The Christmas season is an annual reminder that American Jews are a small minority in a largely Christian country. It has also become occasion for Jewish church-and-state separationists to condemn public ceremonies as harmless as “a creche being erected outside a town hall, or students in public schools singing Christmas carols.” In “Christmas, Christians, and the […]

In the wake of the market crash of 2008, Jack Wertheimer spotlighted the “affordability crisis” plaguing American Jewish families. Adding up the cost of day school, Jewish camping, Kosher meat, synagogue dues, premiums for real estate near a synagogue, trips to Israel, and much else besides, Wertheimer guesses that an “actively engaged” Jewish family pays a […]

Press play below to listen to the podcast, download it in the iTunes Store, or stream it via Stitcher.  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 […]

Zionism was once a source of honor for American Jews. In 2008’s “Forgetting Zion,” Ruth Wisse tells the story of how that sense of triumph has unraveled, and how it has been replaced by susceptibility to shame in Jewish nationalism. With first-hand observations of the campuses and the institutions of American Judaism, Wisse recounts the change in popular […]

Press play below to listen to the podcast, download it in the iTunes Store, or stream it via Stitcher.  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 […]

Intellectual and political leaders are often tempted to do away with nationalism in favor of political arrangements (like the EU) that transcend and diminish the nation. To them and especially to the Israeli “post-Zionists,” Ofir Haivry and the editors of Azure offer a rebuke. In “Who’s Afraid of the Nation State?” (1998) they write: The belief […]

Jewish history has taught Jews to be wary of the intermingling of religious establishments and political power, so it’s understandable that American Jews instinctively safeguard the separation of church and state. But there is a wide gap between opposition to a state church and the radical separationism of the type Milton Himmelfarb criticizes in his classic […]

Press play below to listen to the podcast, download it in the iTunes Store, or stream it via Stitcher.  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 […]

Press play below to listen to the podcast, download it in the iTunes Store, or stream it via Stitcher.  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, […]

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, […]