Best The Tikvah Fund Podcasts (2024)

1
J.J. Schacter on the First Tisha b'Av Since October 7 40:43

5h ago40:43

40:43

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 inesca…

1
Noah Rothman on Kamala Harris’s Views of Israel and the Middle East 49:13

12d ago49:13

49:13

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 ram…

1
Avi Weiss on the AMIA Bombing 30 Years Later (Rebroadcast) 49:05

1h ago49:05

49:05

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…

1
Melanie Phillips on the British Election and the Jews 53:57

24d ago53:57

53:57

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-…

1
Mark Cohn on the Reform Movement and Intermarriage 49:09

26d ago49:09

49:09

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 semi…

1
Jeffrey Saks on the Genius of S.Y. Agnon 54:59

1M ago54:59

54:59

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 …

1
Shlomo Brody on What the Jewish Tradition Says about Going to War 37:31

2M ago37:31

37:31

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 …

1
Chaim Saiman on the Roots and Basis of Jewish Law (Rebroadcast) 47:23

2M ago47:23

47:23

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. I…

1
Elliott Abrams on American Jewish Anti-Zionists 38:45

2M ago38:45

38:45

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 chairma…

1
Andrew Doran on Why He Thinks the Roots of Civilization Are Jewish 50:11

2M ago50:11

50:11

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 viole…

1
Haisam Hassanein on How Egypt Sees Gaza 35:59

3M ago35:59

35:59

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 fe…

1
Asael Abelman on the History of “Hatikvah” 40:01

3M ago40:01

40:01

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 …

1
Shlomo Brody on Jewish Ethics in War 47:27

3M ago47:27

47:27

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 d…

1
Ruth Wisse on the Explosion of Anti-Israel Protests on Campus 51:39

3M ago51:39

51:39

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 mean…

1
Meir Soloveichik on the Politics of the Haggadah 41:17

4M ago41:17

41:17

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 Soloveich…

1
Yechiel Leiter on Losing a Child to War 34:45

4M ago34:45

34:45

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 H…

1
Yehoshua Pfeffer on Haredi Service in the Israeli Military 54:11

4M ago54:11

54:11

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 …

1
Joseph Lieberman on American Jews and the Zionist Dream (Rebroadcast) 22:49

4M ago22:49

22:49

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…

1
Seth Kaplan on How to Fix America's Fragile Neighborhood 39:21

5M ago39:21

39:21

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 …

1
Timothy Carney on How It Became So Hard to Raise a Family in America 45:33

5M ago45:33

45:33

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 …

1
Jonathan Conricus on How Israeli Aid to Gaza Works 51:05

5M ago51:05

51:05

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 d…