The Tikvah Podcast

On March 23, 2021, Israel voted in its 24th Knesset, and with it sent Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid to the premiership. Next week, on November 1, 2022, Israelis return to the polls in order to vote, again—for the fifth time in just over three years—to elect the 25th Knesset and a new prime minister. The central personality of the election is Israel’s longest serving prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been leading the opposition since leaving office in 2021, who remains the head of the Likud party, and who could shortly return to the prime ministership. His chief rival is the current prime minister, Yair Lapid, running to return. And then there are new and rising figures who represent a range of interests, attitudes, and identities from throughout Israeli society.

This week on the podcast, Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver is joined by Haviv Rettig Gur, the lead political reporter at the Times of Israel and a frequent Mosaic contributor. Together, the two look at Israel’s upcoming elections as well as its current political culture.

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: Gur-Oct_2022_FINAL.mp3
Category:Great Jewish Essays and Ideas -- posted at: 10:00pm EST

Some of today's most important ideas were first born in little magazines—magazines, that is to say, like Mosaic. How does that happen? And what is the role of a magazine editor, and does that role differ if the magazine in question is Jewish?

On this week's podcast, we bring you the recording of a live discussion convened earlier this week between Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver and Yoav Sorek, the editor of Hashiloach, a quarterly journal in Israel. Moderated by the writer David Weinberg, the two discuss the state of Jewish ideas, the biggest issues facing the Jewish people in their minds, and the differences between publishing for Jews who are a minority—as Mosaic does—and publishing for Jews who are a majority in their own state, as Hashiloach does.

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: Silver-Sorek_Event_with_INTRO.mp3
Category:Great Jewish Essays and Ideas -- posted at: 4:21pm EST

On October 12, 2022, Israeli prime minister Yair Lapid approved an agreement with the government of Lebanon to establish maritime borders between the two countries. The deal, brokered by the United States, is important because large fields of natural gas have been discovered under the seabed of the Israel-Lebanon coast—and whichever country controls these fields can reap the financial and energy benefits from them. 

In some quarters, the establishment of the new borders—without a war being fought, the usual means of fixing borders—is seen as an accomplishment. For those who hold that view, this deal will help stabilize Lebanon and provide it some economic relief. Furthermore, given that Lebanon and Israel are, officially if not currently in fact, still at war, the agreement is seen as evidence of America’s power as a mediator in the Middle East. In short, the deal is a diplomatic achievement worth celebrating. 

This week’s podcast guest disagrees. Tony Badran, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, has argued that Israel has traded away its maritime rights in exchange for the mere hope of regional order, and it makes future conflict between Israel and Hizballah-controlled Lebanon more likely, not less. In conversation with Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver, he discusses the political context within which the Israelis and Lebanese established their maritime borders, why America pushed so hard for the agreement, and why the deal harms Israeli security and boosts Hizballah. 

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: Badran_Oct-2022_FINAL.mp3
Category:Great Jewish Essays and Ideas -- posted at: 2:30pm EST

The legacy of Christian anti-Semitism is not a happy one. Early in the history of Christianity, as the religion grew, the persecution of Jews became a normal feature of life in Christian lands. By the Middle Ages, the Jewish people were subject to dislocation, alienation, psychological torment, violence, and torture—all with the approval, and at times the official encouragement, of church authorities. Even in modern times, religiously inflected anti-Semitism has been an unavoidable part of the relations between the two religions.

Is that still the case? Perhaps not. Relations between global Christianity and the Jewish people are fundamentally different than they have been. In part this is because of one document: the Vatican’s Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions, more commonly known by the Latin words with which it begins, Nostra Aetate, “In our time.” Nostra Aetate was promulgated at the ecumenical council called by Pope John XXIII known as the Second Vatican Council, only the 21st such council to have been convened in the nearly two millennia of the Catholic church. This month marks the 60th anniversary of its being convened. To help us understand what the Second Vatican Council was about, and its effects today, Mosaic’s editor Jonathan Silver speaks with one of the most incisive analysts of Catholicism: the author George Weigel. This week marks the publication of his new book about the Second Vatican Council, To Sanctify the World: The Vital Legacy of Vatican II, a distillation of which was featured in the Wall Street Journal this month under the title “What Vatican II Accomplished.”

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: Tikvah_Podcast_Weigel_Final.mp3
Category:Great Jewish Essays and Ideas -- posted at: 11:06pm EST

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