The Tikvah Podcast

As the Supreme Court closed out it 2019-2020 term, it handed down its decision in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue. With a 5-4 majority, the Court ruled that states could not use their so-called "Blaine Amendments" in order to deny religious schools funding that is generally available to other private schools. It was a momentous decision, with implications for school choice programs and religious liberty across the nation. Earlier this year, soon after the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case, we had a discussion with Professor Michael Avi Helfand about the legal ins and outs of Espinoza. In this podcast, Jonathan Silver sits down with EdChoice Director of Policy Jason Bedrick to discuss the Court's ultimate decision, what it means for school choice and religious pluralism, and what the decision means for the Jewish community. Bedrick and Silver also talk about school choice programs more broadly, the ongoing debate about government oversight of haredi educational institutions in the U.S., and the recent expansion of educational choice in Florida. 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 May 31, 2020, American Jewry lost a giant. Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm, the longtime president of Yeshiva University (YU), was one of the nation's foremost defenders Orthodox Judaism and exponents of the Torah U'Madda—Torah and secular knowledge—philosophy that animates Modern Orthodoxy. His passing was followed with an outpouring of remembrances from friends, family, students, and admirers. Most of them, appropriately, shined light on Rabbi Lamm's remarkable career as a turnaround artist. He inherited the leadership of Yeshiva University on unstable foundations and saved the flagship institution of Modern Orthodoxy. But writing in Commentary, Rabbi Meir Soloveichik focused his remembrance on something else: Rabbi Lamm's career as a congregational rabbi before his leadership at YU. As Soloveichik reviewed Rabbi Lamm's many speeches and sermons, he concluded that Lamm was "the greatest composer of sermons in the English-speaking rabbinic world." In this podcast, Rabbi Soloveichik joins Jonathan Silver to discuss the basis of that judgment, and what Rabbi Lamm's legacy of rabbinic oratory models for today's pulpit rabbis. They focus especially on two of his most impressive sermons: "The Fountain of Life" and "Confessions of a Confused Rabbi." 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 so-called "rise of the nones" is a trend that has been going on for decades in the U.S., as more and more Americans, when asked about their religion on surveys, are checking the box labeled "none." With this trend strongest among millennials and members of Generation Z, the future seems clear: we are becoming a more secular country. Or are we? The instinctual search for religious meaning and the yearning for transcendence are sewn into the fabric of the human condition. Everyone worships. And as Tara Isabella Burton documents in her new book, Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World, the decline of traditional religious institutions has been accompanied by a rise in alternative forms of spiritual expression; and more than that, an investment of spiritual energy into nearly every domain of human life, from shopping to health to politics. In this podcast, Burton joins Jonathan Silver to discuss her book, the return of paganism to America, and the spirituality of SoulCycle. 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.

Discussions about "cancel culture," the practice of stigmatizing and ostracizing a person or institution deemed to have transgressed political correctness, have become ubiquitous in the United States. From the campus to the boardroom to the newsroom, the cost of having ever said or thought the wrong thing can now put one's reputation and livelihood at risk. And there is no path for the accused to enjoy ablution, to wash away the sin of wrongthink. Public figures of all kinds, from politics to journalism, have been accused and tried in the court of public opinion without the ability to defend themselves. American culture seems to be undergoing a kind of revolution, fomented in social media, that is reshaping the contours of our public life. In this podcast, Jonathan Silver is joined by Professor Gary Saul Morson to discuss his 2019 New Criterion essay, "Leninthink." Morson's essay is not about Lenin the man, nor is it about Lenin's ideology. Leninthink is actually anti-ideological. It is a cast of mind, and a political tactic that utilizes ideology to wage political revolution. At a time when cancel culture threatens to tear down the universities, the museums, and the press, Morson's study is more important than ever. 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.

Professor Wilfred McClay penned his essay, "The Soul of a Nation," just three years after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. The essay—a deep reflection on the history, nature, and future of American civic religion—was written in part as a response to the deep questions American were asking themselves about civil society, faith, and public life in the aftermath of moment of deep and profound crisis. The United States again finds itself in a moment of pain and crisis. In the spirit of helping us think more profoundly about our soul as a people, we are rebroadcasting our 2017 podcast with Professor McClay revisiting his essay. 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 as well as "Baruch Habah," performed by the choir of Congregation Shearith Israel, and "Further Down the Path" by Big Score Audio.

Jewish institutions have not been immune from the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. Summer camps and other revenue generators have been canceled, and donations are predictably down. What does this mean for Jewish life America—especially for the denominational infrastructure that has loomed so large for so long? When the crisis is over, will congregants return to synagogues with renewed enthusiasm or will they continue to enjoy livestreamed services from the comfort of their homes? Will the liberal denominations—already plagued by declining memberships and tenuous commitment—be able to recover? Could the Reform and Conservative denominations merge some of their institutional infrastructure under the pressure of Coronavirus-induced changes, as the Union for Reform Judaism's president Rabbi Rick Jacobs recently suggested? In this episode, one of America's leading Conservative rabbis, David Wolpe, joins Jonathan Silver to think through these challenging questions about the future of Judaism in America. 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.

As the COVID-19 pandemic began to spread in the United States and Israel, and those nations' governments and public institutions responded with quarantines and social-distancing guidelines, the Jewish community was placed in a unique bind. Passover—the most widely observed holiday in the Jewish world, on which families and friends traditionally gather for the seder—was just around the corner. With the world on lockdown, what would the seder look like? The liberal denominations of Judaism responded quickly, encouraging the use of now-ubiquitous video conferencing technology to host "Zoom seders" and providing guidance on how to do so. But the Zoom seder was not such a simple answer for the Orthodox, who generally refrain from using electronic devices and other technologies on Shabbat and holidays. In late March, a group of Israeli rabbis from the Moroccan community issued a radical ruling, permitting the limited use of Zoom on the seder night. But this ruling was met with swift backlash among the majority of the Orthodox rabbinate, which ruled Zoom seders forbidden. What was behind this intra-Orthodox debate? What does the opposition to Zoom seders among most Orthodox authorities tell us about the nature of Jewish law? And in standing against the Zoom seder, what were these traditionalist rabbis standing for? These are the questions Chaim Saiman seeks to answer in his Mosaic essay, "In Rejecting the Zoom Seder, What Did Orthodox Jews Affirm?" And it's what Professor Saiman discusses with Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver in this Tikvah 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 as well as "Ulterior" by Swan Production.

The biblical book of Exodus "not only recounts the founding of the Israelite nation, one of the world's oldest and most consequential peoples...but also sheds light on enduring questions about nation building and peoplehood." So writes Dr. Leon Kass in the introduction to his scintillating, profound, and meticulously close reading of Exodus, Founding God's Nation, forthcoming from Yale University Press in January 2021. In this remarkable commentary, Kass masterfully draws out, line by line and chapter by chapter, the enduring moral, philosophical, and political significance of this most important biblical book. In April 2020, just ahead of Passover, Mosaic published an excerpt from Dr. Kass's book, as "The People-Forming Passover." The essay focuses on the events of the night before and the morning of the Israelites' departure from Egypt—events rehearsed each year at the Passover table—and on their significance in the formation of the Jewish nation. In this week's podcast, Kass sits down with Mosaic's editor Jonathan Silver to explore and elucidate his essay. 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 as well as "Ulterior" by Swan Production.

The so-called "right of return" is one of the the Israeli-Palestinian conflict's thorniest issues. During Israel's 1948 War of Independence, as many as 700,000 Arabs fled or were driven from what had been mandatory Palestine. Since then, and unlike most of the world's other refugee populations, the official number of Palestinian refugees has not declined, but exploded. The United Nations has decided that the refugee status of the Palestinians passes down from generation to generation, so that children born today are classified as refugees in the same way their grandparents were—an attitude that is contrary to its policy for all other displaced groups. And as a consequence, even when neighboring Arab countries make an effort to integrate Palestinians and their descendants, they are counted as refugees. Why did this happen? In The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace, Einat Wilf and Adi Schwartz explain that the persistence of the Palestinian refugee problem is part of the broader Palestinian war—waged not only with rockets, knives, and bullets, but also through international bodies, NGOs, and the media—against the very existence of the Jewish state. They also show how Western indulgence of this manufactured problem has harmed the effort to achieve an end to the conflict. This week, Jonathan Silver sits down with Einat Wilf, a former Knesset member, to discuss the roots of the refugee problem, the role it plays in the Palestinian war against Israel, and why peace will never be achieved until Palestinians abandon the dream of destroying the Jewish state. 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 as well as "Ulterior" by Swan Production.

Have you ever seen the old murals that decorate the walls of Israel's historic kibbutzim? They often feature young, brawny Jewish men and women working and plowing the land. They evoke the pioneering spirit of early Zionism: glorifying the mixing of sweat and soil, focused on what Hebrew labor could achieve through cooperation and collective action, and strikingly statist, even socialist. These murals are, in fact, a stark reminder that the Jewish state was founded in large part by Labor Zionists, and that the Israeli Left once dominated the country's politics. Things have changed a great deal over the past 72 years. Israel is now a nation with a strong conservative consensus. The Labor Party of David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir—the political organization that erected the governing structures of the country—has been reduced to a mere three seats in the 23rd Knesset. And a poll conducted earlier this month shows that if elections were to be held right now, the party that dominated Israeli politics for decades would not win a single seat in the next Knesset. What happened? And what does Labor's decline tell us about contemporary Israel? Earlier this week, the journalist and author Matti Friedman wrote a piece in the New York Times examining "The Last Remnants of the Israeli Left." In this podcast, he joins host Jonathan Silver to discuss the history and precipitous decline of socialist politics in 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 as well as "Ulterior" by Swan Production.