TIKVAH ONLINE COURSES

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1 TIKVAH ONLINE COURSES COURSES.TIKVAHFUND.ORG

2 COURSES.TIKVAHFUND.ORG FALL-WINTER COURSES AVAILABLE NOW Daniel Deronda: A Zionist Masterpiece Ruth Wisse Decades before Herzl, George Eliot wrote Daniel Deronda, her great novel of Jewish nationalism. Explore this masterpiece with Harvard Professor Ruth Wisse. There is simply no better book to begin thinking through the imperatives for a national Jewish home than Daniel Deronda. But it would be a mistake to think the book is simply an argument for a Jewish state in the form of a novel. It is at least as much about the nature of England and the outlook for its future. Some English readers subordinated the importance of the Jewish sections of the novel to the story of English-born Gwendolen Harleth and the issues surrounding her maturation. In fact, Eliot interwove the two plots to demonstrate the interrelated fate of the Jews and the English. She believed that English attitudes toward the Jews reflected and determined the kind of nation England was to be. From her personal experience as a lapsed Christian, George Eliot recognized that modern forces were destabilizing society without necessarily showing citizens how to manage the transformation. If a superior novel can serve as guide to the perplexed, here we have a whole education in a single volume, exploring the strengths and vulnerabilities of English liberalism, the blessings and burdens of love, marriage, and family life, the influences of memory and identity, the manners and mores of a decaying aristocratic culture, and the spiritual qualities needed for cultural renewal. It is a rare pleasure to be in the hands of an author with so much appreciation for the variety of human experience and such a gift for bringing it together in a single book. This online course is guided by preeminent teacher and scholar Ruth Wisse, recently retired from her position as Martin Peretz Professor of Yiddish Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard University and currently the Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Tikvah Fund. Her many books include The Modern Jewish Canon: A Journey Through Literature and Culture, Jews and Power, and No Joke: Making Jewish Humor.

3 AVAILABLE NOW COURSES.TIKVAHFUND.ORG Jewish Ideas and the American Founders Rabbi Meir Soloveichik Join Rabbi Dr. Meir Soloveichik as he explores the life and legacy of Jonas Phillips, the first truly American Jew, and sheds light on the Jewish ideas that inspired America s Founding Fathers. Combining history with theology and politics, this course examines the Jewish contributions to the early republic by tracing the life of one remarkable Jewish family. When Jonas Phillips landed on the coast of South Carolina, a Jewish immigrant from the Old World looking for opportunity, he arrived as an indentured servant to another Jewish merchant. After earning his freedom, he went north, married in New York, settled in Philadelphia, created a large family, became a wealthy man, and throughout his life worked to help the new American nation realize its boldest and most promising ideals. Jonas Phillips was a religious Jew and an American patriot, and his life is a testament to the Jewish significance of the uniquely American tradition of religious freedom. His story and the stories of his children orient us toward an understanding of American politics, culture, and law that combines modern and biblical ideals: contract with covenant, faith with freedom, and equality with pluralism. The Phillips family helps us to see just what makes America so unique in Jewish and world history what is worth protecting, worth celebrating, worth bequeathing to our children. Throughout Jewish Ideas and the American Founders, Rabbi Soloveichik invites us to ask if America is prepared to stay true to the legacy of Jonas Phillips and keep alive the ideals that make America exceptional. Rabbi Dr. Meir Y. Soloveichik is director of the Zahava and Moshael Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University and the rabbi of Congregation Shearith Israel, the oldest Jewish congregation in the United States. His essays have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Commentary, First Things, Azure, Tradition, and The Torah U-Madda Journal. This online course is sponsored by Allen K. Schwartz, in memory of his wife, Barbara R. Schwartz, and in tribute to all Jewish Americans, both strangers and neighbors. It is also sponsored by the Zahava and Moshael Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University.

4 COURSES.TIKVAHFUND.ORG AVAILABLE NOW Theodor Herzl: The Birth of Political Zionism Daniel Polisar Daniel Polisar, one of Israel s leading experts on Herzl, examines of Herzl s innovative statesmanship and visionary leadership. Political ideas no matter how great require determination, vision, and the will of great leaders if they are to influence and order the lives of men. The founding fathers of the State of Israel held the big ideas of Jewish history together with the prudential judgment, executive energy, diplomatic savvy, and military strategy they needed to resurrect the Third Jewish Commonwealth in the Land of Israel. From Ze ev Jabotinsky to David Ben Gurion to modern Israeli leaders like Ariel Sharon and Shimon Peres, the lives and strategic insights of great Jewish political leaders have much to teach us. This course s focus is on the life and career of Theodor Herzl. With little institutional support, with virtually no resources or political leverage, the sheer force of Herzl s writing and will carried him to sit across the negotiating table from kings and emperors, arguing for the free sovereignty of the Jewish people. How did Herzl deal with the challenges that confronted him from within and from without the Jewish world? What strategies did he pursue, what calculations did he make, how did he learn from his failures and how did he think about parlaying successes? What enduring lessons can we learn from Herzl s campaign to lay the groundwork for the Jewish State? Shalem College co-founder and executive vice president Daniel Polisar leads us in an examination of Theodor Herzl s Zionist statesmanship, helping us to relive the arguments and to confront the fateful moments of decision of early Zionist history.

5 COMING SOON COURSES.TIKVAHFUND.ORG Majesty and Humility: The Life, Legacy, and Thought of Joseph B. Soloveitchik Rabbi Jacob J. Schacter November 2018 In this in-depth exploration of Rabbi Soloveitchik s life and thought, Rabbi Dr. Jacob J. Schacter shares personal and intimate reflections on the man who was his own mentor and guide. In his life, his leadership, and his legacy, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik straddled different worlds. Born into a dynasty of great Lithuanian rabbinic scholars, Rabbi Soloveitchik s horizons were shaped by Jewish learning and masterful Talmudic erudition. He also threw himself into the world of Western philosophy, earning a doctorate from the University of Berlin and nursing philosophical interests throughout the rest of his life. Born at the dawn of the twentieth century in the outskirts of the Russian Empire, Rabbi Soloveitchik moved to America where he revolutionized Jewish education, founded the Maimonides School in Boston, and was for decades the beating heart of Yeshiva University s mission to pursue Torah wisdom alongside secular knowledge. Along the way, Rabbi Soloveitchik became the twentieth century s most important American orthodox writer and thinker. Through his works of theology and philosophy, Rabbi Soloveitchik known reverently as The Rav articulates a vision of the modern Jew who lives the tension between faithful obedience to the inherited way of life that has sustained the Jewish people for so many generations, and at the same time who proudly engages the fullness of the modern world. Join us to study Rabbi Soloveitchik s most profound writing and to examine cases of his communal leadership. Rabbi Schacter supplements his teaching about Rabbi Soloveitchik s ideas with personal and intimate reflections on the man who was his own mentor and guide.

6 COURSES.TIKVAHFUND.ORG WINTER 2019 The Meaning of Jewish Nationalism Yoram Hazony January 2019 Israeli political philosopher, author, and Herzl Institute president Yoram Hazony examines the biblical origins of the independent Jewish national state. For thousands of years, the Jewish people has pursued a unique course among the nations. The Hebrew Bible challenged the imperial order of the ancient world with a new political theory and a new theology. In this course, Israeli philosopher and author Yoram Hazony examines the biblical origins of the independent Jewish national state, the later development of this political concept in Protestant Europe and America, and its deployment by the Zionist movement that created the state of Israel. The course seeks answers to crucial questions surrounding Jewish nationalism both in antiquity and in our own time, including: What was unique about the biblical political concept of the independent Jewish national kingdom, and what purposes was it intended to serve within the context of the non-israelite political thought of the ancient world? How did the Jewish tradition of national thinking shape the Christian political thought that gave rise to the modern world, and how did it fail to? Does the political founding of the modern State of Israel succeed as an inheritance of classical Jewish political thought in the writings and work of figures such as Theodor Herzl and David Ben-Gurion? And crucially, where does this idea of a Jewish state stand with respect to political right and wrong in today s world of often quite contrary moral and political ideas? Can this ancient biblical dream still be meaningful for us in our own time, as Jews and as human beings? Yoram Hazony is president of the Herzl Institute in Jerusalem, and the founder and former head of the Shalem Center in Jerusalem, a research institute that conducted nearly two decades of pioneering work in the fields of philosophy, political theory, Bible, Talmud, Jewish and Zionist history, Middle East studies and archaeology. He is also the Director of the John Templeton Foundation s project in Jewish Philosophical Theology. Dr. Hazony researches and writes in the fields of philosophy and theology, political theory and intellectual history. His latest book is The Virtue of Nationalism, and his previous works include The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture, God and Politics in Esther, and The Jewish State: The Struggle for Israel s Soul.

7 WINTER 2019 FALL-WINTER COURSES.TIKVAHFUND.ORG Fiddler in Jerusalem 2, couresty of Leonid Afremov Sholem Aleichem s Tevye the Dairyman Ruth Wisse February 2019 Through the lens of these seminal Jewish stories, study the strains of Jewish life and modern experience. How did a village dairyman become the most famous character in a culture that prides itself on literacy and refinement? Why did a traditional father emerge as the hero of a work that highlights the momentum of modernity? When the Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem created Tevye in 1895, he modestly showed how a Russian Jew could deal with challenges like poverty, inequality, and religious doubt. By the time Sholem Aleichem wrote the ninth and last episode of the Tevye stories in 1916, his spokesman had become a Samson in reverse, holding together a disintegrating Jewry and a toppling civilization. Through the lens of these seminal Jewish stories, we will study the strains of Jewish life and modern experience. Tevye is a comical Rashi who navigates between quotations and their homespun application; he is the first Jewish stand-up comic in a comedy with an exceptionally serious purpose. Since Tevye is known nowadays through his adaptation in Fiddler on the Roof the musical that enchants audiences from Topeka to Tokyo we also explore the difference between kosher and kosher-style, or what happens when a Jewish work goes universal. In this exploration of tradition and freedom from the vantage of the nineteenth century s most entertaining and clear-eyed father, we will be guided by Tikvah s Distinguished Senior Fellow Ruth Wisse, recently retired from her position as Martin Peretz Professor of Yiddish Literature and professor of comparative literature at Harvard University.

8 COURSES.TIKVAHFUND.ORG SPRING 2019 The Haggadah: A Political Classic Rabbi Meir Soloveichik March 2019 The Haggadah is not just a guide to the Seder. It has something to tell us about the nature of freedom, covenant, state and society, the founding and origins of a people, their eschatological aspirations, the political nature of the good, and much else. The most widely read, beloved, and perplexing book of the Jewish tradition is the Passover Haggadah. It is also a serious work of Jewish political philosophy. In this onlne course, Rabbi Meir Soloveichik explores the civic and political teachings of the Haggadah. He shows how every prayer, passage, symbol, and song aims to describe and preserve the Jewish understanding of the good society, and why the festival of freedom is so central to understanding what Judaism stands for in every generation. Rabbi Dr. Meir Y. Soloveichik is director of the Zahava and Moshael Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University and the rabbi of Congregation Shearith Israel, the oldest Jewish congregation in the United States. His essays have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Commentary, First Things, Azure, Tradition, and the Torah U-Madda Journal.

9 SPRING 2019 COURSES.TIKVAHFUND.ORG Declaring Israel s Independence Martin Kramer May 2019 Join distinguished historian Martin Kramerto revisit the political debates that led to the decision to the May 1948 decision to declare independence. Over 70 years after of Israel s birth, its creation seems all the more improbable. Only 600,000 Jews established a state in the face of armed Arab invasion and an international embargo. Yet in the midst of the uncertainties and pressures of battle, Israel s leaders had the clarity of mind to craft a declaration of independence that expressed religious and political arguments old and new for the reestablishment of the Jewish State in the birthplace of the Jewish people. The declaration that David Ben-Gurion read on May 14, 1948, resonates to this day as the constituting document of the State of Israel. In this course, distinguished historian Martin Kramer revisits the political debates of May 1948, leading to the decision to declare independence; the successive drafts of the declaration and the ideas that inspired them; the statesmanship necessary to assemble the coalition of Zionists, socialists, and religious Jewish patriots that stood behind the document; the historic events of the day itself; and the subsequent seventy years of reinterpretation in response to changing Israeli realities. In interrogating the declaration, we will revisit the justifications for the existence of a Jewish state, the tension between religious and secular visions of Israel s purpose, and the state s relations with its Arab population and the world. SUMMER COURSES 2018 Following a twenty-five year career teaching at Tel-Aviv University, where he directed the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, Martin Kramer was the founding president of Shalem College in Jerusalem, Israel s first liberal arts college, where he continues to teach the modern history of the Middle East. Professor Kramer is also the Koret visiting fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. The author of many essays and articles in Commentary, Mosaic, the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, and other publications, Professor Kramer is the author of ten books, most recently The War on Error: Israel, Islam, and the Middle East.

10 COURSES.TIKVAHFUND.ORG SUMMER 2019 FALL-WINTER COURSES The Wisdom of Jewish Literature Ruth Wisse July 2019 Bringing the Jewish canon of great Yiddish and Hebrew stories alive, Ruth Wisse shows us with her lucid analysis and sharp wit why these stories are essential to modern Jewish life and politics. T he modern Jewish experience from exile to sovereignty, from weakness to power, from tragedy to comedy, from America to Israel, from youth to adulthood is so complex and so profound that only great literature can truly make sense of it. In this course, former Harvard professor Ruth Wisse explores some of the classic short stories of the modern Jewish canon. Each lecture focuses on a specific story, and how it illuminates some of the great themes and dilemmas of being Jewish in the modern age. Stories covered include: Sholem Aleichem, Eternal Life Franz Kafka, Report to an Academy Isaac Babel: Story of my Dovecot & First Love Isaac Bashevis Singer, Gimpel the Fool Mendele Mocher Sforim, Shem and Japheth on the Train I. L. Peretz, Bontshe Svayg & The Shabbes Goy Lamed Shapiro, The Cross Isaac Babel, My First Goose Haim Hazaz, Hadrasha Preeminent teacher and scholar Ruth Wisse recently retired from her position as Martin Peretz Professor of Yiddish Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard University, and is currently the Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Tikvah Fund.

11 FALL 2019 COURSES.TIKVAHFUND.ORG God and Man in the Book of Genesis Jon D. Levenson September 2019 No single text has exercised a greater influence over the moral imagination of the West as has the Book of Genesis. Uncover the most profound ideas contained in the Bible s first book with Jon D. Levenson of Harvard Divinity School. Genesis is a book about beginnings: the beginnings of the created order, the beginning of human life, the human family, and human culture, and the beginning of the people of Israel from the family of Abraham. And Genesis is also the beginning of the Hebrew Bible, the foundation stone of Jewish history and theology, and, in time, the beginning of the Christian Bible as well. No single text has exercised a greater influence over the moral imagination of the West as has the Book of Genesis. The Tikvah Fund is pleased to offer this course on the ideas of Genesis as they emerge from a close reading of its dramatic stories. Through the primeval history of mankind, the story of Abraham, God s covenant with him, the rivalries that pit his descendants against one another as that covenant is transmitted from one generation to the next, and the story of his great-grandson, Joseph, we this study considers the character of the remarkable family that grows into the nation of Israel, and the purpose that God gives it to sustain holiness in the world. We shall study in detail the opening creation story, the call and mission of Abraham, the Aqedah, or Binding of Isaac, the rivalry of Jacob and Esau and the often-misunderstood dynamics of chosenness, the sexual violation of Dinah, and the theological and psychological subtleties of the story of Joseph, perhaps the most complex plot in the Hebrew Bible and an extraordinary gem of biblical prose narrative. SUMMER COURSES 2018 Leading this study is Professor Jon D. Levenson, the Albert A. List Professor of Jewish Studies at the Harvard Divinity School. Professor Levenson s many books include Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory of the God of Life, which won the National Jewish Book Award, as well as Inheriting Abraham: The Legacy of the Patriarch in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and, most recently, The Love of God: Divine Gift, Human Gratitude, and Mutual Faithfulness in Judaism, the latter two published jointly by the Tikvah Fund and Princeton University Press in The Library of Jewish Ideas.

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