Beginning Saturday night, the Jewish people will celebrate the holiday of Shavuot. During the festival, Jews traditionally study the book of Ruth, the biblical text that tells the story of a non-Jewish widow who becomes the great-grandmother of King David. To help uncover why the book of Ruth is so beloved, and to make sense of the intertextual references and literary allusions at work in it, the Harvard professor Jon Levenson joins this week’s podcast. In conversation with Mosaic’s editor Jonathan Silver, he explains how the narrative drive of Ruth moves from death to life, and reveals how its principal figures manifest the virtue of ḥesed, traditionally translated as loving-kindness, and meaning loyal devotion. 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.

Jon Levenson on the Moral Force of the Book of Ruth

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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.

Meir Soloveichik on the Politics of the Haggadah

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.

Yechiel Leiter on Losing a Child to War

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 new intensity lately, as the October 7 attacks and Israel’s war in Gaza have unified most of the country in a belief that the haredi draft exemption is unsustainable, unwise, and unjust. This week, Pfeffer joins Jonathan Silver again to talk about how the matter now looks from within the haredi community. They discuss how Israeli haredim reacted to the October 7 attacks, the experience of the small number of haredim who have been serving in military operations since the war began, and what Pfeffer thinks they should do. Notably, he argues that, as a matter of Jewish belonging, haredi men ought to enlist and help to protect their country. 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.

Yehoshua Pfeffer on Haredi Service in the Israeli Military

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 great debates over the conduct of American foreign policy and the management of domestic affairs still admitted heterodox disagreement. He was also a key figure in the U.S.-Israel relationship, articulating as well as anyone in public life why the widespread support that Americans feel toward the Jewish state also had a strategic value in serving American interests. In October 2019, Lieberman, by then retired from the Senate, was in Jerusalem, where he addressed the Herzl Conference on Contemporary Zionism. In that speech—later published in a suitably edited form in Mosaic—he took a retrospective tone, looking back at the initial impulses that led Theodor Herzl’s ideas to take concrete form in modern Israel. He looked at the effect that Israel has had on American Jewry. And he honestly examined growing political trends that troubled him. Today, we rebroadcast a 2019 conversation that Jonathan Silver had with Lieberman in which they discuss that speech and his career. 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.

Joseph Lieberman on American Jews and the Zionist Dream (Rebroadcast)

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 unhealthy, reflecting the nation's loneliness epidemic, its underwhelming public education system, its demoralized society. Seth Kaplan is the author of Fragile Neighborhoods, a new book that diagnoses these dilemmas and that offers practical steps to nurse neighborhoods back to health. He joins Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver to discuss how Jewish neighborhoods might serve as models that could inspire other communities in the United States. 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.

Jon Levenson on the Moral Force of the Book of Ruth

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