Tribe and Family
July 13, 2016 | By: Isaiah Rackovsky
Writing in Tradition in 1965, Rabbi Isaiah Rackovsky explores the tension between the institution of the family, which serves as the foundation of the Jewish way of life, and modernity, its ideas and political institutions. Judaism sets the framework for cultural transmission by imparting a duty on parents to educate their children and commanding children […]
Read MoreSoul of Fire: A Theory of Biblical Man
July 5, 2016 | By: Ethan Dor-Shav
Understanding the human condition, the essential qualities that make us who we are, shapes how we think about our purpose as men and women created in the image of God. Searching for distinctive characteristics that separate the human animal from all others, philosophers have proposed that man is an acquisitive animal, a social animal, a […]
Read MoreAs We Are Now Is Not the Only Way to Be
June 30, 2016 | By: Shalom Carmy
Does religious life benefit from studying the secular liberal arts? In this 2012 essay, Yeshiva University professor Shalom Carmy argues that literature, history, and philosophy enrich an education grounded in the halachic tradition. The study of humanities sheds light on the human condition, making us more aware of the divine presence and the man’s place in […]
Read MoreJewish Education in a World Adrift
June 15, 2016 | By: Eliezer Berkovits
By the time Eliezer Berkovits wrote “Jewish Education in a World Adrift” in 1970, the “value system” that had sustained the West had collapsed. Relativism, nihilism, boredom, and permissiveness characterized the age–and the education of the young. Here Berkovits issues a call to arms, urging Jews to counter the nihilism of the broader culture by […]
Read MoreThe High Cost of Jewish Living
June 8, 2016 | By: Jack Wertheimer
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 […]
Read MorePodcast: Ruth Wisse on Campus Anti-Semitism
June 8, 2016 | By: Ruth Wisse
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 […]
Read MoreForgetting Zion
June 3, 2016 | By: Ruth Wisse
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 […]
Read MoreChurch and State: How High a Wall?
May 25, 2016 | By: Milton Himmelfarb
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 […]
Read MorePodcast: Elliott Abrams on Israel and American Jews
May 17, 2016 | By: Elliott Abrams
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, […]
Read MoreRabbi Jacob J. Schacter on Family and Freedom
September 30, 2015 | By: Jacob J. Schacter
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?
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