Jewish Political Thought

In the wake of the Feinstein Report on the CIA’s post 9/11 activities, Rabbi Shlomo Brody, founding director of the Tikvah Overseas Seminars, takes a look at some arguments about when Jewish law condones the use of torture…

The latest episode of “Conversations with Bill Kristol” features Ruth Wisse, the dean of the study of Jewish literature and distinguished senior fellow at the Tikvah Fund. As it so happens, Professor…

Our friends at the Foundation for Constitutional Government have added Judah Halevi to their Great Thinkers project. A rabbi, poet, and political philosopher, Judah Halevi is the author of a classic work on Jewish thought and…

Historically vulnerable, what has been the Jewish view of power? How should Jews view power? Should Jews be ambivalent toward and uncomfortable with power? Should they be more hard-headed? What about power’s tendency to corrupt? And how can Jews…

Mosaic has launched Mosaic Books, a new e-book series. The first book in the series collects, for the first time, the essential Jewish writings of one of America’s most perceptive and provocative intellectuals, Irving Kristol. On Jews and…

In Tikvah’s advanced institute “The Jewish Idea of God,” founding CEO of Ein Prat, Micah Goodman sets the stage for reading Deuteronomy. The Book of Deuteronomy is composed of several speeches by Moses and is meant to be…

The Declaration of Independence of the State of Israel opens “The Land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped.” The only problem with that statement, according to Rabbi…

As part of Tikvah’s advanced institute “Liberalism, Conservatism, and the Jews,” Ran Baratz, the founding editor of Mida, argued that Israel is overly obsessed with exercising power cleanly. War is never as clean as we design. Hoover Institution scholar…

What does Aristotle’s understanding of politics share with Judaism’s? William Kristol offers a theory. According to him, both Aristotle and Judaism reject the idea of inevitable progress. They also both have comparably few hard and fast rules every…

Rabbi Meir Soloveichik shows the Hebraic significance of Isaiah Berlin’s “Two Concepts of Liberty.” Negative liberty, or freedom from, is recognizable in the Hebrew word chofshi and, not coincidentally, in Hatikvah. Despite its significance in the Israeli national anthem, it…

Just like Thomas Paine’s political thought, Edmund Burke’s sees liberty as a core aim of a good society. But “liberty” means something very different for Burke. While Paine defines liberty as the freedom to do whatever you want…

Possibly Leo Strauss’s greatest essay, “Progress or Return?” is crucial to understanding Strauss’s political thought, especially his famed reason/revelation distinction. In this clip, Peter Berkowitz of the Hoover Institution summarizes the entire argument of the essay in four…