The Tikvah Podcast

Norman Podhoretz, z"l, died on December 16 at the age of ninety-five. For more than three decades, he served as editor of  Commentary , transforming it into what Irving Kristol deemed the most influential magazine in Jewish history. He was a literary critic, a political essayist, and one of the fathers of the orientation toward public affairs that came to be known as neoconservatism. In 2004, Pres...

On the evening of December 14, 2025—the first night of Hanukkah—Rabbi Benjamin Elton was driving home from performing a wedding, looking forward to lighting candles with his family. Then his phone began to explode with messages. There were gunmen at Bondi Beach. His wife and children were in lockdown at a nearby event. Names of the dead were coming through—colleagues, community members. For severa...

On October 6, 2023, Rabbi Meir Soloveichik sat at his desk facing a deadline for his monthly column. Israel's citizens were then furiously debating judicial reform, but he'd already had his say on that matter. He decided to write about something else instead: a  Jeopardy  episode where three educated contestants stared blankly when asked to identify the source of this line: "Yea, though I walk thr...

It's now December, and thus a natural time to look back and think about all that's changed in 2025. What did the Middle East and the world look like at this time a year ago? President Biden was in the Oval Office and President Trump was both the former president and the president-elect. Hamas still held hostages taken on October 7. Iran's regional proxies, though weakened, still threatened both Is...

For many Jewish parents and grandparents, Hillel holds a special place in their memories of college life. Founded in 1923 above a barbershop at the University of Illinois, Hillel grew into a leading Jewish campus organization, now present at hundreds of colleges. For generations, it was where Jewish students found community, celebrated Shabbat, and felt at home as Jews while navigating the challen...

This episode of the Tikvah Podcast might be the first dedicated entirely to Christian theology. Why would a Jewish podcast devote so much attention to a theological debate that took place among Christians in the 2nd   century? First, because it contributed to the canonization of Christian scripture and defined forever the Christian attitude toward the Hebrew Bible. But more importantly, because we...

This week, Ron Dermer resigned from the Israeli cabinet, stepping down as minister of strategic affairs after years of working closely with Prime Minister Netanyahu to guide Israel through this last harrowing chapter of the country 's history. It's a moment of transition—and it brings to mind another such moment, five years ago, when Dermer prepared to leave his post as Israel's ambassador to the...

Every schoolboy has been told that, to understand human nature, we must look to our closest genetic relatives—the chimpanzees. Jane Goodall's pioneering research revealed that chimps use tools, hunt cooperatively, and engage in violent activity that looks like warfare. And from these observations, she and generations of scientists who followed in her wake have concluded that humans are essentially...

Last week, Michael Smuss died at age ninety-nine. Born in 1926, he was the last surviving fighter of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. His passing marks the end of an era, and brings to a close a chapter of living memory. Now the responsibility to tell this story passes fully to us. In the spring of 1943, against impossible odds and with almost no weapons, a small group of young Jews in Nazi-occupied Wa...

Now that there is a fragile cease-fire in place, it's time to ask what to do with Gaza's intricate system of tunnels. There is, of course, nothing new about the use of tunnels in war. From ancient Jerusalem to Vietnam to Islamic State in Mosul, militaries have dealt with underground warfare for millennia. But the scale, purpose, and strategic role of Hamas's tunnel network is fundamentally differe...

"God created man in His image: in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them." Thus reads verse 27 of the first chapter of Genesis, one of the most important lines ever written in history. The Hebrew phrase rendered as "in God's image" is  b'tselem Elohim , and that is the title of a new book that traces the extraordinary career of this concept, known in Latin as  imago Dei ,...

On September 17, 2025, Israel announced that the world's first laser defense system was ready for deployment, and was being integrated into its multitiered missile-defense shield. Iron Beam may be the most significant advance in missile defense since Israel pioneered the concept of intercepting missiles with missiles back in the 1980s. That's because Iron Beam promises to solve one of modern warfa...

What mattered most for survivors of the Holocaust, indeed, what made their survival possible, was not only that the Allies had better ideas about democracy and civilization, though of course Britain, America, and the other Western Allies did. It was that they actually won the war. They defeated the Germans on the field of battle—on sea, land, and air, in the hills and in the streets. It's not enou...

The relationship between the United States and Israel has long been the subject of intense scrutiny, very often distorted by polemic and conspiracy. One of the most influential articulations of these distortions came in 2007, when the political scientists John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt argued that American foreign policy had been hijacked by a powerful Israel lobby—an argument that, despite its...

In the span of just twelve days, the strategic balance of the Middle East was fundamentally altered. Israel systematically dismantled Iran 's drones, missiles, and air defenses, while American strikes turned its most important nuclear facilities into dust. But for all of that, another aspect of the war may not yet have gotten enough attention, and that is the demonstration of what American energy...

This week, as students in North America are returning to campus and settling into the rhythms of the fall semester, some of them are going to open their copies of Homer's epic poems of the Trojan War, the Iliad  and  Odyssey . They will read of the Trojan commander Hector's poignant farewell to his wife Andromache, of the Greek warrior Achilles' terrible rage, of Odysseus' long journey home, and o...

In " A College Guide for the Perplexed ," our feature essay this month at  Mosaic , our focus is on higher-education reform, the future and fate of the humanities, and helping parents of Jewish students figure out the best places to pursue university studies. This is not the first time that  Mosaic  has dealt with these and related issues. In May 2024, my  Mosaic  colleague Andrew Koss wrote a sea...

Between the year 63 before the Common Era, and the year 136 of the Common Era, the Jewish people waged three revolts against the mightiest empire in the world. In retrospect, we can see that these were not only local uprisings, but civilizational confrontations that would echo through history—struggles that pitted the Jewish people's fierce determination to live as a free nation in their ancestral...

On July 29, Gallup published a new poll showing American support for Israel's  military action in Gaza at a historic low. But a strong majority (71 percent) of Republicans say they approve of Israel's conduct in Gaza, and that is up from 66 percent in September. Of Israel's military action in Iran, 78 percent of Republicans approve. And 67 percent of Republicans have a favorable opinion of Israel'...

This month at  Mosaic , we hosted a very important set of conversations, spurred on by a very important essay: " The Enchantment of the Arab Mind ," by the Egyptian-American writer Hussein Aboubakr Mansour. Mansour traces the roots of jihadism to European, and especially German, philosophy, transmitted through 20th-century Arab radicalism. Earlier this week, we broadcast a conversation about the e...

This week, Columbia University reached a $200 million settlement with the Trump administration to resolve multiple federal civil-rights investigations. The deal—which the White House characterized as the largest anti-Semitism-related settlement in U.S. history—will also release hundreds of millions of dollars in suspended federal grants that had been withheld from Columbia as the administration so...

We are now in a period in the liturgical calendar of the Jewish people known as the Three Weeks, which begins on the seventeenth day of the Hebrew month of Tammuz, and continues through the ninth day of the month of Av. It is a period of mourning and commemoration of many experiences of tragedy and sorrow in the Jewish past, and it culminates on the Ninth of Av, or Tisha b'Av , because on that day...

October 7th exposed to everyone what many in and around the academy have known for years: American universities — not all, but many — are failing catastrophically to educate the next generation about the history, cultures, and politics of the Middle East. Instead of producing students versed in the region ' s complexities, these institutions have become factories for ideological activism. And nowh...

This week, America celebrates 249 years of independence. As the countdown begins to our 250th   birthday, our semiquincentennial, it is natural to ask what citizenship means to us as Americans, and as American Jews. How do we fulfill our obligations not just to preserve what we've inherited, but to renew it for future generations? These aren't just political questions—they're moral ones, rooted in...

On June 22, American B-2 bombers dropped hundreds of tons of explosives on three nuclear sites in Iran — Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan. Right after President Trump announced that the pilots were out of Iranian air space, the world started to learn the details of Operation Midnight Hammer, the extraordinary American mission to neutralize Iran's nuclear-weapons program. News coverage started immediate...