provocative essay in which he argues for defining the Jewish State as a democratic, constitutional monarchy. Wyschograd proposes that, without changing anything about the functioning of the Israeli government, the president of the state be given the title, "Regent of the Throne of David"—reconstituting the third Jewish commonwealth as a Davidic monarchy without a reigning king. This idea may seem fantastical, and it was...
Feb 23, 2017•47 min
Sometimes, it takes an outsider to teach a community about its own deepest truths and most powerful teachings. In " Faith in the Flesh ," one of America's most insightful Catholic thinkers does just that for faithful Jews. In this breathtaking piece, published in Commentary a decade ago, R.R. Reno offers a profound meditation on the meaning of Jewish ritual, education, and distinctiveness. Framed by a scene of his daughter chanting the Ten Commandments on the day of her bat mitzvah, the essay te...
Feb 17, 2017•43 min
In this podcast Jonathan Silver speaks with the Hudson Institute's Arthur Herman about his November 2016 Mosaic essay , which bucks conventional wisdom with the thesis that much of the world is warming to and developing closer ties with the Jewish State. Despite the impression one might get by observing the attitudes of Western governments toward Israel, this warming phenomenon can be observed from Asia to Africa to parts of Eastern Europe and, perhaps most surprisingly, to the Middle East. The ...
Nov 28, 2016•36 min
In this podcast Tikvah senior director Jonathan Silver speaks with the Hoover Institution's Peter Berkowitz about what a proper liberal arts education consists of, its betrayal in the American academy, and its complicated relation to Jewish education and religious life. Their conversation is framed by Berkowitz's 2006 Policy Review article, " Liberal Education: Then and Now ." Elaborating the thought of John Stuart Mill, Berkowitz explains that a liberal arts education does not teach students wh...
Nov 16, 2016•47 min
On Wednesday, September 14, 2016, alumni of Tikvah's advanced programs and friends of Mosaic came to an intimate discussion between the Israeli philosopher Yoram Hazony and the American author and historian Walter Russell Mead . The subject of their conversation was the same as the title of Yoram Hazony's essay in Mosaic : " Nationalism and the Future of Western Freedom ." Hazony argues that the political battle over the fate of the nation is the most consequential struggle of our time—one whose...
Nov 09, 2016•55 min
On Wednesday, September 14, 2016, alumni of Tikvah's advanced programs and friends of Mosaic came to an intimate discussion between the Israeli philosopher Yoram Hazony and the American author and historian Walter Russell Mead . The subject of their conversation was the same as the title of Yoram Hazony's essay in Mosaic : " Nationalism and the Future of Western Freedom ." Hazony argues that the political battle over the fate of the nation is the most consequential struggle of our time—one whose...
Nov 09, 2016•19 min
On Wednesday, September 14, 2016, alumni of Tikvah's advanced programs and friends of Mosaic came to an intimate discussion between the Israeli philosopher Yoram Hazony and the American author and historian Walter Russell Mead . The subject of their conversation was the same as the title of Yoram Hazony's essay in Mosaic : " Nationalism and the Future of Western Freedom ." Hazony argues that the political battle over the fate of the nation is the most consequential struggle of our time—one whose...
Nov 09, 2016•33 min
In this podcast Eric Cohen and Rabbi Meir Soloveichik speak about two artistic geniuses whose works highlight Jews' humanity, on the one hand, and other-worldliness, on the other. These two sides of the Jewish people—at once part of the human race and God's chosen people—comprise Jews' inherently dialectical nature, Soloveichik argues. Framed by Soloveichik's recent essay, " Rembrandt's Great Jewish Painting " ( Mosaic , June 2016), the discussion begins with an exploration of the great Dutch pa...
Sep 29, 2016•53 min
Britain's June 23 referendum on independence was the most important vote in a democratic nation in a generation, Yoram Hazony argues in " Nationalism and the Future of Western Freedom ," his September 2016 Mosaic essay. Its outcome, in favor of an exit from the EU, provoked fear, outrage, and despair in elite opinion in both Europe and the United States. At the same time, however, the re-emergence of an independent Britain has rallied profound admiration and enthusiasm among millions of others w...
Sep 21, 2016•1 hr 7 min
Jewish education is an important source of Jewish continuity in America. This is has been true in all times and places throughout the Jewish diaspora, but it is all the more so in the United States, a nation dedicated to the proposition that all are created equal. In America, with its individual freedoms, the most potent threat to the Jewish community is not anti-Semitic persecution of old, but assimilation. The threat of assimilation in modern America makes an education in Jewish particularism ...
Aug 02, 2016•42 min
In this podcast, Eric Cohen talks with Judaic Studies and History professor Allan Arkush, an expert in modern Jewish history, about Ahad Ha'am and his classic essay, "The Jewish State and Jewish Problem" (1897). In this essay, Ahad Ha'am—pen name of Asher Ginsberg—expounds on the material and moral crises facing the Jewish people. Modern Jews need an identity authentically derived from Jewish ideas and culture—not one simply formed by outside gentile influences. European nationalism is not suffi...
Jul 20, 2016•43 min
In this podcast, Eric Cohen speaks with Bret Stephens, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for the Wall Street Journal, about three of his essays that assess political life in Israel, America, and that analyze the challenges of the Middle East and the the modern West alike. " Born on the Fourth of June ," a Commentary essay from 2012, concerns the lessons and legacy of the 1967 war and what it means for current political challenges. In " Peter Beinart's False Prophecy ," published in Tablet in 2012...
Jul 13, 2016•46 min
In this podcast, Eric Cohen talks with Jay Lefkowitz about his provocative 2014 essay, "The Rise of Social Orthodoxy: A Personal Account" . The essay caused a stir by describing a subset of American Modern Orthodox Judaism whose participation in Jewish ritual is primarily motivated by social and civilizational attachments to the Jewish people, not out of faith in the God of the Hebrew Bible or reverence for His commandments. Lefkowitz and Cohen begin by surveying the denominations of American Ju...
Jul 07, 2016•52 min
In this podcast, Eric Cohen sits down with the legendary editor of Commentary , Norman Podhoretz, to discuss his 2007 essay, "Jerusalem: The Scandal of Particularity." The ancient capital of the Jewish people, Jerusalem, has been the essential center of Jewish political and religious life for generations. But, despite promises of its inviolability, the temptations to divide Jerusalem in exchange for peace arise again and again. "In wondering about this singling-out of one city from among all the...
Jun 29, 2016•35 min
As recently as the Cold War, the center-right and the center-left overcame their differences on other issues to oppose the enemies of the open society. In a lecture to alumni and guests of the Tikvah Fund, Standpoint editor Daniel Johnson argues that the center is failing to hold and that illiberalism's many forms are on the rise. Both right and left have been submerged under populist spasms. The right lured in by the coarse, idea-free spectacle of Donald Trump; the left embracing the Western se...
Jun 23, 2016•1 hr 27 min
In this podcast, Michael Doran, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and prominent scholar and commentator on Middle Eastern affairs and world politics, talks with Tikvah's Eric Cohen about a classic essay excoriating Western elites for misunderstanding the passions that drive the Middle East. Elie Kedourie's 1970 manifesto, "The Chatham House Version," examined the confusions of Arnold Toynbee and other British mandarins: confusions over pan-Arabism, over the links between the Israeli-Arab c...
Jun 14, 2016•48 min
In this podcast, the Tikvah Fund's Distinguished Senior Fellow, Ruth Wisse, joins Eric Cohen to discuss her 2015 Mosaic essay, "Anti-Semitism Goes to School." Drawing on her experiences at Harvard University and elsewhere, Wisse argues that there has been a resurgence of anti-Semitism on campus, often centered on attempts to delegitimize the Jewish state and assail what Israel represents. Despite ideological pressure on campus to stifle bigotry, Jews are the "one licensed exception … the only ca...
Jun 08, 2016•46 min
Realist foreign policy is premised on the idea that states always act in their own interest, as defined by the rational calculation of external threats from rival states. To scholars and practitioners of the realist school, America's support for Israel is irrational, for in the support of the Jewish State realists see no benefit to American interest. Some have concluded that a small and influential political lobby is to blame for America's support for Israel. In this recording, Walter Russell Me...
Jun 02, 2016•58 min
The subject of this podcast is Joseph B. Soloveitchik's classic 1964 essay, "Confrontation," one of those rare, enduring masterpieces that is both a profound theological reflection on human nature, and an important work of Jewish communal policy. This essay—and the commentaries, conversations, and commitments that have followed in its wake—has long shaped how many traditional Jews engage in the public life of modern society, and how Orthodox Jews see their relationship to modern Christians (and ...
May 31, 2016•54 min
In this podcast, Yuval Levin and Eric Cohen discuss Mr. Levin's recent essay in First Things , "The Perils of Religious Liberty." The flourishing of religious communities and the freedom of religious conscience have been central to American life since the founding of the United States. Yet we are living in an age that is not especially conducive to traditionally religious habits or beliefs, and the regulations and laws that structure the American social order have made some traditional Jews and ...
May 24, 2016•43 min
In this podcast, Tikvah's executive director, Eric Cohen, is joined by Elliott Abrams for a discussion of Abrams's important new essay "If American Jews and Israel Are Drifting Apart, What's the Reason?" Published in the April 2016 issue of Mosaic , examines the conventional wisdom that American Jews are becoming less attached to, less interested in, and even more antagonistic toward the Jewish State. If so, he and Cohen ask, do we understand why, and are we willing to confront the real reasons?...
May 16, 2016•39 min
As part of the Tikvah Fund and Hertog Foundation’s Advanced Institute, “Is Israel Alone?,” Roger Hertog sat down with syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer to revisit Dr. Krauthammer’s legendary article for the fiftieth anniversary of Israeli independence. Published in The Weekly Standard , “At Last, Zion,” described the achievement of Israel’s founders within the full scope of Jewish history, arguing that the Jews had traded the vulnerabilities of Diaspora life—assimilation and discriminatio...
Apr 06, 2016•1 hr 24 min
The election of 2016 has few if any precedents in American history. After the transformational presidency of Barack Obama, much is at stake. Hillary Clinton could solidify and build upon his achievements. A Republican candidate could chart a new course. But each party is witnessing a populist insurgency that threatens to reshape American politics. In Jerusalem, Weekly Standard editor William Kristol surveyed the scene. What is beneath all this turmoil? What does it mean for American democracy? W...
Apr 06, 2016•1 hr 38 min
During last month’s Advanced Institute in Jerusalem, “God, Politics, and the Future of Europe,” Tikvah hosted a conversation on “Modernity, Religion, and Morality” to discuss the decline of Western Civilization and to probe some of the reasons behind it. What happens when faith in the God of the Bible deteriorates? How does that affect faith in reason and are the values of liberalism enough to sustain a society? The panel featured prominent intellectuals, George Weigel, Distinguished Senior Fell...
Apr 06, 2016•1 hr 35 min
Joshua Mitchell is a professor of political theory in the Department of Government at Georgetown University. After the terrorist attacks of 2001, he left the U.S. capital to teach the great books of Western political thought to university students in Qatar and Iraq. The students there, he found, differed in dramatic ways from those in the U.S. They were beset with anguish over the value of individualism, and they felt their allegiance to traditional roles in family and society strained in ways t...
Apr 06, 2016•1 hr 45 min
Rabbi Jacob J. Schacter has forged a long and dedicated career both as a pulpit rabbi and as a leading academic scholar of Jewish history. How does he negotiate situations in which love of Torah and tradition appear to be in tension with modern sensibilities or historical truth? What motivates his own spiritual practice? In a moving conversation with students in the Tikvah Summer Fellowship for College Students and moderated by the Tikvah Fund’s Senior Director Mark Gottlieb, Rabbi Schacter work...
Apr 06, 2016•51 min
Through his leadership of the Tzohar Rabbinical Organization, Rabbi David Stav has been at the forefront of debates over the relationship between religion and state in Israel, pushing for reforms in the State's handling of marriage, conversion, and kashrut. Why is Tzohar focused on these issues? And how does he think about government's role in religious life? Rabbi Stav discussed his vision for Tzohar and the relationship between religion and the public square with the Tikvah Fund’s Rabbi Mark G...
Sep 10, 2015•1 hr
The Tikvah Fund once again had the privilege of learning from prize-winning novelist Dara Horn at our recent week-long seminar Jewish Thought, Jewish Literature, Jewish Politics . After leading university students in a stimulating study of love, sexuality, and family guided by readings from the Book of Genesis, S.Y. Agnon, and Sholem Aleichem, Horn opened up about her own life and literary career. Over the course of the lively conversation, moderated by the Tikvah Fund’s Senior Director Mark Got...
Aug 14, 2015•1 hr 10 min
As part of its ongoing series on “Jewish Ideals & Current Dilemmas in Contemporary Zionism,” the Tikvah Overseas Seminars hosted two of Israel’s leading rabbinic activists to discuss recent legislation regarding marriage and conversion in Israel. Rabbi David Stav, chairman of the Tzohar Rabbinic Organization , and Rabbi Dr. Seth Farber, founding director of ITIM , have worked together to promote bills that will allow greater numbers of municipal rabbis to register couples for marriage and pe...
Mar 10, 2015•1 hr 31 min
Dara Horn has won acclaim for her imaginative novels and for the richness of their Jewish foundations. As part of the 2014 Summer Fellowship, Horn sat down to discuss Yiddish literature, American Judaism, her writing process, reactions to her work (from Jews and non-Jews alike), and her life as the mother of four children. In one of the most fascinating parts of the interview, Horn describes the relationship between the Jewish tradition and her own work at length. She tries "to write in English ...
Feb 24, 2015•1 hr 50 min
