The Tikvah Podcast

The Tikvah Podcast explores Jewish ideas, history, and politics through conversations with top thinkers. Host Jonathan Silver engages the most important writers, rabbis, historians, policymakers, and educators on the central questions facing the Jewish people and the West. The Tikvah Podcast is a project of Tikvah, a philanthropic institution committed to advancing Jewish excellence and Western civilization through education and ideas. With its educational programs and institutions, Tikvah shapes the rising generation of Jewish, Zionist, and American leaders. And through its media ventures, academic press, and wide array of conferences and events, Tikvah offers the most serious thinking about the great challenges facing the Jewish people. You can learn more about Tikvah's work at tikvah.org.

Andrew Roberts and Meir Soloveichik on Winston Churchill and His Detractors: The perils of the new historical revisionism 09/18/2025

Andrew Roberts and Meir Soloveichik on Winston Churchill and His Detractors: The perils of the new historical revisionism 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 untarnishable achievement for the Allies to have destroyed the Third Reich—is itself under revisionist assault. The Internet talk-show host Tucker Carlson last year promoted the podcaster Darryl Cooper, calling him “America's most honest historian,” and airing his claim that Winston Churchill was the “chief villain” of World War II who “escalated” what Hitler supposedly intended to be a limited conflict. As one of this episode’s guests reports in the Wall Street Journal, when the Holocaust-denying podcaster Jake Shields polled his social-media followers about who they thought was “the biggest villain of World War II,” 40.3 percent chose Churchill over Hitler (25.3 percent) or Stalin (25.9 percent). Darryl Cooper or Jake Shields are teaching a new generation of Americans a grotesquely distorted view of our own history. To understand why that is, what can be done about it, and what’s at stake for Jews and America, Mosaic’s editor Jonathan Silver sat down Rabbi Meir Soloveichik and Andrew Roberts. Roberts is a distinguish historian and the author of more than twenty books. His 2018 biography of Churchill, Walking with Destiny, was the rare work that deserved all of the glowing praise it received, and there is perhaps no person living who knows more about the 20th century’s greatest man than Roberts. On November 1, 2022, he was elevated to a peerage as Baron Roberts of Belgravia. Rabbi Soloveichik is the religious leader of Congregation Shearith Israel, the director of the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought and Yeshiva University, and vice-chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. This conversation took place at a private event held for members of the Tikvah Society. You can learn more about its activities and how to join . /episode/index/show/tikvah/id/38272315

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 09/12/2025

Richard Goldberg on How American Energy Dominance Is Reshaping the Middle East: A new era of U.S.-Israel cooperation 09/05/2025

Richard Goldberg on How American Energy Dominance Is Reshaping the Middle East: A new era of U.S.-Israel cooperation 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 question lies in part in the creation in February 2025 of the National Energy Dominance Council (NEDC). Our guest today is Richard Goldberg, a senior advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, who recently served as senior counselor to the NEDC. In conversation with Mosaic’s editor Jonathan Silver, Goldberg examines what he calls “a National Security Council for energy,” its role in crafting a whole-of-government approach to coordinating American energy policy, and what it tells us about President Trump’s vision for American power. We are currently living through a three-way strategic competition among the United States, China, and Iran for influence in the Middle East—and energy is the battleground. China is pouring billions into its Belt and Road infrastructure projects across the region while buying Iranian oil in defiance of sanctions. Iran is using energy revenues to fund proxy networks from Iraq to Yemen, threatening the very shipping lanes that global commerce depends on. The Trump administration’s answer is to turn American energy abundance into a strategic weapon. To this end, it has signed an energy- and AI-cooperation agreement with Israel—designed to combine Israeli innovation with American infrastructure to dominate the technologies of the future. The administration is also working to cut off Iran’s energy lifelines, ending waivers that allowed Iraq to buy Iranian oil and gas. It’s also pushing massive infrastructure projects like the India-Middle East-Europe Corridor that would run through Israel and bypass both Iranian threats and Chinese influence. Coordinating and advancing these policies is the work of the NEDC, and Goldberg was in the room during the twelve-day war and the U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, as well as for the signing of that unprecedented U.S.-Israel energy-cooperation agreement during Prime Minister Netanyahu’s July visit to Washington. Now that he no longer holds public office, he can talk about the experience. /episode/index/show/tikvah/id/38098315

Ido Hevroni on Teaching Homer in Wartime: The dust and blood and bronze of the Trojan War come to life in Gaza 08/29/2025

Ido Hevroni on Teaching Homer in Wartime: The dust and blood and bronze of the Trojan War come to life in Gaza 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 and hubris—but for all that, distant stories. When read from the air-conditioned dorm room or plush campus library, the dust and blood and bronze of the Trojan War are abstract. But what happens when these same texts are read by young men and women who do know the weight of putting on armor, who have themselves kissed loved ones goodbye before departing for battle? Who must walk away from their own infant children in order to defend the country? What happens when the students who stand before Homer’s text are not just dispassionately analyzing the soul of the warrior but are warriors themselves? Mosaic’s editor Jonathan Silver speaks in this episode with Ido Hevroni, a professor of literature at Shalem College in Jerusalem. For over a decade, Hevroni has guided Shalem students through Homer’s epics, watching them grapple with these eternal questions of personal pride and public duty, private love and public defense, glory and sacrifice. But now, after October 7, his students find themselves in active combat, and he finds that it is Homer who is helping to explain their own experience back to themselves. And it is their experience in the tanks and tunnels of Gaza that is teaching them to read Homer with new eyes. Hevroni recently in the pages of Mosaic, and that essay was published in honor of Ido’s own teacher, Amy Apfel Kass, z”l, whose yortsayt on the fifth of Elul falls on the day that this conversation was originally broadcast. This discussion, too, is dedicated to her memory. /episode/index/show/tikvah/id/38016945

David Myers and Andrew Koss on Whether Jewish Studies Has Turned against the Jews: Has the field lost its way, and can it recover? 08/21/2025

Barry Strauss on the Jewish Conflict with Ancient Rome: Two Centuries of Rebellion 08/15/2025

Barry Strauss on the Jewish Conflict with Ancient Rome: Two Centuries of Rebellion 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 raise about how different civilizations remember and interpret the same events. Recall the way that Rome understood its purpose and its mission, the grand aspirations that fueled Rome’s rise and Rome’s bloodstained greatness. As Vergil puts it in the Book VI of the Aeneid (in John Dryden’s poetic rendering): But, Rome, ’t is thine alone, with awful sway, To rule mankind, and make the world obey, Disposing peace and war by thy own majestic way; To tame the proud, the fetter’d slave to free: These are imperial arts, and worthy thee. When Roman historians recorded these conflicts in Judea, they saw rebellious subjects disrupting the peace that Rome had brought to the world. They saw the Jews as ingrates and troublemakers, who refused to appreciate the benefits of imperial rule. But when Jewish historians look back on this period they tend to see something altogether different: a tragic tale of national resistance—a struggle for freedom—to defend the honor of God, His people, and His land. These competing narratives reveal something essential about the nature of historical memory, and the separate moral universes of these rival civilizational traditions. To illuminate and explain this conflict, Mosaic’s editor Jonathan Silver speaks with Barry Strauss, formerly a longtime professor of classics at Cornell University, and now a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. His forthcoming book is Jews vs. Rome: Two Centuries of Rebellion Against the World’s Mightiest Empire, to which he brings deep expertise in Roman military history, and also a keen appreciation for the strategic dimensions of these conflicts. /episode/index/show/tikvah/id/37830195

Michael Doran on Israel and the American Right: Republicans remain staunchly pro-Israel, despite their social-media eccentrics 08/08/2025

Michael Doran on Israel and the American Right: Republicans remain staunchly pro-Israel, despite their social-media eccentrics 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 strengthening. Earlier this week, the speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, visited Judea and Samaria, and had dinner with the prime minster in the biblical city of Shiloh. Here’s what makes Gallup’s findings so remarkable: if you spent any time on right-wing social media over the past months, you’d expect to see Republican support for Israel cratering. But peer beneath the surface of the online discourse, and a more complicated picture emerges. Republican voters not only remain steadfast but are actually becoming more supportive, even as influential voices—influential especially with the young—are striking out in a very different direction. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, once a reliable Trump ally, now calls the Gaza war a genocide. Tucker Carlson’s social-media engagement spikes whenever he advances an anti-Israel narrative, hosts an anti-Israel guest, or moots anti-Israel conspiracy theories. Even some longtime pro-Israel voices from the right have made themselves unwitting tools of Hamas and Iranian propaganda. Our guest this week is the Hudson Institute senior fellow Michael Doran, and our subject is Israel and the American right. Of course, the disjuncture between Republican voters and the most prominent and loudest voices in Republican media is not a new story. When you train your eyes on that fact, the entire Trump era, from his 2016 campaign forward, has seen the emergence of a new media elite whose views simply do not convey the attitudes of their base as well as the president himself does. But of course the Trump era will end in a few years, and the contours and debate within the post-Trump right over attitudes toward Israel is being shaped right now. /episode/index/show/tikvah/id/37726605

How Islamism Took Over the Middle East 08/01/2025

Tal Fortgang and David E. Bernstein on Defending Jewish Civil Right on Campus: How the government can fight anti-Semitism effectively and legally 07/25/2025

Tal Fortgang and David E. Bernstein on Defending Jewish Civil Right on Campus: How the government can fight anti-Semitism effectively and legally 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 administration has acted aggressively against anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism at America's elite universities—taking aim at some of the most storied names in higher education: Harvard, Penn, Brown, Columbia. And this effort shows no signs of slowing down. What are the legal tools that the executive branch departments and agencies—especially the Departments of Justice and Education—have at their disposal to protect the rights of Jews on campus? Is there a tension between the protection of Jewish civil rights, on the one hand, and the free speech of students and the academic freedom of faculty, on the other? Last December, just before the new administration took office, Mosaic published an important by the lawyer Tal Fortgang, asking how the incoming Trump team could vigorously protect Jewish civil rights. Later that month, Tal joined the legal scholar David E. Bernstein of George Mason University for a conversation about his essay, which was originally made exclusively available to Mosaic subscribers. Today, as the Trump administration implements some of the very principles and strategies that Tal raised in the pages of Mosaic, we are pleased to share that discussion with you. You can also read the transcript . 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. /episode/index/show/tikvah/id/37543045

Rabbi J.J. Schacter on the Jewish Meaning of Memory: What does it mean to remember the destruction of the Temples? 07/18/2025

Robert Satloff on Revitalizing Middle East Studies: A new graduate program promises to restore scholarly integrity to a debased field 07/11/2025

Robert Satloff on Revitalizing Middle East Studies: A new graduate program promises to restore scholarly integrity to a debased field October 7th exposed to everyone what many in and around the academy have known for years: American universities—not all, but many—are failing catastrophically to educate the next generation about the history, cultures, and politics of the Middle East. Instead of producing students versed in the region’s complexities, these institutions have become factories for ideological activism. And nowhere is this truer than in the case of Israel and its history: Zionism in the modern university classroom is rarely examined as a movement of national liberation but instead as a caricature of colonialism, racism, repression, and occupation. And outside of the classroom, we’ve seen the most prestigious campuses in the United States transform into nodes of anti-Israel activism and Jew hatred. These are immense and long-standing problems. But instead of just diagnosing their sources and discussing their perils, today we’re going to talk to someone who’s actually done something about it. Robert Satloff saw this crisis clearly. Having published back in 2001 the eminent historian Martin Kramer’s short volume on the corruption of Middle East Studies, Ivory Towers on Sand, Satloff has spent decades watching the field drift toward anti-Israel political advocacy. As the executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, he decided to stop complaining and found his own professional master’s program. Working with Pepperdine University, the Washington Institute has established a completely new graduate program designed to train policy professionals with rigorous scholarship and historical accuracy, without anti-Israel bias. The program offers full scholarships, accepts no foreign funding, is fully accredited, and will convene its inaugural cohort in Washington, DC this fall. /episode/index/show/tikvah/id/37370200

Yuval Levin on American Renewal 07/03/2025

What the War Reveals about Providence and Jewish History with Meir Soloveichik 06/27/2025

Jay Lefkowitz on New York City’s Democratic Primary 06/20/2025

Jay Lefkowitz on New York City’s Democratic Primary On June 24, members of New York City’s Democratic party will select their nominee for the mayoral election that is scheduled to take place in November of this year. As of last year, 56 percent of registered voters in New York were Democrats, but even that number doesn’t fully express the extent of the Democratic party’s hold over the city’s affairs. Democrats hold a supermajority on the city council and control the three major citywide offices—mayor, comptroller, and public advocate—and all three of New York City’s congressional representatives are Democrats. New York is a Democratic city, and it is widely believed that the winner of the Democratic primary will be heavily favored in the fall vote. Even though the official election isn’t until November, the most important element in that election will be determined next week. Because New York remains the most important Jewish city in the United States, next week’s primary election will have outsized consequences for more Jews than any other municipal election. To discuss the candidates and to explore the Jewish questions that are going to be put before the next mayor, Jonathan Silver is joined by Jay Lefkowitz, a senior partner at Kirkland and Ellis, an adjunct professor at Columbia Law School, and a member of Tikvah’s board of trustees. Lefkowitz also served the George W. Bush administration as the United States envoy on human rights in North Korea and the deputy assistant to the president for domestic policy.The conversation touches on anti-Israel and anti-Jewish violence, domestic terror, and education and funding in haredi schools—all of which are election issues in way or another—and on what matters most to Jewish voters. The conversation touches on anti-Israel and anti-Jewish violence, domestic terror, and education and funding in haredi schools—all of which are election issues in way or another—and on what matters most to Jewish voters. /episode/index/show/tikvah/id/37086575

Sadanand Dhume on Israeli Arms and the India-Pakistan Conflict: How two democracies found common cause 06/13/2025

Jeffrey Herf on the Transformation of Radical Speech into Violence 06/06/2025

Jeffrey Herf on the Transformation of Radical Speech into Violence On April 13, 2025, an arsonist set fire to the residence of the governor of Pennsylvania. When apprehended, he told law-enforcement officers that he did so using Molotov cocktails. The attack took place just hours after the governor, an American Jew, and his Jewish family, had concluded their Passover seder. The next month, a far-left activist murdered two members of the Israeli embassy staff in the name of Palestine, having gone to a Jewish venue hosting a Jewish event in order to hunt down and kill Jewish people. Not long after, on May 28, a Michigan man was apprehended outside of a Jewish preschool, after threatening Jewish parents and children. It was later discovered that he had attempted to acquire firearms and had planned to kill members of the school. Then there was the most recent news. On June 1, an Egyptian national came to a solidarity walk for Israeli hostages in Boulder, Colorado. There, he threw Molotov cocktails and used a homemade flamethrower in order to burn the attendees. While hurling the explosives, he was recorded yelling “Free Palestine,” and other like phrases. A new season of violence has descended upon the Jews of America. Or, perhaps, one ought to say that a new season of violence has descended upon America with the Jews as its central of target, revealing for all to see the dangers of domestic terrorism. The historian and analyst of anti-Semitism Jeffrey Herf, professor emeritus at the University of Maryland, joins Jonathan Silver to discuss this spike in domestic terrorism. It is his contention that the phenomenon has an antecedent in the 1960s radical movements that, then as now, transformed leftist ideas into violent action. The slogan “globalize the intifada,” has been a hallmark of campus and leftist protest since October 7, but it has slipped the bounds of speech and resulted in violence, with deadly results. Drawing on the work of the writer Paul Berman, Herf goes on to argue that if history is any guide, violence against Jews is likely to increase. He laid this out in he published in the Free Press just hours after the Boulder attack. /episode/index/show/tikvah/id/36885670

Judge Matthew Solomson on Orthodox Judaism and American Public Service: A conversation with one of the highest-ranking observant Jews in the federal judiciary 05/30/2025

Judge Matthew Solomson on Orthodox Judaism and American Public Service: A conversation with one of the highest-ranking observant Jews in the federal judiciary It’s not uncommon, to put the matter lightly, to find Jewish Americans well represented in the legal field. But the conventional storybook narrative of how Jews rise to occupy positions of promise and prestige in the law tends to emphasize the gradual softening or quieting of religious observance in favor of a broader, more secular American identity. I remember back in 2010 when Elena Kagan had been nominated by President Obama to serve on the Supreme Court. In response to a question from Senator Lindsay Graham about a domestic terrorist event that took place on December 25, 2009, Elena Kagan—then dean of Harvard Law and since 2010 a Supreme Court justice—explained that, on that day, “like all Jews, I was probably at a Chinese restaurant.” It was funny and charming and played perfectly to the room and the cameras looking on. But Elena Kagan’s remark also illustrates, to me at least, precisely the sort of culturally Jewish secular sensibility that you wouldn’t be surprised to find in elite positions like the ones she’s held. There are, of course, religiously observant Jewish lawyers, some of them extremely accomplished and some of them having contributed greatly to the American constitutional order. Matthew Solomson is not only a lawyer but a federal judge who represents a different model and different sense of identity, one in which deep Orthodox commitment and distinguished public service not only coexist but reinforce one another. Judge Solomson was elevated to the federal bench in 2020, and last month the president designated him as the chief judge of the United States Court of Federal Claims. Rather than abandoning his Jewish observance and religious devotion in the name of secular citizenship, Judge Solomson is staking out a different path, and his example suggests that America is strengthened when its citizens bring their deepest commitments—including religious commitments—to bear on public service. In conversation with Jonathan Silver, he addresses the questions his career raises about the very nature of American democracy, the meaning of Jewish life in America, and the possibilities for religious citizens to serve the United States in an increasingly secular age. /episode/index/show/tikvah/id/36783610

Yossi Melman on Israel’s Most Famous Spy: What we learn from the Eli Cohen files 05/23/2025

J.J. Kimche on Paul Johnson’s Legacy of Philo-Semitism 05/16/2025

Ari Heistein on the American War on the Houthis, and the Israeli One 05/09/2025

Ari Heistein on the American War on the Houthis, and the Israeli One On May 4, 2025, a ballistic missile traveling up to sixteen times faster than the speed of sound struck ground close to the terminal at Ben-Gurion airport, halting flight traffic and leaving a crater at the point of impact. It was the first time that the airport buildings themselves have been so close to a successful missile attack. This particular missile was fired from a distance of 1,300 miles, from Yemen, the Arab nation situated to the south of Saudi Arabia, whose coastline opens up to the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, and the crucial Bab al-Mandab Straight, a narrow chokepoint in global shipping that allows ships to travel from India and points east through the Suez Canal and into the Mediterranean. The missile was shot by the Houthis, a Shiite Islamist organization that is supported by, and operates in coordination with, Iran and its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. They have been firing rockets at Israel for many months. Back in July 2024, they successfully struck an apartment building near the U.S. embassy’s Tel Avi branch. And since October 2023, they have been targeting commercial naval craft in the Red Sea. Since March 2025, the United States has been conducting a campaign of air and naval strikes against the Houthis. But after the Ben-Gurion airport attack of May 4, the Israelis took matters into their own hands. On May 5, some 30 Israeli military aircraft attacked targets in Houthi-controlled Yemen, including the al-Imran cement factory and the Hodeidah port. On May 6, the Israelis destroyed the airport in Sana’a. This week, we focus on the Houthis, their place in Yemen, their relationship to Iran, and the threats they pose towards global shipping and Israel. Discussing these topics with us is Ari Heistein, who works in business development in Israel, is a close intellectual collaborator with the former Israeli chief of defense intelligence Amos Yadlin, and until recently served as chief of staff at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies. This podcast was recorded on Tuesday morning, May 6, 2025. 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. /episode/index/show/tikvah/id/36504320

Michael Doran on Donald Trump's Middle East Policy 05/02/2025

Michael Doran on Donald Trump's Middle East Policy President Trump and his team came into the White House determined to reverse the course of American foreign policy. Most every president does. It’s what President Obama wished to do vis-à-vis President Bush, President Trump vis-à-vis President Obama, and President Biden vis-à-vis President Trump. Where Biden was for, Trump would be against; where Biden was left, Trump would be right; where Biden was blue; Trump would be red. Every question of foreign policy with any relevance whatsoever to the cut and thrust of domestic American politics would henceforth be set in the opposite direction. In the Middle East, President Trump thought that his predecessor was too acquiescent to Iran, too squeamish about empowering the Israelis to protect themselves, and too untroubled by Houthi attacks. For President Trump and many of his supporters, the quintessential act of the Biden administration was the withdrawal from Afghanistan in the fall of 2021—a symbol of American weakness, incompetence, fecklessness, and delusion. With the start of his second term as president, Donald Trump set about restoring the maximum-pressure campaign on Iran. He confronted—with aggressive military force—the Houthis. He restored the American supply of materiel to Israel. And yet, these decisions do not tell the whole story of the Trump administration’s conduct of American foreign policy during its first hundred days. The foreign-policy record, the disorder, the personnel, and some possible future steps of the administration seem confused. To bring forth some clarity from this confusion, and to shed light on the murky picture of the Trump administration’s approach to the Middle East, Michael Doran joins this week’s podcast. Doran is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, contributor to Mosaic, Tablet, the Wall Street Journal, and the Free Press, and the co-host, with Gadi Taub, of a new podcast called Israel Update. This conversation was recorded live for an audience of members of the Tikvah Society. If you’d like to learn more about supporting our work, and joining the Tikvah Society, please visit . 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. /episode/index/show/tikvah/id/36405350

Benedict Kiely on Pope Francis and the State of Jewish-Catholic Relations 04/25/2025

Benedict Kiely on Pope Francis and the State of Jewish-Catholic Relations The Catholic cardinal Jorge Mario Bergolio ascended to the papacy in 2013. In honor of Saint Francis of Assisi, he chose as his papal name Francis. For a dozen years he was the head of the Catholic Church and a major figure in the moral and cultural life of the West. After a prolonged illness, Pope Francis died on April 21 of this year. There are over 1.4 billion Catholics in the world, and they play a significant role in the production of Western culture and Western opinion. The foundational structures of Europe are derivative of, or inseparably woven into, the history of the Catholic Church. And whether the pope strengthens or undermines the moral confidence of Western nations matters: it mattered during the papacy of John Paul II during the cold war; it mattered in the confrontation with jihadist terror during the papacy of Benedict XVI; and it cannot but be a factor in the horizons of Western civilization. This podcast focuses on a particular dimension of the late Pope Francis’s legacy, namely, how he engaged the Jewish people, Israel, and the Middle East. To discuss the legacy of Pope Francis, the Church’s engagement in the Middle East, and who might be the next Catholic pope, Mosaic’s editor Jonathan Silver sat down with Father Benedict Kiely. Kiely was born in London, ordained a Catholic priest in Canterbury, and has spent most of his ministry in the United States. In 2014, he founded Nasarean.org, a charity that supports persecuted Christians around the world, and especially in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. One of his aims is to see the church grow closer to its Middle Eastern roots, and that means, in some grand spiritual way, closer too to its Jewish roots. For Catholics, the question of the Church’s attitude toward Zionism and Israel is not perhaps among the most pressing of ecclesiastical priorities. One would not expect it to weigh heavily on the Vatican’s conclave in the election of the next pope. This conversation thus takes the perspective of an outsider. Moreover, there are very deep theological matters that will always divide the Catholic Church from the Jewish people. And some of those very deep theological matters also shape the way that Catholics tend to think about Zionism and the modern state of Israel. The Jewish people are animated by a belief in covenantal chosenness, and a sense of sacred obligation to uphold God’s ways in their actions, in their families, and in their nation. That obligation is structured by tradition and law, and it is expressed nationally in the people of Israel, which, after a long hiatus in exile, again has a sovereign state in the land of its fathers. For Catholics, of course, the Church is the new Israel, and despite very welcome and laudable developments since the promulgation of Nostra Aetate in 1965, that is an unbridgeable theological chasm. Nonetheless, friendship between Christians and Jews is essential to revitalizing our shared civilization and passing it on to 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. /episode/index/show/tikvah/id/36303455

Leon Kass on How Exodus Created the Jewish National Narrative 04/17/2025

Dara Horn on Her New Graphic Novel 04/10/2025

Tevi Troy on How Republican Administrations Argue about Israel 04/04/2025

Tevi Troy on How Republican Administrations Argue about Israel Is the Trump administration pro-Israel? There’s a great deal of evidence to believe it is. It’s given Israel the armaments and rhetorical support it needs to fight on until total victory in Gaza. It has targeted the Houthis in Yemen. It has a record of taking action—economic, diplomatic, and military—against Iran and so has a degree of credibility in countering Israel’s greatest external threat. The president has put champions of the U.S.-Israel relationship in key roles: the secretary of state, the national security advisor, and the secretary of defense are all on the record advocating even closer relations between Washington and Jerusalem. President Trump invited the Israeli prime minister for an extensive, private meeting in the Oval Office, the first such meeting of his second term. The Republican convention last year was perhaps the greatest single spectacle of American Zionism aired in prime time. And yet, there are some who see in the Trump administration an equal measure of signs and portents that it will not strengthen but weaken the U.S.-Israel relationship. There is a current of isolationism within the administration and among its key supporters, combined with a strategic concept that weighs American investment in the confrontation with China against American investment in the Middle East. In senior and subcabinet appointments, as well as in the Trump coalition’s media environment, these voices have a significant presence as well. In addition, there has been a welling up of genuinely anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist passions and enmities from rightwing social media and from Trump-aligned populist figures with large online followings. So what is it? Is the second Trump administration’s conception of an America-first foreign policy pro-Israel or isn’t it? The answer is that the administration contains both of these elements, and it’s the president’s job to manage the tensions between them. That tension—between those who see Israel as an asset to American interests and those who see it as a liability—has been present in every Republican administration since Israel was established in 1948. To discuss what that debate has looked like in the past, Mosaic’s editor Jonathan Silver is joined by the presidential historian Tevi Troy. Troy is a senior fellow at the Ronald Reagan Institute, a senior scholar at the Straus Center at Yeshiva University, and a former deputy secretary of HHS. His most recent book is The Power and the Money: The Epic Clashes Between Commanders in Chief and Titans of Industry. /episode/index/show/tikvah/id/36001095

Micah Goodman on What He’s Learned about Israel in the Past Year-and-a-Half 03/27/2025

Mark Gottlieb and Anna Moreland on Judaism, Christianity, and Forgiveness 03/20/2025

Mark Gottlieb and Anna Moreland on Judaism, Christianity, and Forgiveness To expect women and men of flesh and blood to live lives of ethical perfection is to expect too much. Lapses in judgment, ignorance, vice, and sin are inescapable parts of the human condition. Each year, on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, we recite the Al Het prayer, enumerating over 40 sins that we have committed. Sinning is natural, or, as the poet Alexander Pope famously put it, “to err is human, to forgive divine.” And there’s a deep truth to that, for while error and vice are natural to the human condition, religion has introduced into the moral landscape the human imitation of God’s compassion that releases us, and allows us to release one another, from the crushing burden of guilt and vice. That religious innovation is forgiveness, and it plays a central role in the ethical life of Jews and Christians. A society without forgiveness, in which moral stain can never be wiped away, in which no mechanism for absolution exists, is a society that will grow fearful, fragmented, feeble, and frail. A society that is properly calibrated to the inescapable truths of human sin, and also has an instrument that absolves the sinner and and enable him or her to rejoin society, is resilient. A few years ago, American was bound up in a spate of so-called cancellations in which public figures stood accused of some wrong action, wrong statement, or wrong thought, and were deemed unfit for employment or standing in society. And, in the progressive circles that led these efforts to purify the public arena, no apology would suffice. No cleansing was sufficient to remove the stain: once a bigot, always a bigot. It was around that time that a group of Jewish and Christian theologians began meeting to discuss the idea of forgiveness. Over the course of several years of study, reading, and discussion, a statement emerged. “Forgiveness: A Statement by Jews and Christians” was published in the February 2025 issue of First Things magazine. But of course, something of civilizational significance happened while this group convened, and that was the October 7 Hamas attacks, and the adulation of the attackers by American and European activists. In the face of such evil, could forgiveness be offered? Should it be? What are the limitations on forgiveness and what are the moral obligations on the part of the penitent seeking forgiveness? Two of the statement’s signatories, Tikvah’s chief education officer Rabbi Mark Gottlieb and the Villanova University professor Anna Moreland, join Mosaic’s editor Jonathan Silver to discuss these and related themes. /episode/index/show/tikvah/id/35793065

Ronna Burger on Reading Esther as a Philosopher (Rebroadcast) 03/13/2025

Reihan Salam on Rebuilding Urban Conservatism 03/07/2025

Reihan Salam on Rebuilding Urban Conservatism New York City in the 1970s and 1980s was, to put it lightly, not a very safe or nice place to live. Drugs, crime, and public-sector mismanagement made it dangerous and unpleasant, and even the very wealthy were not entirely immune from the disorder. In the 1990s and early 2000s, the city rebounded in an incredible way, and a great deal of that civic revitalization found its roots in the policy research of a small think tank focused on urban affairs, the Manhattan Institute. Utilizing new approaches to law enforcement and other governance matters that scholars at the Manhattan Institute incubated, Mayors Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg restored and improved New York. Then came a wave of politicians in city hall and in Albany who forgot the hard-won lessons of the 90s revival, and the city in the last fifteen or so years has experienced a resurgence of crime, drug abuse, untreated mental illness, homelessness, and violence, along with the tell-tale signs of urban decay and disorder. In all of this, as ever, the Jewish community of New York served as the canary in the coal mine, and a spate of anti-Semitic violence preceded and then coincided with the general unraveling. To discuss how this breakdown of order can be halted and reversed, Mosaic’s editor Jonathan Silver is joined by the irrepressible policy entrepreneur and conservative visionary, the fifth president of the Manhattan Institute, Reihan Salam. Together they address the civic health of New York, the most Jewish city in America; what it takes to re-moralize the culture; what urban conservatism is; and why Salam believes that the work he and his colleagues are doing at the Manhattan Institute could lay the groundwork for New York’s next come back. This conversation was recorded live in Manhattan, in front of an intimate audience of members of the , so you may hear sirens and street sounds—the soundtrack of New York. 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. /episode/index/show/tikvah/id/35570755

Hussein Aboubakr Mansour on Why the End of Palestinian Nationalism Can Bring Hope to Palestinians 02/28/2025

The Tikvah Podcast

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