It has been a great ambition of modern political thought to bring about a world without enemies. But Hamas’s ruthless quest to slaughter Israeli civilians and to reap the public-relations boon of Palestinian deaths is a reminder that both the civilized world, and Israel more specifically, still has enemies. Two years ago, after Operation Pillar […]

Both the traditions of Greek philosophy and rabbinic Judaism place an emphasis on questioning. But, as National Affairs‘s Yuval Levin, the Hoover Institution’s Peter Berkowitz, and Rabbi Meir Soloveichik discuss, Socrates’s mode of questioning is not the same as that of the four sons of the Seder. Socrates stands outside the tradition to question it, often […]

What does it mean to be a neoconservative? William Kristol of The Weekly Standard explains how the one-time liberals differed from the classical conservatives. After first laying out differences between the neoconservatives and the classical conservatives on issues like the welfare state or foreign policy, Kristol examines the more foundational differences. And what about the Jewish character […]

Rabbi Meir Soloveichik reminds us that the Jews are a people who unite politics and food—or soul and body—and that the matzot carry a specific political meaning. Baked with haste, they are a reminder of the preciousness of time and the impermanence of life. A freedom that begins by recognizing these truths will find itself […]

What, if anything, does the thought of Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine have to do with Judaism? National Affairs editor Yuval Levin looks at the question of change and continuity over the generations, certainly an issue of great importance for Jews.  Burke’s and Paine’s opinions are rooted in ideas of human nature. Do these ideas have […]

Hoover Institution scholar Peter Berkowitz and Tikvah’s executive director Eric Cohen explore Leo Strauss’s idea of the crisis of modernity. It is a crisis with two faces: technological progress has given human beings great power, exemplified by the atom bomb; the moral revolution of modern political philosophy has lowered our sights and led to the […]

To understand Irving Kristol’s defense and critique of capitalism, National Affairs editor Yuval Levin breaks down Kristol’s 1970 essay “‘When virtue loses all her loveliness’—some reflections on capitalism and ‘the free society’”. Kristol celebrated how capitalism offers prosperity and freedom, but reserved applause for capitalism as a stand-alone moral system. Famously, Kristol gave capitalism only two cheers, not three. […]

During Tikvah’s advanced institute on “Liberalism, Conservatism, and the Jews”, Hoover Institution scholar Peter Berkowitz discussed Michael Walzer’s account of the Talmudic parable of the oven of Akhnai. Is the oven pure? The rabbis say it is, but Rabbi Eliezer dissents, first appealing to logic but then appealing to miracles. “If the law is as […]

Both liberals and conservatives have good arguments for the idea of federalism, but they typically defend different things. As Tikvah’s executive director Eric Cohen and Weekly Standard editor William Kristol discuss, liberals praise moral freedom and cultural pluralism, while conservatives praise local particularities and the limits on centralized power that come with local self-government. Where does federalism […]

Rabbi Meir Soloveichik argues that the Passover Haggadah should be viewed as the key—and perhaps only—work of Jewish political thought for the hundreds of years between the Tanakh and Maimonides. No other text focuses as much on what it means for the Jews to be a nation. As Soloveichik explains, the Haggadah has something to […]