Leon Kass on How Exodus Created the Jewish National Narrative
Release Date: 04/17/2025
Andrew Roberts and Meir Soloveichik on Winston Churchill and His Detractors: The perils of the new historical revisionism
The Tikvah Podcast
What mattered most for survivors of the Holocaust, indeed, what made their survival possible, was not only that the Allies had better ideas about democracy and civilization, though of course Britain, America, and the other Western Allies did. It was that they actually won the war. They defeated the Germans on the field of battle—on sea, land, and air, in the hills and in the streets. It’s not enough for us to rest contentedly on the superiority of our ideas. We also have to fight. But at this moment, the fundamental political fact of the last 80 years—that it was an indispensable and...
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Daniel Samet on the U.S.-Israel Relationship and the American National Interest: How the cold war shaped an enduring alliance between Washington and Jerusalem
The Tikvah Podcast
The relationship between the United States and Israel has long been the subject of intense scrutiny, very often distorted by polemic and conspiracy. One of the most influential articulations of these distortions came in 2007, when the political scientists John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt argued that American foreign policy had been hijacked by a powerful Israel lobby—an argument that, despite its weaknesses, has shaped how many Americans view relations between these two nations. My guest today, the historian and policy scholar Daniel Samet, has written a new book that aims to set the record...
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Richard Goldberg on How American Energy Dominance Is Reshaping the Middle East: A new era of U.S.-Israel cooperation
The Tikvah Podcast
In the span of just twelve days, the strategic balance of the Middle East was fundamentally altered. Israel systematically dismantled Iran’s drones, missiles, and air defenses, while American strikes turned its most important nuclear facilities into dust. But for all of that, another aspect of the war may not yet have gotten enough attention, and that is the demonstration of what American energy dominance can make possible. What does it mean that oil did not rise over $100 per barrel, as some predicted it might, and how did American policymakers ensure that it didn’t? The answer to that...
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Ido Hevroni on Teaching Homer in Wartime: The dust and blood and bronze of the Trojan War come to life in Gaza
The Tikvah Podcast
This week, as students in North America are returning to campus and settling into the rhythms of the fall semester, some of them are going to open their copies of Homer’s epic poems of the Trojan War, the Iliad and Odyssey. They will read of the Trojan commander Hector’s poignant farewell to his wife Andromache, of the Greek warrior Achilles’ terrible rage, of Odysseus’ long journey home, and of his wife in Ithaca, Penelope, who has endured his absence for some twenty years. For many students, these will be powerful stories—windows into an ancient world of honor and virtue...
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David Myers and Andrew Koss on Whether Jewish Studies Has Turned against the Jews: Has the field lost its way, and can it recover?
The Tikvah Podcast
In “,” our feature essay this month at Mosaic, our focus is on higher-education reform, the future and fate of the humanities, and helping parents of Jewish students figure out the best places to pursue university studies. This is not the first time that Mosaic has dealt with these and related issues. In May 2024, my Mosaic colleague Andrew Koss wrote a searching, provocative essay in which he looked specifically at the field of Jewish studies. In the spring of that year, when campuses had exploded in pro-Hamas, anti-Jewish activism, how did professors of Jewish...
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Barry Strauss on the Jewish Conflict with Ancient Rome: Two Centuries of Rebellion
The Tikvah Podcast
Between the year 63 before the Common Era, and the year 136 of the Common Era, the Jewish people waged three revolts against the mightiest empire in the world. In retrospect, we can see that these were not only local uprisings, but civilizational confrontations that would echo through history—struggles that pitted the Jewish people’s fierce determination to live as a free nation in their ancestral homeland against Rome’s inexorable drive to impose order across its vast dominions. What makes these revolts so fascinating is not merely their military drama, but the profound questions they...
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Michael Doran on Israel and the American Right: Republicans remain staunchly pro-Israel, despite their social-media eccentrics
The Tikvah Podcast
On July 29, Gallup published a new poll showing American support for Israel’s military action in Gaza at a historic low. But a strong majority (71 percent) of Republicans say they approve of Israel’s conduct in Gaza, and that is up from 66 percent in September. Of Israel’s military action in Iran, 78 percent of Republicans approve. And 67 percent of Republicans have a favorable opinion of Israel’s prime minister. Even as the broader American public continues to cool on Israel, Republican support for Israel’s conduct of the war isn’t just holding steady—it’s actually...
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How Islamism Took Over the Middle East
The Tikvah Podcast
This month at Mosaic, we hosted a very important set of conversations, spurred on by a very important essay: “,” by the Egyptian-American writer Hussein Aboubakr Mansour. Mansour traces the roots of jihadism to European, and especially German, philosophy, transmitted through 20th-century Arab radicalism. Earlier this week, we broadcast a conversation about the essay with Hussein and two eminent professors: Bernard Haykel from Princeton University and Ze’ev Maghen from Bar-Ilan University. The discussion was at times contentious in the best, and most illuminating, of ways. For anyone...
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Tal Fortgang and David E. Bernstein on Defending Jewish Civil Right on Campus: How the government can fight anti-Semitism effectively and legally
The Tikvah Podcast
This week, Columbia University reached a $200 million settlement with the Trump administration to resolve multiple federal civil-rights investigations. The deal—which the White House characterized as the largest anti-Semitism-related settlement in U.S. history—will also release hundreds of millions of dollars in suspended federal grants that had been withheld from Columbia as the administration sought to guarantee the rights of Jewish students and faculty at an institution that has become, since October 7, a hotbed of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel activism. Since taking office, the Trump...
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Rabbi J.J. Schacter on the Jewish Meaning of Memory: What does it mean to remember the destruction of the Temples?
The Tikvah Podcast
We are now in a period in the liturgical calendar of the Jewish people known as the Three Weeks, which begins on the seventeenth day of the Hebrew month of Tammuz, and continues through the ninth day of the month of Av. It is a period of mourning and commemoration of many experiences of tragedy and sorrow in the Jewish past, and it culminates on the Ninth of Av, or Tisha b’Av, because on that day, in the year 586 BCE, Nebuchadnezzar’s forces destroyed the First Temple in Jerusalem. It was also on that day, in the year 70 CE, that Roman forces destroyed the Second Temple in Jerusalem. These...
info_outlineThis week the Jewish people is not just celebrating, but reenacting the Exodus from Egypt that our ancestors undertook many generations ago. The complex, ritualized retelling of this story can be found in the Haggadah, the text that structures the Passover’s ceremonial meal, or seder. But of course the defining telling of this story is to be found in the book of Exodus itself.
In 2021, the great Jewish thinker Leon Kass published a searching, capacious commentary on that book called Founding God’s Nation: Reading Exodus. Not long after, he sat down with Mosaic’s editor Jonathan Silver to record a video course based on his commentary, consisting of eight, roughly hour-long episodes. This week, we’re bringing you the audio version of episode two, focusing on the national narrative created in the text. The episode addresses the character of Moses, the nature of Egyptian society, the purpose of the plagues, and the essence of awe and reverence, all against the backdrop of the Exodus’s three defining components: the promulgation of a national story, a law to structure society, and an elevated national aspiration that provides the Jewish people with a mission.
You can watch the entire video course, free of charge, by enrolling here, and you also explore our other courses as well.