The Zionist writer Ahad Ha’am famously remarked that more than the Jewish people kept Shabbat, Shabbat has kept the Jewish people. There is a deep truth that is embedded in the organization of time, the ritualization of communal ceremonies of remembrance and praise, and the recapitulation of the traumas and triumphs of the past: that the calendar can function as a source of national solidarity. Living in rhythm with the Jewish calendar and all that entails is what makes Jews, Jews. The calendar is the instrument that the Jewish people developed to teach our children Jewish history and the fundamental principles of Judaism, and it is what sustains and reinforces those principles throughout the span of a person’s life. It serves, you might say, as a strategy for national cohesion. Jewish nationhood depends on the organization of Jewish hours, days, weeks, and months.

In this episode of the Tikvah Podcast, Mosaic’s editor Jonathan Silver speaks with Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, who has just published a new book that interprets each of the Jewish holidays in light of how it contributes to Jewish national belonging. Rabbi Soloveichik leads Congregation Shearith Israel, the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue; is the director of the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University; and is the impresario of the website MeirSoloveichik.com, where you can find all of his writing along with his many video courses and podcasts, including his daily commentary on the Hebrew Bible, Bible365. His new book Sacred Time was published in 2024 by Koren.

That the Jews have survived is one of the great mysteries of history, and for some theologians, Jewish survival is even an indication of God’s providence. The stronger the force against the Jews, the more miraculous their resilience and endurance.

But that mystery has another dimension to it–because in America, the Jewish community is not doing well at all. And that’s not because America is like Egypt or Spain or Germany–in fact it’s precisely because America is so decent, so good, and so welcoming that the Jewish community finds itself contracting and growing shallower.

There is a powerful countertrend among the Orthodox subpopulations of American Jewry. Their rates of generational retention and inmarriage are high. Jewish education is advanced, and even flourishing. The U.S.-Israel relationship tends to be a salient issue in their approach to public affairs. But the Orthodox segment of American Jewry is very small. What about the other 85 or 90 percent?

Elliott Abrams, the chairman of Tikvah and a distinguished foreign-policy expert, is the author of a new book addressing these topics, If You Will It: Rebuilding Jewish Peoplehood for the 21st Century. Abrams takes comprehensive stock of the available data on American Jewish communal life and then poses a question. The Orthodox Jews of America have a formula that works. But what can be done to strengthen the Jewish attachments and Jewish identities of the non-Orthodox? What do the data tell us? Abrams joins Mosaic‘s editor Jonathan Silver to discuss If You Will It.

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.