The Tikvah Podcast

America remains one of the most religious countries in the developed world. The United States has no established church; yet, some argue that it is the very absence of an official state religion that has allowed faith to flourish and grow in America. Complementing the flourishing of Judaism and Christianity in the United States is a distinct form of civil religion that permeates American institutions, symbols, and culture.

Upon what sources does this civic faith draw? How should Jews and Christians view and participate in it? And is it strong enough to persist in our increasingly secular age? These are the questions Professor Wilfred M. McClay addresses in his essay “The Soul of a Nation,” published in the Public Interest in the spring of 2004. McClay explores the idea of civil religion, tracing its history from Plato and Rousseau to Massachusetts’s Puritan settlers to President Bush’s freedom agenda. He details its uses and abuses in America and worries about a future where civil religion is missing from public life.

In this podcast, Professor McClay sits down with Jonathan Silver to revisit this essay. They discuss the role of civil religion in the period after the September 11 terrorist attacks, the ways the Hebrew Bible shapes civic religion in the United States, and the dangers of the progressive impulse to shed America’s history and hollow out the nation’s soul. At a time when visceral partisanship is running high, McClay shows us how a renewed civil religion can help bring unity and a sense of shared citizenship to a divided 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 as well as “Baruch Habah,” performed by the choir of Congregation Shearith Israel, and “Further Down the Path” by Big Score Audio.

Direct download: McClay_Podcast.mp3
Category:Great Jewish Essays and Ideas -- posted at: 4:54pm EDT

At a time when the State of Israel lives under the threat of jihadist Islam and faces the scorn of Western elites, it continues to find friends among the Evangelical Christians of America. Yet, while Evangelicals have been among the most ardent friends of the Jewish people and Jewish state, significant numbers of Jews view their friendship with suspicion. Not only that, but Evangelical attitudes toward Israel and the Palestinians could be changing.

In 2013, Robert Nicholson analyzed the state of Evangelical Zionism in “Evangelicals and Israel,” published in Mosaic. Nicholson acknowledged that Jewish suspicion of Christian goodwill is rooted in memories of historical persecution. But he argues that, those memories notwithstanding, it is a strategic error for the Jewish community to reject this goodwill. In the piece, Nicholson argues that Evangelical support of Israel cannot be taken for granted and makes the case that only greater engagement between Jews and Christians can preserve, heal, and strengthen the promising relationship between Jewish and Christian Zionists.

In this podcast, Nicholson joins Tikvah Executive Director Eric Cohen to revisit his landmark Mosaic essay. He explains the divisions within Evangelical Protestantism about the State of Israel, the reasons for Jewish skepticism of Christian support, and the work of his own Philos Project in strengthening Christians’ connection to Israel. The theological debates of Evangelical Christians mean a great deal to the future of the Jews and their state, and friends of Israel from every background need to understand them.

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.

This podcast was recorded in front of a live audience at the Tikvah Center in New York City.

Direct download: Nicholson_Podcast_FI.mp3
Category:Great Jewish Essays and Ideas -- posted at: 11:29am EDT

Anti-Semitism has, regrettably, been with us for millennia. But its nature and character, its intellectual foundations, its accusations against the Jews have all undergone a process of evolution. In medieval Christendom, Jews were condemned as unsaved, guilty of the crime of deicide. In the Europe of the Enlightenment, Jew-hatred took on a more secular character, grounding itself in the racial pseudo-science of the age. Today, anti-Semitism has tied itself to hatred of the State of Israel and flourishes within the reactionary world of radical Islam and its western apologists.

In 2013, Hebrew University’s Robert Wistrich explored these changing faces of anti-Semitism in the pages Commentary magazine. His piece traces this pernicious hatred through history, highlighting the strikingly similar tropes that recur among anti-Semites from Nazi Europe to the contemporary Muslim world.

In this podcast, Dr. Charles Asher Small of the Institute for the Study of Global Anti-Semitism and Policy joins Jonathan Silver to discuss Wistrich’s article and its relevance today. They explore how Jew-hatred’s justifications have shifted from the religious to the scientific to the national and discuss why modern intellectuals in America and Europe seem persistently to misunderstand the true nature of anti-Semitism’s threat. In an environment where hostility to Jews and the Jewish state has a home on both the Left and Right, Silver and Small make the case that anti-Semitism is not just a problem for Jews; for the forces of reaction and bigotry that target the Jewish people today will inevitably target others tomorrow.

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.

Direct download: Charles_Small_Podcast_FI.mp3
Category:Great Jewish Essays and Ideas -- posted at: 11:08am EDT

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