Why are Jews socialists? Nobel laureate Milton Friedman set out to explore this question in a 1972 lecture before the Mont Pelerin Society. “Jews owe an enormous debt to free enterprise and competitive capitalism,” Friedman said. And yet, “Jews have been consistently opposed to capitalism and have done much on an ideological level to undermine […]

While today Israel enjoys wide support on both sides of the American political aisle, this was not always the case. Late in 1956 the eminent political theorist Leo Strauss took the unusual step of commenting on contemporary political affairs to come to Israel’s defense. Strauss was moved to write by attacks against the nascent Jewish state […]

How does today’s anti-Zionist sentiment compare to historical anti-Semitism? In this 2013 article from Commentary, Robert Wistrich compared the similarities and differences between the two. In both today’s vilification of Israel and traditional anti-Semitism, the Jews are seen as a menace to peace and order. Throughout time, the ideological hatred of the Jewish people has […]

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 […]

Despite liberalization and modernization around the world, anti-Semitism endures and, in some places, seems to be getting more toxic. Herzl’s solution to the problem of anti-Semitism, Zionism, has not been a salve either; now some argue that Israel is the cause of rather than the solution to today’s anti-Semitism. But the truth is that anti-Semitism’s permanence is […]

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

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.  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, […]