Tikvah

Summer Seminars

The Tikvah Fund sponsors and produces a variety of academic seminars every summer. You will find our 2012 roster listed below. These seminars are still being planned, so please check back for more in the next months. Students may apply to and (if the timing permits) attend multiple Tikvah summer seminars.

 

Jewish Thought and Enduring Human Questions at Princeton.

  • Program Dates: July 22 - August 8.
  • Academic Director: Leora Batnitzky
  • Contact: Polly Strauss, pstrauss@princeton.edu
  • Eligible: All undergraduates at U.S., Israeli, and international colleges and universities, including current undergraduates who will have completed their undergraduate degrees by the time the program takes place.
  • Students from universities in North America, Israel and elsewhere around the world convene in Princeton for two weeks in the summer to study Jewish texts, Jewish thought, and Jewish perspectives on the great questions of human life. Students read and discuss classic Jewish and Western texts, hear lectures by renowned professors, and have opportunities for advising sessions with visiting faculty. For more details, and information on the 2012 program, click the link above.
  • In conjunction with the Princeton seminar, Middlebury Language Schools will offer an intensive four-week program in Modern and Biblical Hebrew. Students who are accepted to the Princeton program will be able to enroll in the Tikvah Hebrew Program at MLS at no cost (space permitting). The program is intended for beginners, so no prior knowledge of Modern or Biblical Hebrew is required. Contact hebrew@tikvahfund.org with questions or to apply.

The Tikvah Israel Fellows at Ein Prat, Israel.

  • Program Dates: June 18 - July 24.
  • Academic Director: Micah Goodman
  • Contact: tikvahisraelfellows@tikvahfund.org
  • Eligible: Applicants must come from countries other than Israel and must be native English speakers or have very strong English skills. In addition, applicants must be between the ages of 20 and 29 by the time the program starts.
  • The purpose and meaning of the State of Israel lie at the center of one of the world's most passionate debates. For five weeks in the summer of 2012, a select group of undergraduates, post-graduates and graduate students from the U.S., Canada and the UK will gather at the Israeli Academy for Leadership at Ein Prat for intensive study of this topic. Drawing on the canonical texts of Judaism and the great works of Western civilization, the Fellows will explore the origins of Zionism, the challenges facing the Jewish State, and a range of visions for Israel's future. For more details, click the link above.

 

The Jewish State: Democracy, Freedom, and Virtue at Hebrew University of Jerusalem

  • Program Dates: August 26 - September 13
  • Academic Director: Peter Berkowitz, Tad and Dianne Taube Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University
  • Contact: jewishstate@tikvahfund.org
  • Eligible: Open to exceptional B.A. students in any field from every higher educational institution in Israel with a minimum cumulative grade point average of 85. M.A. students will also be considered. Students should be fluent in Hebrew and have excellent English.
  • This institute will explore the philosophical foundations of liberal democracy, and examine the variety of daunting civic dilemmas that Israel faces as the nation state of the Jewish people in securing its founding commitments to freedom and democracy.

 

Political Thought, Economics, & Strategy at Hebrew University of Jerusalem

  • Program Dates: August 5 - 23
  • Academic Director: Ran Baratz, Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Shalem Center, Jerusalem
  • Contact: pes@tikvahfund.org
  • Eligible: Advanced BA and early MA students from Israel and abroad who are competent in both English and Hebrew are eligible to apply.
  • This is a new, 3 week-long interdisciplinary international summer institute at the Hebrew University that will broaden the horizons of a very select group of students from a variety of fields in three major topics: Political Thought, Economics and Strategy. Through a combination of perspectives - ancient to modern republicanism, political conservatism, and realist thought - this new joint venture offers an innovative and intensive educational experience. Diverse learning methods will be employed and leading faculty from Israel and abroad will teach in the institute.

 

Tikvah-Hertog Summer Institute on Law and National Security at Columbia University

  • Program Dates: July 31 - August 10, 2012
  • Academic Directors: Samuel Rascoff, Assistant Professor at NYU Law, and Matthew Waxman, Associate Professor at Columbia Law School
  • Contact: tikvahlaw@tikvahfund.org
  • Eligible: Advanced BA and early MA students from Israel and abroad who are competent in both English and Hebrew are eligible to apply.
  1. students pursuing J.D. degrees at U.S. law schools who plan to enter public service in fields related to law and national security,
  2. students pursuing graduate or undergraduate law degrees at Israeli or other international educational institutions who plan to enter public service in fields related to law or national security,
  3. students pursuing graduate degrees at U.S., Israeli, or other international educational institutions in fields related to national security,
  4. professionals in fields related to law and national security.
  • Today democracies face violent threats that were unimagined when the foundations of our domestic and international security laws were established. Phenomena from asymmetric conflicts with terrorists to proliferating unmanned weapons systems not only create new tensions between self-defense and liberty but pose more fundamental questions: Are current legal concepts still capable of providing adequate strategic and moral guidance? If not, what kind of legal and ethical regime can meet this challenge?

 

Jewish Thought and the Good Society: Politics, Economics, and the Human Person

  • Program Dates: June 25 - July 12, 2012
  • Academic Directors: Mark Gottlieb, The Tikvah Fund
  • Contact: jsiev@tikvahfund.org
  • Eligible: The program is open to current high school juniors, high school seniors, and recent graduates of Jewish day schools in North America.
  • The seminar is designed to explore ideas of the most important classical and modern thinkers, Jewish and Western, on the subjects of authority, virtue, justice, freedom, membership, and a just and humane political economy. Participants will study seminal texts of the Jewish and Western traditions with excellent college professors at a university level. Classes will be run as seminars, with an emphasis on guided discussions centered on the text, as opposed to lectures. In addition to developing a grasp of the foundations of these traditions, participants will also meet with people of influence in public life, including leading journalists, elected officials, and scholars.