Jewish Values and Strategy in Wartime

A Tikvah Learning Campaign

In the immediate aftermath of the October 7 attacks and the outbreak of Israel’s war with Hamas, Tikvah sought to respond as only we could: with a high-level campaign of learning. In a matter of days, we launched a special series of live online Zoom courses—geared toward high-school students and open to everyone—on “Jewish Values and Strategy in Wartime.” In 35 unique classes taking place every day for 5 weeks, we invited leading policymakers, scholars, writers, activists, and intellectuals to explore a wide range of subjects: from the great leaders of Zionism to urban warfare, from the nature of Israel’s enemies to the crisis of campus anti-Semitism, from Jewish military ethics to Jewish culture in dark times.

You can now watch recordings of every course online, free-of-charge, at your own pace. Just click below to begin learning!

This series is a remarkable example of Tikvah’s mission in action: bringing the most impressive teachers in the world to young Jews in need of serious learning as they face the great challenges confronting our people. And it is because of your support of Tikvah and our mission that we are able to make programs like this happen.

Strategy, Statesmanship, War, and Diplomacy

• Urban Warfare: Strategy and Tactics

• Peace Through Strength: How Democracy Endures

• War Speeches: How Words Can Rally a Nation

• The UN & Israel: A Brief History

• Israeli Missile Defense: An Overview

• Moral Clarity in a Time of War

• The Arab-Israel Relationship: Past, Present, Future

• Arab Terrorism and the Jewish Iron Wall

Jewish Greatness: Heroes and Leaders

• Martyrdom and Heroism: A Jewish Reflection

• Great Zionist Leaders: Menachem Begin

• King David: Lessons in Leadership

• Great Zionist Leaders: David Ben Gurion

• The Jewish Warrior: Ancient and Modern

• Three Jewish Heroes: Herzl, Brandeis, and Eban

The Israeli Fighting Spirit: Past and Present

• Why We Fight: The Principles of the Israeli Declaration of Independence

• The Spirit of Israeli Innovation - And Why It Matters

• The Yom Kippur War in 1973: Lessons for Today

• The War of 1948: The Founding of Israel

Know Your Enemy: Israel’s Adversaries

• The Gaza Strip: Past, Present, Future

• Hamas: Its Origins and Ideology

• What Is Iran’s Strategy?

• The Worst Pogroms in Jewish History – and How Jews Responded

• Anti-Semitism: The Ideology of Jew Hatred

Jewish Thought: War, Peace, and the Problem of Evil

• The Jewish Ethics of War

• The Problem of Evil: A Jewish Reflection

• Jewish Poetry in Dark Times

• Jewish Prayer in a Time of War

• Holy Land: The Bible’s Vision of Zion

• Jewish Faith in Dark Times

America, Israel, and the Middle East

• Left, Right, and Israel: A Political Overview

• America’s Role in the Middle East

• American Jews: What is Our Duty?

• Why Is Israel Hated on Campus? Three Big Falsehoods

• Israel and the American Presidency

Strategy, Statesmanship, War, and Diplomacy

Urban Warfare: Strategy and Tactics

Harry Halem holds an MSc in Political Theory from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and an MA (Hons) in Philosophy and International Relations from the University of St Andrews.  He is a researcher at the Hudson Institute's Center for American Seapower and the Cambridge Middle East and North Africa Forum.  He is primarily interested in maritime strategy, international security, and the history of political thought.

Peace Through Strength: How Democracy Endures

Dr. Gabriel Scheinmann is the Executive Director of the Alexander Hamilton Society, an independent, non-partisan, not-for-profit, membership organization dedicated to promoting constructive debate on basic principles and contemporary issues in foreign, economic, and national security policy. Before joining AHS, Dr. Scheinmann worked at the Center for Strategic and International Studies as a research analyst and then served as the policy director at the Jewish Policy Center where he co-edited a journal of international affairs. He is a widely published author on U.S. national security and foreign policy, including in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and Foreign Affairs. He received his PhD and MA from Georgetown University and his BA from Harvard College.

War Speeches: How Words Can Rally a Nation

Tamara Berens is the co-director of the Krauthammer Fellowship, the director of Young Professionals programs at Tikvah, and a contributor at Mosaic. She graduated from King’s College London with a BA in War Studies. Tamara worked for CAMERA and conducted research at think-tanks in Westminster, England, and Washington, DC, before beginning one of the inaugural Krauthammer Fellowships, then at Mosaic. Tamara’s writing has appeared in publications in the US, UK, and Israel such as National Review and The Weekly Standard and she has been interviewed by the Telegraph and Makor Rishon.

The UN & Israel: A Brief History

Carrie Filipetti currently serves as the executive director of the Vandenberg Coalition. Prior to this role, Carrie served as deputy assistant secretary for Cuba and Venezuela in the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs and the deputy special representative for Venezuela at the U.S. Department of State, for which she received a Superior Honor Award. From 2019-2020, Carrie served as the senior advisor to the Havana Incidents Task Force, where she was responsible for coordinating an inter-agency effort to address the causes of unexplained health incidents affecting U.S. personnel, and identifying proper long-term care mechanisms. Prior to these roles, Carrie served as a senior policy advisor for the United States Mission to the United Nations (USUN), where she advised U.S. Ambassador Nikki R. Haley on issues related to counterterrorism, the Middle East, and the Western Hemisphere. Carrie began her career at The Paul E. Singer Foundation, where she served as director of portfolio management. In her capacity as director of the foundation, Carrie served as a senior advisor and co-founder of Start-Up Nation Central, a Tel-Aviv based non-profit that seeks to connect the world with Israeli innovation.

Israeli Missile Defense: An Overview

Richard Goldberg is a senior advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. From 2019-2020, Richard served as the Director for Countering Iranian Weapons of Mass Destruction for the White House National Security Council. He previously served as chief of staff for Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner and deputy chief of staff and senior foreign policy adviser to former U.S. Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois in both the U.S. House and Senate. As a staff associate for the House Appropriations Subcommittee on State-Foreign Operations, Richard worked on a wide range of issues related to U.S. foreign assistance, including foreign military financing, international security assistance, international peacekeeping, development, global health and economic support funds. A leader in efforts to expand U.S. missile defense cooperation with Israel, Richard played a key role in U.S. funding for the Arrow-3 program, Iron Dome and the deployment of an advanced missile defense radar to the Negev Desert. In the Senate, Richard emerged as a leading architect of the toughest sanctions imposed on the Islamic Republic of Iran. He was the lead Republican negotiator for three rounds of sanctions targeting the Central Bank of Iran, the SWIFT financial messaging service, and entire sectors of the Iranian economy. Richard also drafted and negotiated legislation promoting human rights and democracy in Iran, including sanctions targeting entities that provide the Iranian regime with the tools of repression. His Iran sanctions work was featured in the book The Iran Wars. As the governor’s chief of staff, Richard managed government in America’s fifth-largest state with oversight of all day-to-day operations, including homeland security, public safety, and public health. He also spearheaded the first-ever state legislation to divest public pension funds from companies engaged in boycotts of Israel, which sparked a nationwide initiative in state capitols around America.

Moral Clarity in a Time of War

Harry Ballan is a managing director of Alliant‘s Global Mergers and Acquisitions Group and an adjunct professor at New York University Law School. He holds a B.A., M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. from Yale University and a J.D. from Columbia Law School. After law school, he clerked for the Hon. Wilfred Feinberg in the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, before spending almost 30 years practicing law at Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP. Dr. Ballan served as dean of Touro Law School from 2016 to 2019 and was the founding dean of Tikvah Online Academy in 2020.

The Arab-Israel Relationship: Past, Present, Future

Hussein Aboubakr Mansour is the director of the Endowment for Middle East Truth's Program for Emerging Democratic Voices from the Middle East. Hussein was born in Cairo, Egypt into a family who raised another son to be an imam inspiring young people to become Jihadists. His critical intellect led him to find out more about Israel and Jews and to forge friendships with Israelis. Hussein received political asylum in the United States under President Barack Obama in 2012 and worked as an instructor for language and culture at the Defense Language Institute at Monterey, California. He then went on to work as an educator and public speaker for StandWithUs, educating students about cultural and geopolitical issues in the Middle East and helping them counter anti-Semitism. Hussein wrote an autobiography, Minority of One: The Unchaining of the Arab Mind, and his articles have appeared in Commentary, Newsweek, the Jewish Journal, JNS.org, Times of Israel, and Mosaic.

Arab Terrorism and the Jewish Iron Wall

Dore Feith is a second-year student at Columbia Law School, where he is an editor on the Columbia Business Law Review, a Federalist Society board member, and a student fellow in the law school’s National Security Law Program, researching constitutional war powers and other aspects of law and American grand strategy. Last summer, Dore interned at the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York. Before law school, from 2019-2020, Dore served as a special assistant to the deputy administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). He also worked on Middle East policy at a private foundation and helped lead a fellowship program on U.S.-China technology competition. Dore has published in the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, Newsweek, RealClearWorld and elsewhere, speaks Hebrew and Arabic, and graduated magna cum laude from Columbia University with a B.A. in History. After graduation, Dore will clerk for Judge Steven Menashi on the Second Circuit.

Jewish Greatness: Heroes and Leaders

Martyrdom and Heroism: A Jewish Reflection

Noah Greenfield is 5+ year veteran of McKinsey & Co. He is a graduate of Yale Law School, a doctoral candidate in Near Eastern Studies at UC Berkeley, and received his ordination from Yeshiva University.

Great Zionist Leaders: Menachem Begin

Daniel Polisar is the co-founder and executive vice president of Shalem College in Jerusalem, Israel’s first liberal arts college. He previously served as the president of the Shalem Center from 2002-2013 and also as its director of research, academic director, and editor-in-chief of its journal, Azure. From 2006 to 2009, he served as the founding chairman, within the Office of the Israeli Prime Minister, of the National Council for the Commemoration of the Legacy of Theodor Herzl. Dr. Polisar received his BA in politics from Princeton University and his PhD in government from Harvard University, where he was the recipient of Truman and Fulbright scholarships, as well as of a Mellon Fellowship. His research interests include Zionist history and thought, Israeli constitutional development, and the history and philosophy of higher education.

King David: Lessons in Leadership

Rabbi David Wolpe is a visiting scholar at Harvard Divinity School, the inaugural rabbinic fellow at the Anti-Defamation League, and the Max Webb Rabbi Emeritus of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, CA. Named one of the 500 Most Influential People in Los Angeles in 2016 and again in 2017,Most Influential Rabbi in America by Newsweek and one of the 50 Most Influential Jews in the World by The Jerusalem Post, Rabbi Wolpe has previously taught at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York, the American Jewish University in Los Angeles, Hunter College, and UCLA. A columnist for Time.com, he has been published and profiled in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post’s On Faith website, The Huffington Post, and the New York Jewish Week. Rabbi Wolpe is the author of eight books, including the national bestseller Making Loss Matter: Creating Meaning in Difficult Times. His book David: The Divided Heart was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Awards, and has been optioned for a movie by Warner Bros.

Great Zionist Leaders: David Ben Gurion

Daniel Polisar is the co-founder and executive vice president of Shalem College in Jerusalem, Israel’s first liberal arts college. He previously served as the president of the Shalem Center from 2002-2013 and also as its director of research, academic director, and editor-in-chief of its journal, Azure. From 2006 to 2009, he served as the founding chairman, within the Office of the Israeli Prime Minister, of the National Council for the Commemoration of the Legacy of Theodor Herzl. Dr. Polisar received his BA in politics from Princeton University and his PhD in government from Harvard University, where he was the recipient of Truman and Fulbright scholarships, as well as of a Mellon Fellowship. His research interests include Zionist history and thought, Israeli constitutional development, and the history and philosophy of higher education.

The Jewish Warrior: Ancient and Modern

Dr. Jonathan Silver is the Chief Programming Officer of Tikvah, the editor of Mosaic, and the Warren R. Stern Senior Fellow of Jewish Civilization. As the host of the Tikvah Podcast, he has hosted hundreds of writers, rabbis, educators, military officers, artists, and political figures, including members of Israel’s Knesset, the U.S. Senate, and the prime minister of Israel.

Three Jewish Heroes: Herzl, Brandeis, and Eban

Rick Richman is a resident scholar at American Jewish University in Los Angeles. He graduated with honors from Harvard College and NYU Law School and has written for Commentary, The Jewish Press, Mosaic, The New York Sun, PJ Media, The Tower Magazine, and his own blog, Jewish Current Issues, created in 2003. He is the author, most recently, of And None Shall Make Them Afraid: Eight Stories of the Modern State of Israel (Encounter Books, 2023), and of Racing Against History: The 1940 Campaign for a Jewish Army to Fight Hitler (Encounter Books, 2018). He also wrote the chapter on Louis Brandeis in What America Owes the Jews, What Jews Owe America (Mosaic Books, 2016) and appeared in the documentary film, “Body and Soul: The State of the Jewish Nation” (DocEmet Productions, 2014). He is a member of the Board of Directors of American Jewish University in Los Angeles and in 2016 received Sinai Temple’s Burning Bush Award for leadership and service to the Jewish community in America and Israel.

The Israeli Fighting Spirit: Past and Present

Why We Fight: The Principles of the Israeli Declaration of Independence

Dov Zigler is the author of Israel’s Declaration of Independence: The History and Political Theory of the Nation’s Founding Moment (Cambridge University Press, 2023), co-authored with Neil Rogachevsky. He is an investor and Chief International Economist at Element Capital in New York. He was previously a financial markets economist at Scotiabank and held a teaching fellowship at McGill University in the department of North American studies. He has also held a research fellowship at the Shalem Center and worked as an analyst at the Canadian Department of National Defence.  He holds an M.A. from The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, a B.A. (Hons.) from McGill University, and a B.E.I. certificate from Sciences-Po in Paris and has been an Asper Fellow at the Hebrew University. He is vice chairman of the Montreal Bach Festival.

The Spirit of Israeli Innovation - And Why It Matters

Daniel S. Senor is a bestselling author, host of the “Call Me Back” podcast, and a co-founder and member of the board of directors of the Foreign Policy Initiative. His most recent government position was in the administration of George W. Bush, where Mr. Senor served as chief spokesman and senior adviser to the Coalition in Iraq. One of the longest-serving civilian officials in Iraq, Mr. Senor also served as a Pentagon adviser to U.S. Central Command in Qatar and as a foreign policy and communications aide in the U.S. Senate. He has also advised a number of candidates for U.S. Senate. During the 2012 presidential election, Mr. Senor was a senior foreign policy adviser to Governor Mitt Romney. His analytical pieces have been published by the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Weekly Standard, Time, and Newsweek. He is co-author of Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle (2011), a New York Times Business Bestseller. From 2001 to 2003, Mr. Senor worked as an investment banker at the Carlyle Group. He earned a B.A. in History from the University of Western Ontario and an M.B.A from Harvard.

The Yom Kippur War in 1973: Lessons for Today

Uri Kaufman is the author of the newly released Eighteen Days in October: The Yom Kippur War and How It Created the Modern Middle East (St. Martin’s Press), the first history of the Yom Kippur War to be released in twenty years, which draws from never-before-seen declassified documents. He's been published in Foreign Affairs, Mosaic, and The Forward. After putting himself through CUNY’s Queens College at night, he attended New York University School of Law and graduated with honors in 1989. Mr. Kaufman subsequently became a real estate developer, specializing in adaptively restoring historic buildings, winning awards at the national and state level. His Harmony Mills project appears on the homepage of the New York State Historic Preservation Office’s website, hailed by officials as perhaps the finest example of restoring New York’s rich architectural heritage. He lives with his family in Lawrence, New York.

The War of 1948: The Founding of Israel

Neil Rogachevsky is associate director and assistant professor at the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University, where he researches and teaches Israel studies and political philosophy. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Mosaic, Jewish Review of Books, American Interest, Ha'aretz, American Affairs, and other publications. With Dov Zigler, he is the author of Israel's Declaration of Independence: The History and Political Theory of the Nation's Founding Moment and is currently working on a book on constitutional debates in 1948-1949. He received his BA from McGill University, his MA from the University of Toronto, and his PhD from the University of Cambridge.

Know Your Enemy: Israel’s Adversaries

The Gaza Strip: Past, Present, Future

Dr. Gabriel Scheinmann is the Executive Director of the Alexander Hamilton Society, an independent, non-partisan, not-for-profit, membership organization dedicated to promoting constructive debate on basic principles and contemporary issues in foreign, economic, and national security policy. Before joining AHS, Dr. Scheinmann worked at the Center for Strategic and International Studies as a research analyst and then served as the policy director at the Jewish Policy Center where he co-edited a journal of international affairs. He is a widely published author on U.S. national security and foreign policy, including in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and Foreign Affairs. He received his PhD and MA from Georgetown University and his BA from Harvard College.

Hamas: Its Origins and Ideology

Dr. Matthew Levitt is the Fromer-Wexler Fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy where he directs the Institute's Reinhard Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence. Previously, Levitt served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis at the U.S. Department of the Treasury and before that as an FBI counterterrorism analyst, including work on the Millennial and September 11th plots. He also served as a State Department counterterrorism advisor to Gen James L. Jones, the special envoy for Middle East regional security, and earned numerous awards and commendations for his government service. Levitt is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and sits on the advisory boards of several think tanks around the world. Widely published, Levitt is the author of many articles, book chapters, monographs, and books. His most recent book is Hezbollah: The Global Footprint of Lebanon’s Party of God (Georgetown University Press, 2013) and his latest monograph is Rethinking U.S. Efforts on Counterterrorism: Toward a Sustainable Plan Two Decades After 9/11 (2021). He is also the author of Hamas: Politics, Charity and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad (Yale University Press, 2006). Levitt is the creator of the Lebanese Hezbollah Worldwide Activities interactive map and timeline and the host of the podcast Breaking Hezbollah’s Golden Rule. Dr. Levitt held the Andrew H. Siegel Professorship in American Middle Eastern Foreign Policy, Georgetown University, 2021-2022, and was awarded a Georgetown University Faculty and Staff Career Champion award in 2022.

What Is Iran’s Strategy?

Michael Doran is a senior fellow and director of the Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East at Hudson Institute. He specializes in Middle East security issues and co-hosts the Counterbalance podcast. In the administration of President George W. Bush, he served in the White House as a senior director in the National Security Council as well as a senior advisor in the State Department and a deputy assistant secretary of defense in the Pentagon. He was previously a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and held teaching positions at New York University, Princeton University, and the University of Central Florida. He is the author of several books—most recently, Ike’s Gamble— and has published extensively in Foreign Affairs, the American Interest, Commentary, Mosaic, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the New York Times.

The Worst Pogroms in Jewish History – and How Jews Responded

Dr. Justin Cammy is professor and chair of the programs in Jewish Studies and World Literatures at Smith College. A specialist in Yiddish literature and eastern European cultural history, he also teaches courses on Hebrew literature and Israeli history. Cammy's publications range from essays on Yiddish writers to scholarly translations of foundational texts to introductions to new editions of works by Yiddish poets and memoirists that open them up to a broad readership. His scholarship on the generation of “when Yiddish was young” challenges post-war myths about Yiddish. Cammy’s recent critical edition and translation of Abraham Sutzkever’s From the Vilna Ghetto to Nuremberg: Memoir and Testimony was awarded the 2022 Leviant Memorial Prize in Yiddish Studies from the Modern Language Association, the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Yiddish, and the Finestone Prize for the best translation of a book on a Jewish theme from the J.I. Segal Awards. Cammy holds a PhD in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from Harvard and a BA in Middle Eastern Studies and Political Science from McGill, which included a junior year at the Rothberg International School at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. For almost twenty years, he also has been a faculty member at both the Steiner summer program at the Yiddish Book Center and the Naomi Prawer Kadar International Yiddish summer program at Tel Aviv University.

Anti-Semitism: The Ideology of Jew Hatred

David Bernstein is the founder of the Jewish Institute for Liberal Values (JILV), which opposes illiberal ideologies and supports liberal values in and out of the Jewish community, and author of Woke Antisemitism: How a Progressive Ideology Harms Jews. He is also a co-founder of the Institute for Liberal Values, a consortium of like-minded organizations supporting liberal principles. He is past President and CEO of Jewish Council for Public Affairs and former executive director of the David Project. He spent 13 years at the American Jewish Committee in senior roles. David is a prolific speaker, podcaster and writer, having written hundreds of opinion pieces in the Jewish and general press.

Jewish Thought: War, Peace, and the Problem of Evil

The Jewish Ethics of War

Rabbi Dr. Shlomo Brody is the executive director of Ematai and the Jewish Law Live columnist for the Jerusalem Post. He previously served as the founding director of the Tikvah Overseas Student Institute and co-dean of Tikvah Online Academy, a senior instructor at Yeshivat Hakotel, and as a junior research fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute. Rabbi Brody’s career has focused on making Jewish texts accessible to broader audiences while applying them to contemporary social and ethical dilemmas. His writings have been cited in Israeli Supreme Court decisions and have appeared in Mosaic, First Things, Tradition, The Federalist, Tablet, Tzohar, The Forward, Hakirah, Jewish Review of Books, and other popular publications. His first book, A Guide to the Complex: Contemporary Halakhic Debates (Maggid), received a National Jewish Book Award. His next book, Judaism Confronts War: Jewish Military Ethics for the 21st Century, is scheduled to be published in both Hebrew and English in early 2024. A summa cum laude graduate of Harvard College, he received rabbinic ordination from the Israeli Chief Rabbinate, an MA in Jewish philosophy at the Hebrew University, and his PhD from Bar Ilan University Law School, where he continues to serve as a post-doctoral fellow. Rabbi Brody has been an invited scholar-in-residence at over 40 distinguished congregations and campuses in the United States, Canada, England, and Israel.

The Problem of Evil: A Jewish Reflection

Cole Aronson is a writer living in Jerusalem, Israel. He’s published essays in the Jewish Review of Books, First Things, Tablet, The Point, Public Discourse, and Common Sense (now The Free Press), as well as in the Journal of Analytic Theology. He’s also working on a book-length defense of traditional Judaism. After graduating from Yale College in 2018 with a B.A. in philosophy, he spent four years at Yeshivat Har Etzion in Alon Shevut, Israel. He’s also studying towards an M.A. in philosophy at Hebrew University.

Jewish Poetry in Dark Times

Dr. Dara Horn is the award-winning author of six books: In the Image (2002),  The World to Come (2006),  All Other Nights (2009),  A Guide for the Perplexed (2013), Eternal Life (2018), and People Love Dead Jews (2021). One of Granta magazine's "Best Young American Novelists," she has twice won the National Jewish Book Award and has received numerous other honors for her books, which have been translated into twelve languages. A scholar of Yiddish and Hebrew literature with a doctorate in comparative literature from Harvard, Dr. Horn has taught these subjects at Sarah Lawrence College, Harvard University, and Yeshiva University, and has lectured on Jewish literature in over 200 universities and cultural institutions throughout North America, Israel, and Australia. Her nonfiction work has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, Smithsonian, and Jewish Review of Books, among many other publications, and she is a columnist for Tablet. She lives with her husband and four children in New Jersey.

Jewish Prayer in a Time of War

Rabbi Dr. Jacob J. Schacter is University Professor of Jewish History and Jewish Thought and senior scholar at the Center for the Jewish Future at Yeshiva University. From 2000 to 2005, he served as dean of the Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik Institute in Boston, and from 1981 to 2000, he served as rabbi of The Jewish Center in Manhattan. Rabbi Schacter holds a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages from Harvard University and received rabbinic ordination from Mesivta Torah Vodaath. He was a teaching fellow at Harvard from 1978-1980, director of Yeshiva University’s Torah u Madda Project from 1986-1997, and an adjunct assistant professor at the Stern College for Women at Yeshiva University from 1993-1999. He is the co-author of A Modern Heretic and a Traditional Community: Mordecai M. Kaplan, Orthodoxy, and American Judaism (with Jeffrey Gurock, 1996) and the editor of Jewish Tradition and the Nontraditional Jew (1992) and Judaism’s Encounter with other Cultures: Rejection or Integration? (1997). He has published numerous articles and reviews in Hebrew and English and is the founding editor of the Torah u-Madda Journal.

Holy Land: The Bible’s Vision of Zion

Rick Schindelheim has taught Jewish History, Tanakh, and Talmud at the Fuchs Mizrachi School in Cleveland since 2013. He currently serves as the chair of the Talmud Department and is the Upper School Judaic Studies Coordinator. His informal educational experience includes over a decade of work at Camp Stone in a variety of capacities. After studying in Yeshivat Kerem B’Yavneh in Israel for three years, Rick earned his B.A. in psychology from Yeshiva College and studied at Yeshiva University’s Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (REITS). He is a Nationally Certified School Psychologist and earned his Masters and Education Specialist degrees at John Carroll University in Cleveland.

Jewish Faith in Dark Times

Rabbi Mark Gottlieb is chief education officer of Tikvah and founding dean of the Tikvah Scholars Program. Prior to joining Tikvah, Rabbi Gottlieb served as head of school at Yeshiva University High School for Boys and principal of the Maimonides School in Brookline, MA, and has taught at The Frisch School, Ida Crown Jewish Academy, Hebrew Theological College, Loyola University in Chicago, and the University of Chicago. He received his BA from Yeshiva College, rabbinical ordination from the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, and an MA in Philosophy from the University of Chicago, where his doctoral studies focused on the moral and political thought of Alasdair MacIntyre. Rabbi Gottlieb’s work has been featured twice in the Wall Street Journal and his writing has appeared in First Things, Public Discourse, SEVEN: An Anglo-American Literary Review, The University Bookman, Tradition Online, the Algemeiner, From Within the Tent: Essays on the Weekly Parsha from Rabbis and Professors of Yeshiva University, and, most recently, Strauss, Spinoza & Sinai: Orthodox Judaism and Modern Questions of Faith. He is a trustee of the Hildebrand Project and serves on the Editorial Committee of Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought. He lives in Teaneck, NJ, with his wife and family.

America, Israel, and the Middle East

Left, Right, and Israel: A Political Overview

Matthew Continetti is the director of domestic policy studies and the inaugural Patrick and Charlene Neal Chair in American Prosperity at the American Enterprise Institute. Mr. Continetti is a columnist for Commentary and co-hosts the magazine's daily podcast. He is also the founding editor of the Washington Free Beacon and a contributing editor at National Review. He has been published in the Atlantic, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post, among other outlets. His broadcast appearances include Fox News Channel’s Special Report with Bret Baier and NBC News’ Meet the Press. Mr. Continetti is the author of three books, including, most recently, The Right: The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism (Basic Books, 2022). His previous books were The Persecution of Sarah Palin: How the Elite Media Tried to Bring Down a Rising Star (Penguin, 2009) and The K Street Gang: The Rise and Fall of the Republican Machine (Doubleday, 2006).

America’s Role in the Middle East

Elliott Abrams is the chairman of Tikvah, as well as chairman of the Vandenberg Coalition and senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C. He served as special assistant to the president and NSC senior director for the Near East and North Africa in the first term of George W. Bush, and as deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security advisor in the second term. In the Trump administration, he served in the State Department as special representative for Iran and for Venezuela. He is the author of Undue Process (1993), Security and Sacrifice (1995), Faith or Fear (1997), and Tested by Zion (2013), and writes widely on U.S. foreign policy, with special focus on the Middle East and the issues of democracy and human rights. His most recent book is Realism and Democracy: American Foreign Policy After the Arab Spring (2017).

American Jews: What is Our Duty?

Alan Rubenstein is the executive director of the Rosenthal-Levy Scholars Program at the University of Florida and a senior director at Tikvah. He is also now serving as a lecturer at the University of Florida’s Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Education. Alan was educated in Liberal Arts at St. John’s College in Annapolis, MD, and also at Georgetown University. Before his move into Jewish classical education, he served as a senior consultant for the President’s Council on Bioethics. For over a decade, he was the Hanson Scholar of Ethics at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, where he taught ethical thought through the close reading of great literature of the West—in particular, Plato, the Hebrew Bible, and Shakespeare. His published essays have focused on the philosopher Hans Jonas, the Hebrew Bible, and Judaism in middle America.

Why Is Israel Hated on Campus? Three Big Falsehoods

J.J. Kimche is a student, teacher, researcher, editor, ghostwriter, and translator, currently residing in Cambridge, Massachusetts. J.J. is a PhD candidate in the field of modern religious philosophy at Harvard University, where he specialises in the intersection between Modern European philosophy and Post-Enlightenment Jewish thought. His academic essays and translations have been published in both academic and popular venues. J.J. received his undergraduate education at Shalem College, Jerusalem, where he double-majored in Western philosophy and Jewish thought. Prior to that, he spent two years learning in Yeshivat Har Etzion and completed his military service in the 101st Division of the IDF’s Paratroopers Brigade. Born into a family of renowned British rabbis and educators, J.J. has been intensely involved in Jewish education for the past twelve years, teaching Jewish ideas to a wide array of audiences across three continents, and in multiple languages. In recent years he has taught Jewish thought at a prominent Yeshivah, Greek philosophy at a pre-army academy, and worked as a Junior Research Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute. J.J. currently serves as the Orthodox educator at MIT Hillel, where he teaches a wide range of Jewish texts.

Israel and the American Presidency

Tevi Troy is a senior fellow at the Ronald Reagan Institute, a Senior Scholar at Yeshiva University’s Straus Center, and a former Deputy Secretary of HHS and senior White House aide. He is the author of five books on the presidency, including most recently "The Power and the Money: The Epic Clashes Between Commanders in Chief and Titans of Industry."

On August 3, 2007, Dr. Troy was unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate as the Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. As Deputy Secretary, Dr. Troy was the chief operating officer of the largest civilian department in the federal government, with a budget of $716 billion and over 67,000 employees.

Dr. Troy has extensive White House experience, having served in several high-level positions over a five-year period, culminating in his service as Deputy Assistant and then Acting Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy.

Dr. Troy has held high-level positions on Capitol Hill as well. From 1998 to 2000, Dr. Troy served as the Policy Director for Senator John Ashcroft. From 1996 to 1998, Troy was Senior Domestic Policy Adviser and later Domestic Policy Director for the House Policy Committee, chaired by Christopher Cox.

In addition to his senior level government work and health care expertise, Dr. Troy is also a presidential historian, making him one of only a handful of historians who has both studied the White House as a historian and worked there at the highest levels. He is the author of the best-selling book, What Jefferson Read, Ike Watched, and Obama Tweeted: 200 Years of Popular Culture in the White House, as well as Intellectuals and the American Presidency: Philosophers, Jesters, or Technicians?, and Shall We Wake the President? Two Centuries of Disaster Management in the Oval Office. Fight House: Rivalries in the White House, from Truman to Trump was named one of the top political books for 2020 by the Wall Street Journal. Dr. Troy has written over 400 published articles, for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New Republic, Commentary, National Review, Washingtonian, The Weekly Standard, and other publications. He is a frequent television and radio analyst, and has appeared on CNBC, CNN, C-SPAN, Fox News, Fox Business, and The NewsHour, among other outlets.

Dr. Troy's many other affiliations include: contributing editor for Washingtonian magazine; contributing writer for the Washington Examiner; member of the publication committee of National Affairs; member of the Board of Fellows of the Jewish Policy Center; a Senior Fellow at the Potomac Institute; and a member of the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense.

Dr. Troy has a B.S. in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University and an M.A and Ph.D. in American Civilization from the University of Texas at Austin.

Dr. Troy lives in Maryland with his wife, Kami. They have four children.