Unlock the most serious Jewish, Zionist, and American thinking.
Subscribe NowPodcast • Episode 453
Roy Altman came to America as a little boy. He came from Venezuela, where his own grandparents had fled to during the Holocaust. Altman and his family arrived in the U.S. with very little and knowing almost no one …
Course
Rabbi Meir Soloveichik examines key moments in the American history through a set of iconic images.
Course Lesson
Rabbi Soloveichik examines Arthur J. Stansbury's sketch, "John Quincy Adams Unconscious in the Capitol Rotunda," drawn soon after the former president and legendary congressman suffered a stroke while on the floor of the House of Representatives. Rabbi Soloveichik reflects …
Podcast • Episode 116
A Talmudic story about David's "alarm clock" is linked to this psalm. Supplemental Materials: Click here to listen to a recitation of Psalm 108 in English. Click here to listen to a recitation of Psalm 108 in Hebrew. Click …
Monthly Essay
The death of Ali Khamenei and the end of political Islam’s century-long experiment in power.
Response
Militaries must return to the ancient confidence that it is better to kill more of the aggressors’ population than to have lost some of its own.
Observation
A native of Odessa, the Jewish thinker needed no convincing that Ukrainians were a distinct nation. He understood that if they were subdued, no other nation would stand a chance.
Podcast
In this daily podcast, Rabbi Meir Soloveichik guides listeners through all 150 chapters of King David's Psalms, exploring their poetry, meaning, and enduring place in the life of faith.
Podcast
A daily 15-minute podcast guiding listeners through the entire Hebrew Bible in one year, with insightful commentary and analysis.
Podcast • Episode 115
A psalm of thanksgiving is linked to the Pilgrim story. Supplemental Materials: Click here to listen to a recitation of Psalm 107 in English. Click here to listen to a recitation of Psalm 107 in Hebrew. Click here to read …
Monthly Essay
Since 2023, the Jewish state has been teetering on the edge of a constitutional crisis. Expanding the legislative branch could bring stability and maturity to Israeli democracy.
Response
Having lost its audience in the Middle East, the ideology of the Islamic Revolution is finding new adherents in Europe.
Response
Geographic representation won’t fix it. What Israel needs is a senate formally designed to protect each of its distinct sectors.
Podcast
Professor Ruth Wisse explores the wit and wisdom of the greatest stories in the modern Jewish literary canon.
Monthly Essay
October 7 was not Palestine’s independence day, but the final nail in the two-state solution’s coffin. Is confederation with Jordan all that remains?
Podcast • Episode 114
This psalm’s tenor is the opposite of the previous one, but in fact, both of the psalms are meant to be taken together. Supplemental Materials: Click here to listen to a recitation of Psalm 106 in English. Click here …
Course Lesson
Can a single painting capture the American Revolution? John Trumbull’s “Declaration of Independence” attempts just that. In this lecture, Rabbi Soloveichik examines what the painting reveals about the Founding Fathers and America itself. Through a dual focus on Jefferson …
Podcast
Weekly, in-depth conversations on Jews, Judaism, America, and Israel with leading thinkers, writers, rabbis, and policymakers.
Course
Martin Kramer Teaches Declaring Israel's Independence
Course
A comprehensive look at the history of Zionism—political, social, and religious—and the schools of anti-Zionism that have opposed it.
Monthly Essay
Sixty years ago, the infamous Nazi official was abducted in Argentina and brought to Israel. What really happened, what did Hollywood make up, and why?
Observation
Leviticus asks the individual to constrain himself today so that mankind won't lose its way tomorrow.
Course
Leon Kass Teaches Founding God's Nation: Reading Exodus
Podcast • Episode 450
On February 28, 2026, Ali Khamenei was assassinated. He was killed in a joint American and Israeli airstrike, in a bunker so deep the elevator took five minutes to reach it, at a meeting with senior advisers whose location intelligence …
Podcast • Episode 452
There is an irony set at the cornerstone of Jewish memory. The very texts that proclaim the Jewish people’s liberation from Egypt—the Song of the Sea, the Haggadah that we recite at the Passover seder—borrow their most …
Monthly Essay
A young secular Viennese writer had an experience 125 years ago that would lead him to change Jewish history forever. He could never explain it. Can anyone else?
Course Lesson
Emanuel Leutze’s “Washington Crossing the Delaware” is one of the most recognizable images of the American Revolution, yet also one of its most contested for its historical liberties. In this lecture, Rabbi Soloveichik examines the painting’s famous inaccuracies …
Monthly Essay
Today’s Islamism promises authenticity but is postmodern in form, postcolonial in posture, and pretends to retrieve the sacred through the techniques of the profane.
Course
Explore Pirkei Avot, the classic Jewish text on ethics, through brief video lessons with master teachers. Discover the timeless building blocks of a Jewish life well-lived.
Course
Yoram Hazony Teaches The Meaning of Jewish Nationalism
Monthly Essay
The case of the literary master helps explain why people who devote themselves to compassion for all so often make an exception for Jews.
Monthly Essay
How generations of Arab thinkers and leaders tried to turn the humiliation of their losses to Israel into a springboard to launch their nations into an enchanted new age.
Podcast • Episode 128
The name of one figure from Isaiah can now be found in the British Museum. Supplemental Materials: Click here to read Isaiah 22-23. Click here to view the Shebna Inscription housed at the British Museum.
Podcast • Episode 111
Psalm 103 describes the reason for God’s forgiveness. Supplemental Materials: Click here to listen to a recitation of Psalm 103 in English. Click here to listen to a recitation of Psalm 103 in Hebrew. Click here to read Psalm …
Course Lesson
In his 1941 State of the Union address, President Franklin D. Roosevelt articulated a vision of human freedom consisting of four specific liberties: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. Norman Rockwell translated these …
Podcast • Episode 301
The last words of the Hebrew Bible can be seen as a hint to the age in which we live. Text: 2 Chronicles 36
Course
Micah Goodman Teaches Deuteronomy: The Last Speech of Moses
Podcast • Episode 113
The wonders of early Israelite history are described in this psalm, as well as why God brought these miracles about. Supplemental Materials: Click here to listen to a recitation of Psalm 105 in English. Click here to listen to a …
Response
What Khamenei's downfall won't change.
Course
Delve into the masterpieces of modern Jewish literature with one of the world’s foremost interpreters of Jewish fiction.
Observation
Fifty years on, no work by or about Jews has won American hearts so thoroughly. So what's my problem?
Course Lesson
Alonzo Chappel’s “The Last Hours of Abraham Lincoln” may be ahistorical, but it’s also a revealing meditation on leadership. In this lecture, Rabbi Soloveichik argues that the painting captures an essential quality of Lincoln’s greatness: his biblical …
Observation
A true-crime mystery in the Persian court.
Monthly Essay
One-hundred years of betrayal, beginning with directives from Stalin.
Course Lesson
Jews lived in Judea for thousands of years, but even after the exile, they were still set apart from other societies. That changed in the 19th century, when Jews were offered the political equality they had hitherto been denied. But …
Observation
The spy show seems so accurate I found myself wondering whether its creators are themselves former Mossad agents who spent time in the titular city.
Monthly Essay
In 1977, a Jewish director of the ACLU famously agreed to defend the rights of neo-Nazis in Illinois to demonstrate in public. Would the same thing happen today—and should it?
Response
Why some scholars want to see the exodus as just a great story.
Monthly Essay
Many are sure that one of Judaism's central events never happened. Evidence, some published here for the first time, suggests otherwise.
Podcast • Episode 112
Psalm 104 is an ode to the natural world and the way in which its intricacy proclaims the glory of God. Supplemental Materials: Click here to listen to a recitation of Psalm 104 in English. Click here to listen to …
