On Going to Synagogue
July 22, 2016 | By: George B. Goodman

Synagogue membership rolls have been dwindling, and the Jewish establishment is right to wonder about the fate of the one communal institution around which the religious lives of most Jewish men and women have revolved since the destruction of the Second Temple. In the United States, the synagogue is threatened by a scale of young […]
Read MoreTribe 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 MoreWhy Religion Is Good for the Jews
July 12, 2016 | By: Irving Kristol

Writing in 1994, Irving Kristol warns about the demographic problems facing American Jews. By the mid-nineties, the American Jewish community was pursuing a path to assimilation through low birth rates and intermarriage. Both phenomena, Kristol argues, were not failures of Jewish communal policy, but instead the unanticipated consequences of its success. For years, championing the […]
Read MoreEducating Father Abraham: The Meaning of Fatherhood
June 28, 2016 | By: Leon Kass

In this essay, the second of a two-part series on Abraham, Leon Kass reads the stories of God’s promise to Abraham, the birth and banishment of Ishmael, Sodom and Gomorrah, Isaac’s circumcision, and the sacrifice of Isaac in a wisdom-seeking spirit. Kass explores how Abraham learns the arts of fatherhood and founding, elevating the household above […]
Read MoreFaith in the Flesh
June 20, 2016 | By: R.R. Reno

As Catholic theologian, social critic, and First Things editor R.R. Reno sat in the synagogue pews one Saturday morning, watching his daughter assume her place in the people of Israel as a bat mitzvah, he was provoked to scrutinize his own Christian faith in light of the Judaism of his wife and children. In this […]
Read MoreThe Jewish Mother
June 9, 2016 | By: Meir Soloveichik

Few Jewish doctrines sound as strange to modern ears as that of “matrilineal descent,” the notion that membership in the Jewish people is passed on through the mother even as other specific qualities of Jewishness (like whether one is a Levite) are passed on through the father. In “The Jewish Mother,” Rabbi Meir Soloveichik looks beyond sociological […]
Read MoreRabbi David Stav on Jewish Unity
September 10, 2015 | By: David Stav

Through his leadership of the Tzohar Rabbinical Organization, Rabbi David Stav has been at the forefront of debates over the relationship between religion and state in Israel, pushing for reforms in the State’s handling of marriage, conversion, and kashrut. Why is Tzohar focused on these issues? And how does he think about government’s role in religious life?
Read MoreDara Horn on Jewish Literature and American Life
August 18, 2015 | By: Dara HornThe Tikvah Fund once again had the privilege of learning from prize-winning novelist Dara Horn at our recent week-long seminar Jewish Thought, Jewish Literature, Jewish Politics. After leading university students in a stimulating study of love, sexuality, and family guided by readings from the Book of Genesis, S.Y. Agnon, and Sholem Aleichem, Horn opened up about her own life and literary career. […]
Read MoreDavid Stav and Seth Farber – Marriage and Conversion in the State of Israel
March 4, 2015 | By: David Stav and Seth Farber

As part of its ongoing series on “Jewish Ideals & Current Dilemmas in Contemporary Zionism,” the Tikvah Overseas Seminars hosted two of Israel’s leading rabbinic activists to discuss recent legislation regarding marriage and conversion in Israel. Rabbi David Stav, chairman of the Tzohar Rabbinic Organization, and Rabbi Dr. Seth Farber, founding director of ITIM, have […]
Read MoreDara Horn - Life and Work
February 24, 2015 | By: Dara Horn

Dara Horn has won acclaim for her imaginative novels and for the richness of their Jewish foundations. As part of the 2014 Summer Fellowship, Horn sat down to discuss Yiddish literature, American Judaism, her writing process, reactions to her work (from Jews and non-Jews alike), and her life as the mother of four children. In […]
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