January 2023
MLK Weekend
Our Inaugural Washington, D.C. Retreat
Since 1948, the State of Israel has transformed itself from distant long-shot to an amazing success story. In our final section, we will explore the near-impossible yet extraordinary ideas and leaders behind the earliest triumphs of the newly founded Jewish state. These challenges were virtually without precedent in the history of nations and in each case Israel turned a daunting task into an opportunity to establish itself as a regional power and the driving force in leading the Jewish people worldwide. Beginning with the War of Independence, the immigration of Jews from Arab lands, Israel’s development of nuclear weapons and the kidnapping and trial of the top-ranking Nazi Adolf Eichmann, we will explore the creation of modern Israel from 1948 to the present-day triumphs of Israeli technology innovators and the improbable alliance-builders of the Abraham Accords.

Abraham Socher
Abraham Socher was educated at UCLA, Harvard University and UC Berkeley, where he received a PhD in History. He is the author of The Radical Enlightenment of Solomon Maimon: Judaism, Philosophy, Heresy (Stanford University Press, 2006), and has published essays and reviews on topics in Jewish intellectual history, literary criticism and baseball. He is a professor at Oberlin College in the Department of Religion and directs the Program in Jewish Studies. In 2010, with the support of the Tikvah Fund, he founded the Jewish Review of Books, which he continues to edit.
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