The Tikvah Podcast

Next week, Jewish families will sit at their seder tables and relive the drama of Jewish liberation from Egyptian oppression. The text used, the Haggadah, is one of the most widely read works of the rabbinic tradition. It has an inescapably national aspect, and its main themes, when seen in the right perspective, suggest to the rabbi Meir Soloveichik that it can be understood as a preeminent work of Jewish political thought: tackling themes of freedom and oppression, covenant and constitution, state and society, the nature of law and the dreams of a people.

Soloveichik discusses that and more here, in the first lecture in his eight-part course, ?The Haggadah: A Political Classic,? which is available in full at meirsoloveichik.com.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

Yechiel Leiter is a distinguished Israeli public servant and thinker. A scholar of political philosophy, the head of the international department of the Shiloh Policy Forum, the former chief of staff to then-Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he is also the father of seven children?including five of whom are serving in Israel?s current war with Hamas. His oldest son, Moshe Leiter, himself a father of six children, fell in battle on November 10.

Here, he joins host Jonathan Silver to mark six months of the war, to talk about the obligations of Israeli citizenship, Zionism, and Judaism, to remember his son Moshe, and to share how he and the nation have mourned their lost children.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

Whether or not haredi Jews should be required to serve in the IDF is a perennial question of Israeli politics, one that has caused political parties to form and disband, governing coalitions to rise and fall. It was the subject of a 2021 episode of this podcast with the haredi judge, editor, and rabbi Yehoshua Pfeffer. This question has taken on a new intensity lately, as the October 7 attacks and Israel?s war in Gaza have unified most of the country in a belief that the haredi draft exemption is unsustainable, unwise, and unjust.

This week, Pfeffer joins Jonathan Silver again to talk about how the matter now looks from within the haredi community. They discuss how Israeli haredim reacted to the October 7 attacks, the experience of the small number of haredim who have been serving in military operations since the war began, and what Pfeffer thinks they should do. Notably, he argues that, as a matter of Jewish belonging, haredi men ought to enlist and help to protect their country.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

Nearly twenty-five years ago, at the turn of the new millennium, America came very close to selecting not only a Jewish vice president, but a proudly religious, Shabbat-observing, kosher-eating Jewish vice president: Joe Lieberman, senator from Connecticut.

Lieberman, who died this week, epitomized a certain spirit in American public life, when the great debates over the conduct of American foreign policy and the management of domestic affairs still admitted heterodox disagreement. He was also a key figure in the U.S.-Israel relationship, articulating as well as anyone in public life why the widespread support that Americans feel toward the Jewish state also had a strategic value in serving American interests.

In October 2019, Lieberman, by then retired from the Senate, was in Jerusalem, where he addressed the Herzl Conference on Contemporary Zionism. In that speech?later published in a suitably edited form in Mosaic?he took a retrospective tone, looking back at the initial impulses that led Theodor Herzl?s ideas to take concrete form in modern Israel. He looked at the effect that Israel has had on American Jewry. And he honestly examined growing political trends that troubled him.

Today, we rebroadcast a 2019 conversation that Jonathan Silver had with Lieberman in which they discuss that speech and his career.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

Neighborhoods have always played a distinctly important role in American public life. The neighborhood is the most intimate public setting outside of the home, the place where mediating institutions of common life?schools, stores, gyms, houses of worship?connect citizens to each other. American neighborhoods, however, have lately grown fragile and unhealthy, reflecting the nation's loneliness epidemic, its underwhelming public education system, its demoralized society.

Seth Kaplan is the author of Fragile Neighborhoods, a new book that diagnoses these dilemmas and that offers practical steps to nurse neighborhoods back to health. He joins Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver to discuss how Jewish neighborhoods might serve as models that could inspire other communities in the United States.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

In 21st-century America, the formation of families has become less common, and when people do get married and have children, they have fewer of them. According to demographers, for a population to reproduce itself, each family in it must on average produce at least 2.1 children. Americans are now reproducing at well below that number, a trend that comes with economic, social, political, spiritual, and moral consequences.

It's possible that government initiatives and financial incentives can encourage this number to rise. But in general there are mixed results when governments try to incentivize childbirth. This may be a sign that the forces undermining family formation are not primarily legal or economic, and that they are instead cultural attitudes and norms of behavior.

That possibility is what today's podcast guest, Timothy Carney, addresses in a new book, Family Unfriendly: How Our Culture Made Raising Kids Much Harder Than It Needs to Be. In looking for examples of communities that have developed healthy family cultures, his reporting took him to an Orthodox suburb of Washington, DC, where he spent Purim and Shabbat, and to Israel.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

During Israel's war against Hamas, it has provided direct aid to Gazans, and it has allowed for the distribution of foreign aid. Hamas has accused Israeli soldiers of intentionally targeting Palestinians as they gather to receive food, most recently on February 29. The Israeli military released video evidence to the contrary, but by the time they did so, international impressions were already set, and Israelis now wonder why they?re volunteering the wellbeing of their own soldiers, and their own resources, only to be met with international condemnation.

To explain the historical and strategic context of the aid to Gaza that Israel gives and facilitates, Jonathan Conricus joins Mosaic editor and podcast host Jonathan Silver. Conricus served in the Givati Brigade of the IDF when Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. Since then, he's served as a combat commander, military diplomat, and IDF international spokesman, and has been acting as a spokesman in the months since October 7.   Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

One day after this phase of the war began, on February 25, 2022, the writer, former Senate staff member, Navy reservist, and executive director of the KKR Global Institute Vance Serchuk joined Mosaic?s editor Jonathan Silver to discuss what was happening in real time. Two years later, he joins the Tikvah Podcast again to step back and ask some basic questions, and to offer his considered judgment on the state of the war.

What are its causes? On what basis can one decipher the truth from the conflicting narratives about the war in Europe, in Ukraine, in Russia, and in the United States? What have we learned about the deployment of novel military technology? What sorts of alliances have emerged or been strengthened, and what can we learn from them? Has the invasion of Ukraine helped the West relearn the necessity of military force, and chastened some of the most idealistic discourse about human rights and multilateralism? How does the war in Ukraine shed light on the state of U.S.-Russia relations and competition?

Serchuk recently returned from the Munich Security Conference, where he spoke with foreign officials about the state of the war. And, this August, he?s teaching a specialized seminar on U.S.-Russia Relations as a part of the Security Studies Program at the Hertog Foundation in Washington, DC. If you?re an advanced undergraduate, a recent college graduate, or a young professional working in national security, foreign policy, or related fields, you might consider applying to study with Mr. Serchuk. Applications are available at hertogfoundation.org, and they are due on March 4.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

The outstanding rabbinic authority and philosopher of the Middle Ages, Maimonides, was also a physician. After writing The Guide of the Perplexed, his great philosophical treatise, he turned his attention to composing works of medicine. He produced ten: On Hemorrhoids, On Cohabitation, On Asthma, On Poisons and Their Antidotes, Regimen of Health, On the Causes of Symptoms, Extracts from Galen, Medical Aphorisms, a Commentary on Hippocrates? Aphorisms, and a Glossary of Drug Names.

In all of these, Maimonides is preoccupied with organizing, clarifying, simplifying vast expanses of text into usable guidelines. That?s one reason why the production of and instruction in aphorisms was so important for him?they were designed to be easy for physicians and their patients to remember. And there was a lot to remember. According to Maimonides, a doctor must know all about anatomy, symptoms, the health and sickness of the body and its parts, how to restore health when a person is sick, and food and diets, medicines, bathing, bandaging, and the various instruments that a medical doctor would need to use.

To get a sense of all this, the Maimonides expert Yehuda Halper sits down with host Jonathan Silver to focus on one particular medical work, Maimonides?s Commentary on Hippocrates? Aphorisms. Many now will be familiar with Hippocrates because the popular Hippocratic oath that inducts physicians into their profession is attributed to him. But in Maimonides? time, medical research often took the form of commentary on the ancient writings of Hippocrates. One of Hippocrates earliest and most authoritative commentators was Galen, an ancient Roman doctor, and in his commentary, Maimonides applies his reason and empirical experience in the medical field to both of them. Along the way, Halper, in the fourth and final episode in their mini-series on Maimonides, explains how Maimonides thinks about the nature of authority, about the role and also the limits of tradition, and about the domain of reason and observation in human life.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

In the 1850s, when a young Italian Jewish boy named Edgardo Mortara fell ill, his family?s Christian maid had secretly baptized him in hopes that he would be restored to health, or that if he died, his soul would be saved.

This meant that when Edgardo survived and his baptism was revealed, the church saw him as a Christian child, not a Jewish one?and it was forbidden by Canon law for a Christian child to be raised by Jewish parents. So Edgardo, then six years old, was removed from his family against their wishes by the pope, and brought to Rome where he was instructed in the Catholic faith and eventually became a priest.

This is the background to a new work of short fiction, ?The Story of My Family,? written by the great American Jewish writer Cynthia Ozick and published in the March 2024 issue of Commentary. In it, Ozick retells the kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara as it is remembered by Edgardo?s nephew?s daughter who, by the time of the story, has moved to America. From there, she reflects on the way that Edgardo?s life and priesthood haunted his nephew, that is, her own father.

To discuss her new story, Ozick joins Mosaic?s editor and podcast host Jonathan Silver this week. Together, the two investigate the meaning of a tale about a Jew who becomes a tormentor of the Jews, and how such theological disturbances can rattle future generations.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

 

This week, the Tikvah Podcast at Mosaic returns to the towering intellectual and religious sage of medieval Judaism, Moses Maimonides, the Rambam. In two previous conversations about his work, the professor of Judaism Yehuda Halper and podcast host Jonathan Silver focused on Maimonides?s Mishneh Torah, his code of law.

This week, the two turn from the Mishneh Torah to Maimonides?s philosophical magnum opus, Moreh ha Nevukhim, known in English as The Guide of the Perplexed. Whereas the Mishneh Torah leaves one with the impression that philosophy and law can be reconciled within the covenantal structure of an observant Jewish life, the emphasis in The Guide of the Perplexed is on the tensions, difficulties, and apparent contradictions between philosophy and law.

The Guide is one of the great books of Jewish philosophy, and it requires some preliminary introduction before anyone can seriously engage its questions. So this discussion is an orientation to the kind of study, the kind of person, and the kind of life that the Guide is written to instruct.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

Since October 7, there have been more than one hundred attacks by Iran-backed militias against American forces in the Middle East. On January 28, a drone strike, probably launched by Iran?s most powerful proxy in Iraq, killed three and injured more than 40 American soldiers. Iran-supported Houthis have launched dozens of attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea. Iran?s most important proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah, sustains a low-grade confrontation with Israel. And, of course, 130 Israelis remain captive to Iran-backed Hamas as hostages in Gaza.

In other words, there is a war, sometimes hot, sometimes cool, happening across the entire Middle East between Iran, Israel, the U.S., and various other smaller actors. What does Iran want out of this war? Is it achieving its objectives? What is it concerned about?

To answer these and other questions, Ray Takeyh here joins Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver. Takeyh is a senior fellow for Middle East studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal and Foreign Affairs, and the author, just last week, of a New York Times opinion piece called ?Why Iran Doesn?t Want a War.?

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

 

Recently, the Israeli professor of Jewish philosophy Yehuda Halper joined Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver to discuss Maimonides, the Rambam, perhaps the most significant medieval rabbinic sage and Jewish philosopher. They discussed Maimonides?s life and the main genres of his work?his commentary on Jewish law, his codification of Jewish law, his elaboration of philosophic mysteries that he believed are laden within the biblical and rabbinic corpus, his writings on science and medicine, and his views on the laws pertaining to Torah study.

Halper now returns for another conversation about Maimonides. This week, they look at ?Hilchot De?ot,? a section of the Mishneh Torah, Maimonides?s great work on Jewish law, pertaining to the laws of character traits. In ?Hilchot De?ot,? Maimonides introduced a portrait of the human condition, suggesting a moral psychology that can be assessed, trained, and elevated, and a description of the human person as an embodied being with a physical presence. There are profound philosophical and religious questions raised explicitly in this work, and even more profound ones residing just under the surface of the text.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

1948 was a landmark year in international politics. It saw the establishment of modern Israel. And it saw the General Assembly of the United Nations adopt the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That document, recognized today as a foundation stone of international human-rights law, gives voice to a range of fundamental rights meant to honor human freedom and dignity.

At the time, many of the proponents of human-rights statements and organizations were not only Jewish but proud Zionists. In the seventy-five years since, those two sorts of commitments seem to have grown in different directions, so that now, most people who work in the human-rights industry do not support but actively oppose the foundational premises and practical necessities of Jewish national freedom.

Hillel Neuer is the executive director of UN Watch, a human-rights organization based in Geneva. Together in conversation with Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver, he asks several pressing questions about this history, which he wrote about as a chapter in the new volume Jewish Priorities: Sixty-Five Proposals for the Future of Our People, published by Wicked Son. How did the human-rights movement and Israel start together? How did they grow apart? Can the human-rights movement change course, so that it can still highlight violations of human-rights law without falling prey to the obsession with Israel that today undermines its credibility?

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

2024 marks 820 years since the death of Maimonides in the Egyptian city of Fustat. The main focus of his writing falls in three categories. There's his commentary on the Mishnah and his code of Jewish law, the Mishneh Torah, a monumental contribution to Jewish jurisprudence. His Guide of the Perplexed is a magnum opus of theological and philosophical puzzles and reflection. And his writings about science, health, and medicine are an expression of the expertise he developed in his career as a court physician in Egypt.

Today's episode is the first of a multi-episode mini-series on Maimonides featuring Yehuda Halper of Bar-Ilan University, among the most distinguished scholars today of medieval Jewish philosophy and medieval Islamic philosophy, in conversation with Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver. This week, they begin the series by looking at passages from the Mishneh Torah which describe the purview of Torah study.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

In 2023, host Jonathan Silver convened 47 new conversations probing some of the most interesting and consequential subjects in modern Jewish life, from theological and religious themes to political and military ones. He spoke to scholars, visual artists, rabbis, writers, soldiers, strategists, and generals. Now that 2023 has come to an end, he's looking back at a number of representative excerpts from the year past in hopes that, as we plan 40 or 50 more conversations in 2024, you?ll return to the archive and listen to some of the most fascinating conversations from this year.

In this episode, we present selections from some of our favorite 2023 conversations. Excerpts include the podcast host and president of Shalem College, Russ Roberts; the great American writer, Cynthia Ozick; the Hebrew calligrapher, Izzy Pludwinski; Peter Berkowitz and Gadi Taub debating judicial reform; Ran Baratz on the roots of Israel's rifts; Michael Doran comparing October's Hamas attacks with the Yom Kippur War; Meir Soloveichik on Jewish martyrs; and, discussing Mosaic's November essay on the Palestinian predicament, the scholar Shany Mor, the journalist Haviv Gur, and the intellectual Hussein Aboubakr.

Finally, this episode ends on a note of hope, sounded by the historian Rick Richman, whose book of biographical portraits, And None Shall Make Them Afraid, turns out to have been the book we most needed this year.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

Israel is known for its advances in military technology, from the helmet-mounted displays of the newest fighter jets to the Iron Beam anti-missile defense system. (See this recent discussion with the military strategist and author Edward Luttwak about his new book on the subject, or this discussion with the entrepreneur Alon Arvatz about the cyber-specific dimension of Israeli defense.)

But as with everything, there are always tradeoffs to technology. Those tradeoffs are the concern of the Israeli writer Matti Friedman, who recently published an essay in the Atlantic called ?Israel Is Dangerously Dependent on Technology.? Here, he speaks with Mosaic's editor Jonathan Silver about that essay, and the tradeoffs for Israeli planners and politicians that have recently arrived.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

Earlier this month, the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research released a poll of Palestinian attitudes?attitudes towards Israel, towards Hamas, towards the Palestinian Authority, about the Hamas attacks of October 7, about the conduct of the war since that time, and more.

The findings are eye-opening. Asked if the October 7 attacks were the right thing to do, in light of all that?s happened since, 72% of Palestinians think they were. A further 85% said that they have not seen the videos of the October 7 attacks, and the vast majority do not believe that Hamas committed the atrocities that the videos show. Meanwhile, 66% of Palestinian respondents do not support the idea of a two-state solution. Approximately the same number, 63% of Palestinian respondents, believes that armed struggle is the best means of achieving, in the words of the poll, ?an end to the occupation and the building of an independent state.?

Ghaith al-Omari is a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the former executive director of the American Task Force on Palestine, and served as an advisor to the Palestinian negotiating team during the 1999?2001 permanent-status talks (in addition to holding various other positions within the Palestinian Authority). Here, in conversation with Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver, he breaks down some of this data and offers historical and political context for it.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

This week, Mosaic editor and podcast host Jonathan Silver steps into the arena of campus conflict. Alexandra Orbuch is a junior at Princeton, while Gabriel Diamond is a senior at Yale and the co-author of an essay in the New York Times entitled ?What is Happening on College Campuses is Not Free Speech.? Zach Kessel recently graduated from Northwest and is a fellow at National Review as well as at Tikvah. The three come from different places in the country, have different kinds of religious practices, study different subjects, and none intended to become college activists. Yet all three have found themselves caught up in what they all see as a deteriorating climate for young American Jews.

Do arguments over messages scribbled in chalk on the sidewalk or the presence or absence of posters on message boards matter? These three think they do, and ably explain why. The attitudes that are crystalizing in American universities, particularly elite ones, have a disproportionately large impact on American culture by virtue of the disproportionately large power of their graduates. In other words, questions of chalk messages and posters become proxy expressions of power.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

In the summer 2023 issue of Sapir, Roya Hakakian, an Iranian Jewish refugee to America, published an essay titled ?Letter to an Anti-Zionist Idealist." Its form echoes some of the most important arguments in modern times: Edmund Burke?s Reflections on the French Revolution was written as a letter, as was perhaps the foremost Zionist polemic in English, Hillel Halkin?s Letters to an American Jewish Friend.

In it, Hakakian acknowledges the misgivings that her correspondent?a benighted, well-intentioned, kind-hearted, idealist?has about Israel, and confronts that point of view with her own gratitude for Israel. And by examining the different judgments at which she and her correspondent have arrived, she is also able to shed light on the effects that America has had on Zionism in general.

This week, she joins Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver to discuss her letter, the fervor that now surrounds the subject, and the resurgent presence of the anti-Zionist idealists to whom Hakakian addresses herself.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

Compared to the United States and other great military powers, Israel has been relatively weak, relatively poor, and relatively embattled, without much space or time to incubate sophisticated military technology. Yet it has somehow become an innovator in that field. How is it that Israel has been able to turn its many limitations into assets that have helped it develop some of the most advanced defense technology on the planet?

Edward Luttwak is a distinguished military strategist and historian, who, together with Eitan Shamir, has just published a new book called The Art of Military Innovation: Lessons from the Israel Defense Forces. Luttwak joins Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver here to discuss the history of Israeli military-technology innovation, and the political, economic, and cultural factors that make it possible.

On October 7, Hamas terrorists recorded themselves in a state of joyous excitement to document their murder of so many Jews. But over the ensuing weeks, that emotion has given way to another emotion: pity for the Palestinians as passive victims of Israeli aggression. The men instigated this war are now seen as victims of this war, occupied, displaced, not murderers but among the murdered. That transformation is our focus of this episode of the Tikvah Podcast.

As it happens, that transformation is not unique to the Hamas attacks of October 2023. It is a pattern of Palestinian transformation that can be observed throughout the history of Israel. This is one of the distinguishing features of the Palestinian predicament, according to the Israeli writer Shany Mor, and it?s one of the core themes of a big essay he wrote for us at Mosaic in November 2023, called ?Ecstasy and Amnesia in the Gaza Strip.?

On November 15, Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver convened a discussion of Mor?s essay, along with the Egyptian-American writer Hussein Aboubakr, and the Israeli journalist Haviv Rettig Gur. This week?s podcast brings you that conversation.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

After the Hamas massacre of October 7, the Israeli military took three weeks before it responded with a ground invasion of Gaza, a span longer than most outside observers seemed to expect. What was happening? In that time, Israel?s air force was softening the ground for that incursion, and giving Palestinian civilians time to vacate the battlefield.

Assaf Orion, a retired IDF brigadier general and defense strategist, joins Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver this week to explain how Israel staged its air campaign, why it would help the ground phase, whether the air force's objectives were met, how bombs and missiles can penetrate subterranean targets, and how hostage fatalities could be avoided. Their conversation amounts to a preliminary retrospective on the earliest phase in Israel?s response.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

When Israeli officials examined shells and munitions that have been fired into Israel recently by Hamas, they realized that they look like they were not made in Gaza. Similarly, when IDF inspectors looked at some of the rocket launchers Israel captured near the Gaza border, they discovered units with the word Bang-122 written on them in Korean. Bang is evidently an abbreviation of the Korean phrase bangsapo, which means ?multiple rocket launcher,? and 122 is thought to indicate the caliber?122 millimeters.

It turns out that North Korean arms dealers have been supplying Hamas with rockets, rocket-propelled grenades, laser-guided anti-tank missiles, and more. North Korean engineers, meanwhile, have taught Hamas how to design and build the many tunnels that underneath Gaza.

Bruce Bechtol, a political scientist at Angelo State University and a former Marine, is the author of the recent article ?Hamas Is Using North Korean Weapons Against Israel? at the website 19fortyfive.com, and the book, North Korean Military Proliferation in the Middle East and Africa, published in 2018. Here he joins Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver to discuss how Hamas connected with North Korea, what weapons are involved, and what each side gets out of the arrangement.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

After years of acrimony, several recent meetings between Israeli and Turkish leaders seemed to suggest the possibility of a gradual thaw in relations between the two most powerful nations in the Middle East. Such a reconciliation, combined with a growing relationship with the Arab states in the Gulf, might have firmed up an alliance structure in the region powerful enough to deter Iran and its many proxies.

The Hamas massacre on October 7 has thrown a wrench into that possibility. Senior Hamas operatives live in Turkey and operate there under its protection. On October 11, Erdogan criticized the ?shameful methods? that Israel used to strike Hamas targets. On October 25, he disputed the idea that Hamas is a terrorist organization at all, calling them instead mujahadeen?soldiers engaged in jihad. On October 27, he called Israel a war criminal and a pawn of the West. Ambassadors in both nations have been recalled.

Are relations doomed to degrade further? Can they be rescued? Hay Eytan Cohen Yanarocak is a longtime observer of Turkey based at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security and also at the Moshe Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University. In June 2022, he wrote an essay in Mosaic looking at Israeli-Turkish relations. Here, he speaks with Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver to look at that question in the wake of October 7.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

On October 6, 1973, on Yom Kippur, the forces of Egypt and Syria invaded Israel and launched the Yom Kippur War. Fifty years and one day later, Hamas terrorists invaded southwest Israel, killed some 1400 Israelis, took some 200 hostages, and, in so doing, opened up a new front in the simmering conflict that pits Iran and its supporters?China and Russia among them?against Israel and its chief supporter, the United States. 

 

After the Yom Kippur War of 1973, an Israeli board, known as the Agranat Commission, issued a report investigating the failings of the IDF leading up to the war. No commission has yet been established to investigate the intelligence and operational failures that allowed the October 7 massacre to take place. But there are clearly some echoes and similarities between the two attacks. To explore them, Michael Doran joins Mosaic editor and Tikvah Podcast host Jonathan Silver for a discussion.

 

Doran is the author of the October essay at Mosaic, ?The Hidden Calculation behind the Yom Kippur War,? which argues that Israeli leaders made a conscious choice not to preempt the Egyptians and take the initiative, as they had so successfully in the 1967 Six Day War, because they were thinking about the U.S. Israel relationship. They didn't know that war was looming, exactly, but they knew that something might happen. They certainly didn't know the intensity of the offensive campaigns against Israel, or about the proficiency or tactical deployment of anti-aircraft missile technology layered into Egyptian defenses?much the same as, this year, they didn't know about Hamas's ability to use drones and gliders. 

 

Doran is also the instructor of a free new online course on the same subject, which can be found at yomkippurwar.tikvahfund.org. 

 

The conversation took place on a live broadcast on October 18 to subscribers of Mosaic /and to Tikvah's online course supporters, who also got the chance to ask questions.

 

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

Pidyon shvuyim, the redemption and release of captives, is an old and urgent task that Jewish communities are obliged to meet. It is an obligation derived from the Hebrew Bible, developed in the writings and reflection of the rabbinic sages, and deepened and explicated in the work of Jewish medieval thinkers whose communities were situated inside Christian and Muslim host cultures.

At the moment when these laws were conceived, the buying and selling of human lives was common; thankfully, slavery of that kind is rare today. Then, since persons had a market value, the Jewish community often had to raise the funds necessary to purchase the freedom of their hostages. This led to much debate about the practice. Did meeting the demands of the captors incentivize further hostage-taking? If the hostage?s family was wealthy and eager to pay any price for release, did they nevertheless have an obligation not to, lest they increase the price for the rest of the community?

These questions are not merely historical any longer. There are 203 Israelis captive and bound in Gaza. Some of them are young children. Some of them are elderly. Some of them have disabilities and handicaps.

The current situation introduces new questions, too. In the times before the modern state of Israel, Jewish communities did not have a sovereign state to act on their behalf, nor did they have a military. And today's captors do not seem to want money, as their predecessors did. They aim instead at a different sort of currency: leverage, shame, and power.

What can and should be done to secure the freedom of Israel's hostages?

This week, the rabbi Ethan Tucker, president and rosh yeshiva of Hadar, joins Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver to discuss the history and development of pidyon shvuyim. Together, they try to uncover the roots, the extent, and the limits of the obligation at a moment that presents a difficult set of moral tradeoffs.   Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

Jews typically honor the dead by saying the phrase zikhrono livrakha, ?may his memory be a blessing.? But when a Jew is murdered because he is a Jew, he is considered a martyr, and his name is then honored by the use of a different phrase, hashem yikom damo, "may God avenge his blood." Today, Rabbi Meir Soloveichik joins Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver to discuss his 2018 essay in Commentary on this subject, and to share his first thoughts on one of the worst weeks in modern Jewish history.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

Sixty years ago, outlawing racial segregation was a dominant civil rights priority of liberals. Today, in the name of racial equality, many progressive thinkers and activists champion policies and actions that promote segregation. The story of how that moral transformation took place is one of the central preoccupations of the professor Yascha Mounk, the author of The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time.

In that book, released last month, Mounk plots the relevant intellectual history, from the postmodern philosophy of Michel Foucault to the post-colonial writing of Edward Said to early expressions of critical race theory in the work of Derrick Bell and to the articulation of the governing idea of intersectionality in the work of Kimberlé Crenshaw. Mounk explores how the architects of what he calls ?the identity synthesis??his term for what alternatively goes by identity politics or wokeness, terms that he avoids because he believes they are overly polemical?are not accidentally but conscientiously opposed to the race-blind aspirations of their liberal predecessors.

All this he discusses this week with Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver. The two also turn to the question of what this revolutionary moral transformation has to do with the Jews. Does the very notion that Americans should be categorized and evaluated in political, civic, and educational settings on the basis of race?and that, moreover, Jews are often fit into the racially white, oppressor category?mean that logic of the identity synthesis tends toward anti-Semitism? Does the legitimating of racial categorization give ammunition to white supremacists to reject the whiteness of Jews, and indulge their own Jew-hatred? And what does all this mean for the central goal of Jewish education?to teach children to assume responsibility for and pride in the Jewish tradition?

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

Israel's success in military cyber-operations and cyber-security, from disrupting Iranian nuclear development to covert intelligence gathering, is well known. It has given birth to a cluster of companies that have made Tel Aviv a global hub for cyber-security.

Alon Arvatz is CEO and co-founder of PointFive, a new cybersecurity start up based in Tel Aviv, and the author of a new book, The Battle for Your Computer: Israel and the Growth of the Global Cyber-Security Industry. With Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver, he talks here about some of the factors that make Israeli companies so competitive in cybersecurity, how military and intelligence applications of cyber technology have changed over time, how he thinks they will change in the future, how these technological capabilities relate to policy and politics, what kind of regulatory oversight is appropriate for the industry, and much else.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

?When a man or woman shall commit any sin that men commit, to do a trespass against the Lord, and that person be guilty; then they shall confess their sin which they have done: and he shall make restitution for this trespass in full.? So reads chapter 5 from the book of Numbers. Repentance is on the Jewish mind these days. The time between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is called the Ten Days of Teshuva?the Ten Days of Repentance?and during it observant Jews engage in prayer and penitence.

What is repentance? How does it operate? What?s actually happening in the mind of the penitent?

Daniel Rynhold is dean of the Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies and professor of Jewish philosophy at Yeshiva University. He has thought and written much about repentance and sees it as a way to illustrate some of the most interesting contrasts between medieval and modern philosophers. Joining Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver here to discuss the subject, he focuses on three major thinkers, two from within the Jewish tradition and one outside of it.

The first is Rabbeinu Yonah, the 13th-century author of the rabbinic work The Gates of Repentance. The second is Joseph B. Soloveitchik, known as the Rav, who was perhaps the central intellectual figure of post-war Modern Orthodoxy. The third is the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, a famous critic of the Enlightenment, of liberalism, and of modernity. The last two are the focus of his book, written with Michael Harris, Nietzsche, Soloveitchik, and Contemporary Jewish Philosophy, published in 2018 by Cambridge University Press.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

Tonight begins Rosh Hashanah, when Jewish communities celebrate the new year and, as part of this celebration, read chapter 22 of Genesis. This contains the famous story in which God asks Abraham to take his son Isaac to a mountain and offer him there as a sacrifice.

What is this passage all about? What does it mean? What can be learned about Abraham, about Isaac, or about God by reading it carefully? Joining Mosaic?s editor Jonathan Silver today to discuss these questions is Jon D. Levenson, a professor of Jewish studies at Harvard Divinity School and frequent Mosaic contributor. Levenson has written about this episode in several books, including The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son published in 1993 by Yale University Press, and also in Inheriting Abraham, published in 2012 by Princeton University Press.

Akeidat Yitz?ak, the binding of Isaac, as the Jewish people traditionally refer to this episode, has a long afterlife in Christian and Muslim traditions; it is also a centerpiece of philosophical reflection among modern thinkers like Immanuel Kant and Soren Kierkegaard. Reading the text now in the aftermath of those later reflections, it?s difficult to retrieve its original meaning. The temptation is overwhelming to propose moral justifications for Abraham and for God, to excuse or at least to try to soften the drama of Genesis 22.  To hear what the text of the Hebrew Bible really might have to say in response to that temptation requires undoing some modern assumptions?a task that Levenson and Silver take up.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

Last Saturday, supporters and opponents of Eritrea?s president, Isaias Afwerki, confronted one another in violent clashes. Yet rather than in Asmara, Eritrea?s capital city, this confrontation took place in the streets of south Tel Aviv. In the second half of the 2000s, east African migration to Israel began to accelerate. Since then, in part due to changes in labor policies and law enforcement and in part to a barrier wall erected along the Egypt-Israel border, the number of new east African migrants has fallen precipitously. Nevertheless, although statistics are hard to come by with great precision, there are probably around 40,000 non-Jewish African migrants living in Israel today.

What brings these mainly Ethiopian, Eritrean, and Sudanese immigrants to the cities and towns of Israel? And how does and how should Israel distinguish between those seeking humanitarian asylum and those looking for work opportunities and social benefits?

These questions have become major points of debate in Israel. Some argue that the state must act in the world as a corrective to the Jewish experience of statelessness in history?that since Jews have so often been migrants and refugees and dependent on the help of others, Israel must help others in need when it can. Others argue that Israel?the political answer to the problems of Jewish statelessness?has an overriding moral obligation to welcome and to secure the lives and liberties of Jews?that it has a special obligation to pursue the ingathering of the Jewish diaspora and so to make a distinction between Jewish and non-Jewish immigrants.

To discuss these issues, Yonatan Jakubowicz, formerly an advisor to Israel?s Minister of Interior, and a founder of the Israeli Immigration Policy Center, joins Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

Podcast: Mordechai Kedar on the Return of Terrorism in the West Bank

Since the end of the second intifada nearly twenty years ago, and the attendant calming of the West Bank, the main source of violence against Israel has been the Gaza Strip. That's involved fewer terrorists blowing themselves up in Israeli cafes and more rockets fired across the border. But over the last year the pace of terrorism from the West Bank is once again accelerating, with two attacks in Israel just this week.

Mordechai Kedar is a scholar of Arab politics and a retired lieutenant colonel in the IDF, where he specialized in military intelligence, focusing on Syria, Arab political discourse, Arab media, and Islamism. Today, in conversation with Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver, he shares his assessment of what?s happening in the West Bank.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

Starting in January of this year, there have been popular protests each week in Israel. On Saturday night, when Shabbat comes to a close, hundreds and thousands of people go into the streets protesting the government and its policies, chief among them judicial reform. Yet it was plain from the beginning that the protests were about more than judicial reform?that the lens of judicial reform isn't adequate to fully understand the deeper emotions on all sides of this civil crisis.

Ran Baratz is the founding editor of the Israeli magazine Mida and a regular contributor to the conservative newspaper Makor Rishon. Speaking here with Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver, he tries to understand what?s really happening now in Israel. If the events of the last six months are not just about judicial reform, then what are they about? And how can any deeper sources of Israeli animosity be understood and addressed? For those who support the protestors, here?s a chance to learn how some Israeli conservatives actually think. For those who oppose the protestors, here?s a chance to think about their motivations sympathetically. Both endeavors are fitting for democratic citizens of the same nation, and their friends around the world.

 

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

 

 

In the period between 1936-1938, now known to historians as the Great Terror, Joseph Stalin oversaw the murder of over 700,000 Soviet subjects. Some of them were political rivals. Some of them held heterodox views. Some of them were merely accused of holding heterodox views. Nearly 30,000 of them were executed at two mass gravesites, Kommunarka and Butovo. Today?s podcast guest recently journeyed to Kommunarka to pay homage to one of these victims, his great-grandfather.

Dovid Margolin is senior editor at Chabad.org and the author of a new essay, ?The Jews in Defiance of History? in the September 2023 issue of Commentary, that looks at Stalin?s Great Terror through his own family?s legacy. Margolin is a Lubavitcher Hasid, and remarks on the fact that under so much pressure to assimilate?even to the point of persecution and death?the Jews of the Soviet Union did not disappear. That fact leads him to note one of the reasons that the Communist understanding of history cannot be true: because the existence and perpetuation of the Jews disprove it. Here he speaks to Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver about that idea, about his journey, and about his family.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

On October 27, 2018, a gunman burst into the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, armed with a Colt AR-15 semi-automatic rifle and three Glock .357 semi-automatic pistols. He executed eleven Jews at prayer. When police arrived, they shot the gunman multiple times, but he survived and was taken into custody. Earlier this month, he was sentenced to death by lethal injection.

How does Judaism look upon capital punishment? Does this killer still bear the image and likeness of God and possess a dignity that is irreducible, such that he could be punished but should not be killed? Or did he surrender that moral standing by the act of murder? Do resources from within the Jewish tradition suggest that capital punishment has a deterrent effect on other potential criminals?

To think about these questions, Rabbi Shlomo Brody, the director of an organization dedicated to helping Jews navigate choices regarding aging, end-of-life care, and organ donation, joins the podcast. In 2021, he wrote an analysis of the death penalty for terrorists as seen by Jewish law. That essay, published in a volume entitled Hokhma LeShlomo, frames the conversation he has here with Mosaic?s editor Jonathan Silver.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

The celebrated novelist Dara Horn's new book People Love Dead Jews has an arresting title, one designed to make the reader feel uncomfortable. That's because Horn makes an argument that tries to change the way people think about the function of Jews in the conscience of the West.

In the book, and in this podcast conversation with Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver, Horn suggests that Jewish communities, figures, and abstract symbols of ?the Jews? have come to serve a moral role in the Western imagination that, when one takes a step back, is bizarre and grotesque.

It?s easy to acknowledge the darkness of the Holocaust and to marvel at the optimism of Anne Frank, but Horn detects in that acknowledgement something insidious that hasn't yet been fully revealed or explained.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

Perhaps more than any other major religious tradition, Judaism is mediated through words. God first communicated to Abraham through intelligible speech. Moses brought down from Mount Sinai tablets inscribed with words codifying the structure of Jewish moral order. The book of Deuteronomy commands that every Jewish king write his own Torah scroll. For millions of Jews, the study of Jewish texts constitutes the holiest activity of all.

So perhaps it is not surprising that, seen in this light, words, letters, the technology and artistry of writing, the vocation of the scribe?the sofer, in Hebrew?deserve an elevated place in Jewish tradition. The English word calligrapher comes from the Greek phrase kalos graphos, beautiful writing; the vast tradition of Hebrew calligraphy offers no small amount of beautiful writing.

This week on the podcast, host Jonathan Silver looks at a stunning new book, The Beauty of the Hebrew Letter by the sofer Izzy Pludwinski, and speaks with its author. It's a lavish coffee-table book full of gorgeous illustrations; it can be bought here.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

In the sixth century BCE, the kingdom of Judah and its capitol in Jerusalem were besieged by the Babylonian forces of Nebuchadnezzar II. After a long period of deprivation, the walls of the city were finally breached. On the Hebrew date of the 9th of the month of Av?Tisha b?Av?the Temple that had stood in Jerusalem for centuries was plundered and destroyed, the inhabitants of the city were massacred, and the survivors were taken into captivity.

This experience remains one of the most traumatic in Jewish history. The Hebrew Bible records it in the book of Eicha, known in English as the book of Lamentations. Its five chapters, all of them highly structured, contain some of the most grotesque and poignant language of oppression and suffering in all of biblical literature. There are descriptions of mothers driven to such desperation that they resort to cannibalism; there is a haunting description of a man whose body has so withered from starvation that his skin hangs on him like desiccated wool.

Lamentations expresses a range of emotional responses to that trauma. Some, seemingly in line with Jeremiah?s chastening prophecy, understand the destruction of the city as a just punishment for a sinful people meted out by God; while others direct frustration, desperation, and even bitterness at God. The rabbi and academic Bible scholar Joshua Berman has just published a new commentary called The Book of Lamentations with Cambridge University Press. His interpretation and his new book frame a discussion this week with Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

The first century Roman essayist and philosopher Plutarch is perhaps most famous today for his stylized, paired biographies of Greek and Roman statesmen. In Plutarch?s parallel lives, Alexander, who conquered the Mediterranean world, is compared to Julius Caesar, who did the same a few hundred years later. Alcibiades and Coriolanus are paired together to show how spiritedness and martial virtue, when not tempered by political judgment, can wreak havoc.

Plutarch?s lives are moral portraits; their task is the moral formation of the reader, civic education, and the inculcation of virtue. They inspired Shakespeare?s portraits of Coriolanus, Caesar, Brutus, Cassius, and Casca. The Swiss philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau likewise drew inspiration from them in, for example, his treatise Emile. And the American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson once called Plutarch?s parallel lives ?a bible for heroes.?

But what about the Bible, and the Jewish tradition it inaugurates? Meir Soloveichik, the rabbi of Congregation Shearith Israel in New York, the director of the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University, and host of the podcasts Bible365 and Jerusalem365, believes that Jewish history offers its own examples of Jewish leadership. He's just published a new book, Providence and Power: Ten Portraits in Jewish Statesmanship, that attempts to do for the Jews what Plutarch did for the ancient Greeks and Romans. He joins Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver here to talk about that new book.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

At the end of May, the Biden administration released the first-ever U.S. National Strategy to Counter Anti-Semitism. This document looks at the threat anti-Semitism poses to America, outlines ways the federal government can improve the safety and security of Jewish communities, offers plans for countering anti-Semitic discrimination online, in media, and in schools, and describes the administration?s vision for partnering with various religious and civic groups to address the issue.

The existence of this strategy is both praiseworthy and worrying. Often in Jewish history it has been the very governments to which Jews are subject that themselves fuel or carry out anti-Semitic attacks; now, the government is trying to prevent them. Still, the fact that such a national strategy is now needed is a sign of some disturbing trends in American culture and American public life.

Tevi Troy, a veteran of the American government, recently analyzed the Biden administration?s National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism in a new essay, called ?How to Combat Anti-Semitism,? for the journal National Affairs. Here, he joins Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver to discuss his ideas.

In particular, he wonders if, however, praiseworthy or well-intended the impulse behind this national strategy might be, the federal government has the wherewithal to do any good here. Then, looking a little more deeply into the report, he raises other questions?questions having to do with the definition of anti-Semitism, the strategic conceptions deployed to fight against it, the partners that have been enlisted to help implement these initiatives, and so forth.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

Loyalty?as a human sentiment, as a moral virtue, as a matrix of decision-making?is the subject of this podcast conversation.

Avital Levi, a postdoctoral fellow at Tel Aviv University and a teacher of Bible and philosophy in Israel, is curious about what keeps nations that are deeply divided together. Conservative Americans dislike liberal ones, and vice versa; and the same goes for Israelis and for the populations of many other nations. So what keeps those nations from descending into civil war? Levi looks at modern philosophical approaches to ethical decision making and thinks they?re not fully equipped to answer that question. Instead, she argues, another approach is needed.

This approach begins not by asking what people are support as partisans but whom they stand with as citizens. Loyalty is the quality she thinks is most important here?the moral virtue responsible for belonging and membership, that contours the devotion that people muster to stand with their fellow citizens even when they dislike them. Together, Levi and Mosaic?s editor Jonathan Silver discuss what motivated her research into loyalty?and why it matters.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

Earlier this week, the American foreign-policy expert and Mosaic writer Michael Doran published an important essay called ?Biden?s Ties That Bind.? In it, he argues that the Biden administration?s true strategic aims in the Middle East are not a change from the Obama administration?s aims but are consistent with them.

These aims were to empower Iran in order to establish a balance of power in the region which would, in turn, allow America to focus more attention on China. And to empower Iran, the United States must constrain Israel, Iran's chief regional nemesis. Doran?s essay seeks therefore to explain how the Biden administration deploys symbols of an American-Israeli united front in order to advance toward a new deal with the Tehran. Here, he joins Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver to discuss that idea and the evidence he sees for it. 

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

This week, the Tikvah Podcast offers up not a conversation but a speech. It?s a speech that was offered up to American Jewish high school and college graduates by Tikvah?s CEO, Eric Cohen. 

In the fall of 2021, four Jewish women?Carolyn Rowan, Liz Lange, Nina Davidson, and Rebecca Sugar?came together to create an organization for parents grappling with the challenges of raising committed Jewish children in today's confusing and contentious cultural environment. The Jewish Parents Forum organizes events for parents to get to know one another and to learn how to address the practical challenges facing Jewish mothers and fathers today, from the mainstreaming of anti-Semitism to identity politics to vociferous anti-Zionism to what to do about social media and phones.

This spring, the Jewish Parents Forum invited  Cohen to deliver a graduation address on these themes for students in Tikvah?s education programs. In that speech, he raises questions that all American Jews are now confronted with?questions that are also those that all Jews at all times must ask and answer.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

This past Sunday, photographs began to appear on social media of a sports stadium, the Wells Fargo Center just outside of Philadelphia, full of haredi men?some 27,000 of them. The name of the gathering was Adirei HaTorah, a Hebrew phrase that means ?warriors of Torah.? All those people were convened in order to honor a small group of men: hundreds of relatively anonymous adults engaged in full-time Torah study at Beth Medrash Govoha in Lakewood, New Jersey.

Beth Medrash Govoha is one of the most interesting Jewish educational institutions in the world. It?s the largest yeshiva outside of Israel; thousands of students are enrolled there full time. Most if not all of them are married, which means that there are also thousands of wives, and many thousands of children, amounting to an entire world of Orthodox Judaism.

What does the decision to honor the adults who dedicate themselves to Torah study reveal about the spirit of the Lakewood world ? To answer that question, the rabbi Eli Steinberg, a 10-year veteran of the Lakewood yeshiva, formerly on the professional staff there, joins Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver on a tour of the Adirei HaTorah celebration last Sunday, and of the society built around a school of which that celebration is a fascinating expression. Together, they also ask if there?s something there from which all Jewish communities can learn.

 

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

In July of the year 1263, the Dominican friar Pablo Christiani met to debate the rabbi Moshe ben Nachman, sometimes known as Nachmanides, to discuss whether Jesus was the Messiah, and thus whether Christianity or Judaism had a greater claim to truth. They  conducted this debate in the court of King James of Aragon, who famously guaranteed the rabbi?s freedom of speech, allowing Nachmanides to even advance arguments that, being regarded as heretical by Christian clergy, would have otherwise caused him to be imprisoned or worse. These proceedings are known, famously, in history as the Disputation of Barcelona.

To fully understand the context of this debate, one has to know something more about the Dominican friar Pablo Christiani: he was not born Pablo Christiani. In fact, he was born as a Sephardic Jew with the birth name of Saul. Only later in life, having lived as a Jewish man and having been exposed to some Jewish learning, did he convert to Catholicism. Joining the Dominican order as a friar, Saul?newly dubbed Pablo?dedicated his life to converting the Jews, possibly with argument and persuasion?he liked to use statements from Talmudic writing as evidence for Christian theology?but also through the threat of violence and force.

What is it that would so compel a person to turn against their own family, their own teachers, their own neighbors, their own religion?and not as a matter of indifference but as a matter of revenge on the sources of his own formation?

That is one of the questions that runs underneath a new story by the legendary essayist, novelist, and short-story writer Cynthia Ozick. Her newest story is called ?The Conversion of the Jews,? and it was published in Harper?slast month. Ozick?s ?The Conversion of the Jews? follows a 24-year-old scholar of words and languages named Solomon Adelberg, as he, in the early 1930s, attempts to discover how and why Christiani undertook his conversion. These questions lead Adelberg to a hollowed-out monastery in the Judean desert, through the occult world of mysticism and magic, and eventually to attempting a séance with the icon of a saint in his Lower East Side apartment. This week, to discuss that story, and the many ideas, themes, and questions it raises, Cynthia Ozick joins Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver on our podcast.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

Most everyone who reads it loves the book of Ruth, with its bucolic settings, its charming loves, its grace, and its devoted characters?Naomi, Boaz, and Ruth herself. Alongside that appeal, the book of Ruth also conveys truths about the human condition: about who children are and what they mean for the life of a woman, a family, and a nation; about the complementary human and divine sources of redemption; and about a distinctly Hebraic sense of the shape of a human life.

These ideas and more are offered up in a 2021 book about Ruth by Leon Kass and Hannah Mandelbaum, Reading Ruth: Birth, Redemption, and the Way of Israel. The origins of their book?a line by line commentary on Ruth?is itself a story no less moving than the text it interprets. Hannah Mandelbaum is Leon Kass?s granddaughter, and they began to read the book of Ruth together while mourning Amy Kass, Kass?s late and beloved wife of 54 years and Mandelbaum?s grandmother. In so doing, they followed a path that Ruth herself treads, from desolation to gladness, with a distinguished Jewish future unfurling along the way.

Leon Kass is an emeritus professor at the University of Chicago?s Committee on Social Thought, the author of many books, including studies of Genesis and Exodus, and the dean of faculty at Shalem College in Jerusalem. In this conversation, recorded at an event in 2021, he joins Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver to talk about Reading Ruth and writing it with his granddaughter.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

Many modern movements and philosophies have invited humans to look for answers to fundamental human questions not outside of themselves?as many traditional religious forms and classical and pre-modern philosophical traditions did?but inside of themselves. This is an impulse to seek contentment through self-realization, to judge a person?s inner attitudes by the extent to which they are authentic to who they truly are. That means that personal thoughts and feelings now govern behavior more than external standards or external channels of ambition. Modern people do not want the self to melt away into something greater, or holier; modern people are self-made.

Self-Made is the title of a forthcoming book from Tara Isabella Burton, the author of Strange Rites and an occasional Mosaic contributor. Strange Rites was about the way old spiritual drives have endowed new and unorthodox practices?like eating organic food or exercising at a fancy gym?with spiritual significance. Self-Made tells the story of how so many people came to believe in the importance of creating their own bespoke personalities, in ?branding ourselves,? in self-definition, in fashioning desires into purposes. It?s an important book, and Burton is one the most theologically attuned social critics writing today. Here, she joins Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver to talk about it. Their conversation ranges through many time periods and the philosophical and literary authors who have influenced her thought on these matters. In other words, it?s a bit more abstract that most conversations on this podcast.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibits employers from discriminating against employees on the basis of religion. An employer can?t say that he won?t hire Muslims or Mormons or Jews, and he can?t fire one of his employees because of their faith. But how is religion defined? Religion, after all, is both a belief and a practice. It?s not only what happens in the head of the believer?it?s also the actions the believer undertakes based on their religion. That question has been a major point of legal battles relating to religion and the Civil Rights Act over the last sixty years.

In 1977, the Supreme Court heard the case of TWA v Hardison. Larry Hardison was a Christian employee at Trans World Airlines and felt that he could not work on the Sabbath (which his particular Christian denomination kept, like Jews, on Saturdays). TWA tried to reassign him, but that didn?t work and he was eventually fired. When Hardison sued TWA for religious discrimination, the court sided with TWA, arguing that, yes, accommodations should be made for believers, but that TWA tried to make some reasonable accommodations and could not be expected to make more than that. Not everyone on the court agreed; Thurgood Marshall wrote, in his dissent from the majority?s opinion, that ?religious diversity has been seriously eroded? by the ruling.

Since then, the decision in TWA v Hardison has held. Yet it may not hold for much longer. Earlier this month, the Supreme Court heard a new case about an American Christian who, like Larry Hardison, was fired for keeping the Sabbath. That case, Groff v. DeJoy, could be a major moment in the history of religious freedom in America. Nathan Diament, executive director for the Orthodox Union Advocacy Center, is the co-author of the OU?s amicus brief on this case, and also the author of an April 17 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal entitled ?Can the Post Office Force a Christian to Deliver on Sunday?? He joins Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver to discuss his argument, the history of the issue, and what the Supreme Court might decide.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.