Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook is a founder of religious Zionism and guide for many today. Perhaps less well known are his views on economics. In this lecture, Tikvah alum Rabbi Netanel Elyashiv explains that Rav Kook has a free market teaching about economics, in which he provides spiritual meaning to the workings of the market […]

Press play below to listen to the podcast, download it in the iTunes Store, or stream it via Stitcher.  Chapter 1: Evolution of Jewish Education in America Chapter 2: Milton Friedman on“The Role of Government in Education” Chapter 3: State of Jewish Day Schools and the Tuition Crisis Chapter 4: State of School Choice Debate in America Chapter 5: […]

On top of the rising costs of raising a child in America, Jack Wertheimer estimates that “actively engaged” Jewish families pay a premium of “$50,000 and $110,000 a year just to live a Jewish life.” Behind these financial costs are significant moral ones, Rabbi Aryeh Klapper argues in this 2012 article. High costs of living […]

What role should the government play in educating its citizens? In this 1955 essay, economics Nobel laureate Milton Friedman argues that while there is an economic case to be made for government to subsidize the education of the young, it does not follow that government itself should be in the business of running schools. Friedman […]

In this 1988 article, Irving Kristol explores historical and theological reasons for Jewish attachment to the politics of the Left: the history of their emancipation, the emphasis of the “prophetic” elements of the Jewish tradition, and their identification with the downtrodden. But, though understandable, Kristol wonders if Jewish attachment to leftist politics is sustainable over time. Social […]

Why are Jews socialists? Nobel laureate Milton Friedman set out to explore this question in a 1972 lecture before the Mont Pelerin Society. “Jews owe an enormous debt to free enterprise and competitive capitalism,” Friedman said. And yet, “Jews have been consistently opposed to capitalism and have done much on an ideological level to undermine […]

What is the Jewish understanding of economic justice? Many Jews assume it is one in which property rights are limited for the purpose of redistributing wealth and lessening the economic gap between rich and poor. Indeed, Jewish thinkers have been some of the chief proponents of socialism since its inception, and socialist economic policy was […]

Why have Jewish men and women succeeded in capitalist economies? How is it that Jews have come to be identified with both capitalism and with anti-capitalist movements like Bolshevism? Has capitalism been good to the Jews? Has it been good to Judaism? In a review of Jerry Muller’s Capitalism and the Jews, National Affairs editor Yuval […]

Friedrich Hayek, noted as one of the twentieth century’s greatest defenders of the free market, also made a case for religious traditions. In theory, the energetic, dynamic, disruptive market would seem to be at odds with the restraint, humility, and anti-materialism of revealed religion. Reflecting on Hayek’s praise for both religious order and market freedom, […]

Tikvah hosted an alumni event in Israel last month and invited the American economic thinker Samuel Gregg to speak. Gregg described the cultural foundations of economic order, and of national prosperity. Writing in Mida, Amnon Lord sees a similarity between these comments and Mitt Romney’s somehow-controversial praise for Israel’s start-up culture in 2012. But, as Lord […]