The Tikvah Podcast

On June 8, 1978, Harvard University invited the Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn to deliver a major commencement address. Solzhenitsyn was, by this time, a world famous figure who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970. Some two and a half decades earlier, while serving in the Soviet army during World War II, he was arrested and sent to the Gulag for criticizing the Soviet premier Joseph Stalin in a private letter. He was imprisoned there for nearly a decade, during which he underwent a profound spiritual, religious, philosophical reorientation and awakening, eventually reflecting on his experiences in a major study of Soviet Gulag system, The Gulag Archipelago. In time, he was freed from the camp but exiled from the Soviet Union. He settled in America, and there, was thought perhaps to be a valuable critic of the Soviet system. But the fact that he was a critic of Soviet repression and the soul-deforming debasement that Russians were forced to endure did not necessarily mean that he would endorse t

Israel’s critics today like to argue that the country is illegitimate because it is the product of what they call settler colonialism. They consider non-Jewish Arab peoples the native inhabitants of the land—inhabitants who were displaced by the appearance of Jewish immigrants over the last 150 years. The great colonial moment was capped in 1948, when the Jews established political sovereignty in the state of Israel; then, subsequent wars, including and especially the Six Day War of 1967, further expanded and entrenched that moment. According to this sort of analysis, Israel is always and forever illegitimate. Much the same is seen as true of America, which was not only illegitimate at the moment it seized native lands, but is still illegitimate, and will always be illegitimate. This dynamic is captured in a comment by Patrick Wolfe, a frequently quoted Australian scholar of settler colonialism: “invasion is a structure, not an event.” This worldview establishes a moral hierarchy, draws political alliances, e

Right now, over 50,000 Israelis from the northern reaches of the country are not living in their homes. The intensity of rocket fire from Hizballah, arrayed across the Lebanese border, is too dangerous. For that reason and several others relating to Hizballah's patron, Iran, a war to Israel's north looms. In April of this year, the Israeli security analyst and IDF reserve intelligence officer Raphael BenLevi published an essay in Mosaic that explains the history of Israel’s northern border security, and what Israel can do now to restore it. To discuss that essay and its arguments, Mosaic’s editor and the podcast's host Jonathan Silver convened a conversation with the Lebanese writer Hanin Ghaddar and the Iran expert Richard Goldberg. This week, given the intensification of concern toward Israel's north, brings the audio of that conversation in podcast form: as good a place as any to start thinking about the dangers that Hizballah poses in the larger conflict between Iran and Israel.

Earlier this week, Vice President Kamala Harris announced that she’d invited the governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, to be her running mate in this fall’s presidential election. Walz has pretty conventional views of Israel for a Democrat: he believes in Israel’s right to exist and to defend itself, he has previously spoken at an AIPAC gathering, he condemned Hamas after October 7, that Hamas is not representative of the Palestinian people, that Israel is guilty of allowing too much civilian harm and civilian casualties in Gaza, that there must be a two-state solution, and that Israeli settlements are a barrier to that political outcome. That's what any number of other candidates on the vice-presidential shortlist also think, including Arizona senator Mark Kelly and Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro. For that matter, until the announcement, Shapiro was widely thought to be the front-runner by virtue of his popularity in what's expected to be the most important swing state in the election. Why didn't Harris selec

On the 9th day of the Hebrew month of Av in the year 586 BCE, Nebuchadnezzar and his Babylonian forces destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem. Since then, Tisha b’Av has served as a day of commemorating Jewish tragedy, a day when Jews remember those killed for being Jews and recite kinnot, elegies recounting the sacrifice and suffering that is an inescapable part of the Jewish past. Tisha b’Av this year, taking place on August 12-13, will be the first since the October 7 attack on Israel, and its arrival raises a number of questions. To examine them, host Jonathan Silver is joined here in conversation by the rabbi J.J. Schacter, who for decades has led important Tisha b’Av services and has reflected deeply on questions of kinnot and memory as both a professional historian and a communal leader and teacher. (He recently delivered a free online video course on the meaning of Jewish memory accessible at memory.tikvahfund.org.) Together, they explore how the liturgy of Tisha b’Av might be expanded to address October 7

Suddenly, Vice President Kamala Harris is the Democratic party’s candidate for president. She’s been in the public eye for much less time than Joe Biden or Donald Trump, and much less is known about her views on many subjects—including on the U.S.-Israel relationship or America’s posture in the Middle East. For instance, as Israel’s war in Gaza ramped up earlier this year, Harris became an outspoken critic of it, and a champion of a ceasefire arrangement between Israel and Hamas on the grounds of humanitarian concern for Palestinian civilians. But it’s possible that these attitudes were a product of her role in the Biden administration, that she was assigned the role of bad cop to the president’s good cop. So what does Harris really think about the subject? What role might her Jewish family members play in her views? How does she understand the politics of the U.S.-Israel relationship? To answer those questions, host Jonathan Silver speaks here with Noah Rothman, a senior writer at National Review and the aut

In April 2024, a court in Argentina ruled that the 1994 bombing of the AMIA, a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, was directed by Iran and carried out by Hezbollah. It was an official government acknowledgement of what was long thought to be true, and certainly the conclusion that the Argentinian prosecutor Alberto Nisman had arrived at prior to being assassinated the day before he was due to testify. Today, July 18, on the thirtieth anniversary of the AMIA bombing, Argentina’s current president, Javier Milei, announced his intention to prosecute Iranian leaders involved in the attack. To commemorate the anniversary, we’re rebroadcasting this week a conversation from 2019 that Jonathan Silver had with the rabbi Avi Weiss, author of a Mosaic essay on the subject from the same 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.

This month, Keir Starmer was elected prime minister of the UK. He is something of a reformer in the Labor party, which, before him, had been led by Jeremy Corbyn. The two have a different public temperament and different public persona. They have a different attitude toward the Jewish people and the Jewish state. Corbyn normalized a degree of anti-Semitism within mainstream Labor politics that was so odious it forced ideologically committed Labor members who are Jewish to leave the party. Since Starmer took over, the party has made a conscious effort to put forward a different, more welcoming face toward Jews. And what about beneath the surface? Is Starmer different in practice and policy toward Israel and the Jewish people? To answer that question, host Jonathan Silver speaks here with British journalist Melanie Phillips, who wrote an essay on the subject recently called "All Change." Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim an

For years, the Reform movement in America has allowed marriage between a Jewish and non-Jewish spouse, as long as the couple commits to raising their children as Jews. But a cultural taboo against intermarriage remained for Reform clergy, a taboo reinforced by admissions and ordination standards at the Hebrew Union College, the movement’s main seminary. Applicants who were in a long-term relationship with a non-Jewish partner were denied, on the grounds that modeling a Jewish home was expected of rabbis. That changed this year. “Moving forward,” a recent letter from the president, provost, and board chair of the seminary announced, “the religious identity of a student’s or applicant’s partner will no longer disqualify students for admission or ordination.” The letter goes on to explain that this decision is the result of a process of internal deliberation, and that it brings what’s expected of the clergy in line with the reality of the broader Reform community. In reaction, the longtime Reform rabbi Mark Cohn

Shmuel Yosef Agnon is one of the masters of modern Hebrew fiction, who helped to spark the revival of modern Hebrew literature in Israel and around the world. His work is not only beloved, but also profound, laden with many allusions to the vast canon of traditional Jewish text that shaped his literary imagination: one hears in Agnon’s work echoes of the siddur, the Hebrew Bible, and an astonishing array of rabbinic literature. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1966.   Yesterday, Tikvah released a five-part, online video course introducing students to S.Y. Agnon’s short stories, novels, and anthologies—​writing that strengthened the Jewish people in those pivotal 20th-century years when the state of Israel was reborn. The course is taught by Rabbi Jeffrey Saks, director of research at the Agnon House in Jerusalem, series editor of the S.Y. Agnon Library at the Toby Press, editor of the journal Tradition, and the founding director of the Academy for Torah Initiatives and Directions in Jewish E

Last month, host Jonathan Silver spoke with the rabbi Shlomo Brody about Jewish military ethics. They spoke, in particular, about the Jewish ethical tradition’s conception of right conduct once a war has begun: how one ought to calibrate the force of a maneuver to the threat it is meant to neutralize, how one ought to balance collateral damage and civilian casualties with force protection, and other related questions. This week, Brody joins Silver once again to discuss the reasons nations go to war—that is, to discern in Jewish history, Jewish text, and the drama of modern Zionism, the ethical parameters of thinking about going to war in the first place. As with their previous conversation, this conversation is informed by Brody’s recently published book, Ethics of Our Fighters.  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.

Jewish communities have just concluded the celebration of Shavuot, a pilgrimage festival in times of the Temple and the moment when, fifty days after the Jewish people’s exodus from Egypt, God revealed the Ten Commandments to Moses. Those commandments form the foundation of the many rules and obligations inflected throughout the Jewish tradition. Indeed, after thousands of years of Jewish history, observant Jewish lives continue to be structured by what is known as halakhah, Jewish law. What is halakhah? In 2018, the rabbi Mark Gottlieb sat down to answer that question with Chaim Saiman, one of the world’s foremost scholars of Jewish law and the author of a then newly published book called Halakhah: The Rabbinic Idea of Law. This week, in honor of the Jewish holiday that celebrates lawgiving, we bring you a rebroadcast of their discussion. 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 the attacks of October 7 and since the Gaza war began, a small but vocal segment of American Jews have joined in with the anti-Israel protests convulsing American cities and campuses. What are their ideas and where do they come from? Elliott Abrams is the author of If You Will It, a book coming this fall on Jewish peoplehood. Also the chairman of Tikvah and a regular Mosaic writer, he’s been an observer of American Jewish life for a long time. In his view, the Jewish turn against Israel in America today is vastly different than the usual critiques one hears every Shabbat in every synagogue across the country. In other words, it’s not that these Jews don’t like the Israeli prime minister or other members of his governing coalition, or certain policies of the government or trends in Israeli culture. It's that they see Israel as a moral encumbrance on the Jewish conscience, and imagine that the Jews would be better off without statehood altogether. He recently developed this argument in an essay in Fathom 

Traditional readers of the Hebrew Bible, reinforced by rabbinic commentary, condemn the bloodlust, cruelty, exploitation of the weak, and exaltation of the strong that is on display in the Amalekite attack on Israel in the book of Exodus. But it’s not the Amalekites, the nomadic enemies of the Israelites, who are shocking for their sacralized violence; it’s the Israelites who are shocking for their ability to quiet that darker, natural impulse, and live out a different moral code.  That is the thought that frames a recent essay called “Civilization Is from the Jews,” written by Andrew Doran, a senior research fellow with the Philos Project. Here, with host Jonathan Silver, Doran discusses his contention that what we think of as “civilization” came into the drama of human history in no other way than through God’s covenantal promise with Abraham and his 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 E

A stable if somewhat cold peace has endured between Egypt and Israel for nearly fifty years, a peace that includes serious diplomatic and security cooperation. Much of that has to do with Gaza. After Hamas took control of Gaza in 2007, Israel and Egypt jointly imposed a blockade and began to control its borders, since each had its own reasons to fear Hamas. Hamas was, after all, an outgrowth of the very Muslim Brotherhood that threatened the Egyptian government’s rule. Since October 7, Egypt has catapulted itself into a role as a key mediator between Israel and Hamas. The country’s leader, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, has seen the crisis as a lever he could use to grow his country’s economy and restore some of its diminishing political clout. Has that worked? Haisam Hassanein is an analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. In this podcast, he joins host Jonathan Silver to think through how Cairo assesses the war on its border, how it sees its own interests there, and what lasting consequences Israel’s wa

Israel’s national anthem, “Hatikvah,” has a long and poignant history that traces back to a poem originally written by Naftali Herz Imber called “Tikvateinu.” This week, to mark the 76th anniversary of Israel’s founding, the historian and author Asael Abelman joins Mosaic’s editor Jonathan Silver to investigate that history. Together, they look at the biblical sources and national aspirations of the poem, examine some of the contemporary discussion surrounding it, and take stock of some of its mysteries and paradoxes. Foremost among those paradoxes is the fact that the state of Israel’s anthem is a song of longing for the day that there will be such a thing as a state of 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.

After a long delay, the Israeli military’s advance into Rafah, the city in southern Gaza that is the last stronghold of Hamas’s fighting force and that now also hosts many civilian refugees from the rest of Gaza, may now be underway. Many in the U.S. are concerned that an Israeli push into Rafah will incur high numbers of civilian casualties. How does and should Israel think about that possibility? The rabbi and scholar Shlomo Brody is the author of a new volume on Jewish military ethics, Ethics of Our Fighters. It is traditional in the intellectual and philosophical field of just-war theory to draw a distinction between the ethics of going to war and the ethics of fighting in war. Here, Brody and host Jonathan Silver discuss the latter subject—ethics in war—as it is seen through the Jewish tradition and the historical experience of the Israeli military. 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.

Anti-Israel campus activism has never been more popular or unpleasant than it is right now. In years past, much of this activism was mixed up with nods to the desire for peace and a two-state solution that would allow for Palestinians to enjoy their own sovereignty alongside a secure Israel. That isn't happening now. It certainly isn’t what is meant by the chants, now common at the most prestigious universities in the United States, that call for the globalization of the intifada or that give voice to the delusion that Israel can be unborn. To analyze the protests, the protestors, and their slogans, Ruth Wisse, the scholar of Yiddish and Jewish literature and history, and the author of books including Jews and Power, joins 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.

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.