Jewish Political Thought

During Tikvah’s advanced institute “Liberalism, Conservatism, and the Jews,” Eric Cohen, Yuval Levin, and Meir Soloveichik tried to sort through the deep dilemma facing the modern, post-Enlightenment Jew who also holds a Burkean respect for old ways. Eric Cohen…

What is the proper relationship between Jews and political power? To what extent should Jews eschew worldly power for the sake of piety? How Machiavellian can Jews allow themselves to be? Two of the Jewish world’s most esteemed…

Yuval Levin of National Affairs and Rabbi Meir Soloveichik explore in this clip the tensions between the social aim of liberty and the need for child-rearing. Bringing in Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and John Locke, Levin and Soloveichik…

While Rabbinic Judaism—the Judaism of everyday laws—has declined in the modern era, Prophetic Judaism—the Judaism of profound, universalist ethical proclamations—has risen to the forefront of Jewish self-understanding. Peter Berkowitz of the Hoover Institution explains in this clip why…

Yuval Levin, editor of National Affairs, takes on the relationship between theory and practice. We tend to think that political theories are dreamed up absent society and then played out in a society. But, drawing on Burke and Tocqueville,…

Is there an authentically Jewish view of economics? Peter Berkowitz of the Hoover Institution argued during Tikvah’s advanced institute “Liberalism, Conservatism, and the Jews” that there is and there isn’t. As with medical care, there are technical dilemmas…

As part of Tikvah’s advanced institute “Liberalism, Conservatism, and the Jews”, Tikvah’s executive director Eric Cohen offered two philosophical dilemmas for conservatives. The first is how to reconcile the tension between an economics that praises creative destruction and…

In a discussion of the political thought of the Haggadah, Peter Berkowitz of the Hoover Institution notices a recognition of the importance of the separate person—the individual—in the Passover teaching. Rabbi Meir Soloveichik concurs and offers a beautiful…

Does the Jewish tradition offer resources for thinking about political questions? Editor of The Weekly Standard William Kristol offers a hedging “yes” to that question. There are certainly lessons in the Bible and other texts, but, because the Rabbis…

To begin a close reading of one of Karl Marx’s most important early works, “On the Jewish Question”, Hoover Institution fellow Peter Berkowitz identified two kinds of emancipation Marx is concerned with. The first is political emancipation, or…

Two hundred and twenty-five years ago, Parisian radicals stormed the Bastille. To Thomas Paine, this inaugurated an “Age of Revolutions.” As part of Tikvah’s advanced institute on “Liberalism, Conservatism, and the Jews”, Hoover Institution scholar Peter Berkowitz and National…

George Mason University’s Jeremy Rabkin reviewed Hoover Institution Scholar Peter Berkowitz’s Israel and the Struggle Over the International Laws of War in The Jewish Review of Books‘s Summer 2012 issue. Rabkin praises Berkowitz for his cogent defense of Israel against…