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Modernity is often thought of as characterized by a series of contradictions: freedom vs. order, religion vs. culture, morality vs. freedom, and tradition vs. progress. Many liberals and conservatives establish their political positions by placing emphasis on one category at the expense of another, and many Jewish and Christian scholars argue that a good life involves achieving the right balance or relationship between these categories.

But are these concepts really contradictions? Or are they mutually dependent upon one another? And if they are mutually dependent, why do they seem to conflict so often?

In this episode, Rabbi Mitch Rocklin examines the question of what it means to be religious and cultured in the West. He considers how Western Civilization created unique poetic and philosophical approaches to these concepts, as well as how their development created serious crises for religious and traditional
individuals. How have great minds grappled with these crises, and how we might chart a new way forward by reexamining the origins of religion and culture and their relevance to our rapidly changing world?

Rabbi Mitchell Rocklin is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Yeshiva University’s Azrieli Graduate School of Jewish Education.

Read more about the course: https://www.dropbox.com/s/jaz0rpgvu8a8xxb/Virtue%20and%20Ethics%20in%20Jewish%20and%20Greek%20Thought%20-%20Reader.pdf?dl=0

Check out our high school offerings at www.tikvahfund.org/hs

Zionism is one of the world’s most successful revolutionary movements. From an idea that was considered borderline insane, Zionism was able to lay the foundation for the existence of an actual country – Israel – that is one of the world’s most vibrant democracies, prosperous economies and successful societies.

Yet, from its inception, Zionism faced not just diplomatic and physical obstacles to the implementation of its vision, but intellectual opposition to its very idea. Zionism has not existed for a single day without various forms of intellectual opposition to its goal, and once its goal was attained in the form of a state – to the state itself.

The episode will explore Zionist and anti-Zionist thought in tandem, demonstrating how every type of Zionism was opposed by a certain brand of anti-Zionism, and how those various debates about Zionism persist to this day. Dr. Wilf traces Zionism from its political beginnings and the opposition posed by those who favored the path of Jewish emancipation and assimilation, to Labor Zionism against the utopian appeal of Communism and the efforts of Bundism, to the theologies that underlie Zionism and anti-Zionism in both Jewish and Christian forms, to the ongoing intellectual conflict between Zionism in Israel and anti-Zionism in the Arab world, ending with the contemporary question of whether anti-Zionism has become a new form of antisemitism.

Dr. Einat Wilf was a member of the Israeli Parliament from 2010-2013 on behalf of the Labor and Independence parties.

Read more about the course: https://www.dropbox.com/s/hpgw8n4bi33hnqh/Zionism%20and%20Anti-Zionism.pdf?dl=0

Check out our high school offerings at www.tikvahfund.org/hs

Sophocles' Oedipus Rex is certainly one of the greatest tragedies ever written. It's a murder mystery whose solution turns into a search for the identity of the searcher himself. His pride of reason solves every riddle, but cannot save him from the blinding terror of knowing who he is and what he has done along the way (murder and incest) to become a knower and ruler. King Lear is Shakespeare's top of the mountain experience of tragedy. An old king and father administers a love test to his three daughters, to determine who loves him most, and to divide up the kingdom on that basis. He is not able to hear truth and love in the same word—why is that so hard?—and he makes a terrible mistake. To see the truth of the heart and to abide by the promptings of nature require, in this play, more blinding of eyes and suffering beyond human endurance. Both Sophocles and Shakespeare put in question the cost of knowing the truth about the things that matter most: love, family, wisdom, and rule. Therefore, they also must put in question the causes of things: freedom, fate, chance, and the gods.

Louis Petrich is a Tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis, teaching the great books across the liberal arts curriculum.

Read more about this course at: https://www.dropbox.com/s/yp26as7q4ajcg39/Terror%20and%20Truth%20in%20Oedipus%20Rex%20and%20King%20Lear.pdf?dl=0

Check out our high school offerings at www.tikvahfund.org/hs

In our cultural moment, society’s disregard of qualitative reasoning in favor of quantitative analysis–what spiritual master Rene Guenon dubbed “The Reign of Quantity”–has left a gaping hole in issues relating to morality, spirituality, and meaning. In this episode, Dr. Snell discusses questions such as: What is reason in the 21st century? Do the worlds of philosophical reasoning and empirical analysis speak different languages? Can these languages be meaningfully brought into conversation with one another? Where do they exhibit similarities and how do they differ?

RJ Snell directs the Center on Ethics and the University at the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, NJ, and is senior fellow at the Agora Institute for Civic Virtue and the Common Good.

Read more about The Nature of Reason course at: https://www.dropbox.com/s/468i4ig58yz79vm/The%20Nature%20of%20Reason%20in%20Western%20and%20Jewish%20Thought%20-%20Readers.pdf?dl=0

Check out our high school offerings at www.tikvahfund.org/hs

In our cultural moment, society’s disregard of qualitative reasoning in favor of quantitative analysis–what spiritual master Rene Guenon dubbed “The Reign of Quantity”–has left a gaping hole in issues relating to morality, spirituality, and meaning. In this episode, Rabbi Gottlieb discusses questions such as: What is reason in the 21st century? Do the worlds of philosophical reasoning and empirical analysis speak different languages? Can these languages be meaningfully brought into conversation with one another? Where do they exhibit similarities and how do they differ?

Rabbi Mark Gottlieb is Senior Director of the Tikvah Fund and Founding Dean of the Tikvah High School Programs at Yale University. He received his BA from Yeshiva College, rabbinical ordination from the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, and an MA in Philosophy from the University of Chicago, where his doctoral studies focused on the moral and political thought of Alasdair MacIntyre. 

Read more about The Nature of Reason course at: https://www.dropbox.com/s/468i4ig58yz79vm/The%20Nature%20of%20Reason%20in%20Western%20and%20Jewish%20Thought%20-%20Readers.pdf?dl=0