Ours is an age in which the notion that men and women are created with distinct and complementary purposes is seen as little more than thinly veiled bigotry. But one of the great Jewish contributions to civilization is the idea that the sexes are not identical to, but are instead in need of, one another. […]

Press play below to listen to the podcast, download it in the iTunes Store, or stream it via Stitcher.  Chapter 1: Marriage, Children, and the Beginning of Wisdom Chapter 2: Commandments, Faith, and Moral Formation Chapter 3: Do Judaism and Christianity Entail Different Political Orientations? Chapter 4: Lessons for Jews and Christians Sometimes, it takes an outsider to […]

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: Jews in Early Modern Dutch Society Chapter 2: Rembrandt’s Encounter with the Jews Chapter 3: Rembrandt’s Painting of Moses Receiving the Luchot Chapter 4: Tolkien and the Jews Chapter 5: The Dialectical Nature of the Jewish People […]

Press play below to listen to the podcast, download it in the iTunes Store, or stream it via Stitcher.  Chapter 1: The Brexit Vote, the Meaning of Nationalism, and the Biblical Roots of the Nation-State Chapter 2: The Seduction of Empire: The Nation-State’s Rival Chapter 3: Evaluating Protestant Nationalism Chapter 4: Nationalism vs. Liberalism Chapter 5: Neo-Nationalism, Neo-Catholicism, […]

It is widely known that a substantial number of men from the yeshiva community in Israel study Torah full-time, relying on broad support from the state to supplement their wives’ income in order to sustain their families. Perhaps less well known is that this phenomenon is not a traditional way of Jewish life, but one […]

Why does the Torah prohibit eating certain types of animals? Several explanations have been posited: From Maimonides’s suggestion that the prohibitions are rooted in a concern for health, to Samson Raphael Hirsch’s explanation concerning the connection of one’s body to one’s soul. In this 2006 Azure article, Meir Soloveichik argues these explanations misunderstand the true […]

The politics of ancient Israel were theocratic, federal, and republican, Daniel J. Elazar argues in this 1973 Tradition article. Deriving his understanding of the political teaching of the Hebrew Bible by analyzing the its account of Israelite history and the judgment it casts upon alternative political institutions, Elazar takes the reader through the four constitutional […]

In the “struggle for universal human dignity and equality,” the Jewish legal tradition instructs and complements the modern tradition of rights. Yale law professor Robert M. Cover argues in this 1988 article for the Journal of Law and Religion that, in contrast to modern conceptions of rights, which are primarily concerned with the protection of […]

Does Bible Criticism leave room for faith? Noted Bible scholar Jon Levenson points out in this 1993 First Things article that the purely secular, critical approach to the Bible of many academics suffers from the same faults as does the fundamentalist religious approach: both ultimately rely on their own uncriticized values and assumptions. Pluralism and […]