Jews & Conservatism

The 2021 Online Conference on Jews & Conservatism

MARCH 14-15, 2021 From the Executive Director

The Jewish Leadership Conference is one of many projects led by the Tikvah Fund. Our mission: to educate the rising generation of young Jews, in America and Israel, about the great challenges facing the Jewish people; to advance the most serious conservative thinking about Jewish history and culture, politics and economics, military strategy and world affairs; and to strengthen Jewish leaders in the cultural, religious, and policy arenas.

During the Jewish Leadership Conference on Sunday, March 14, and Monday, March 15, we invite you to meet and speak with the leaders of some of our most important Tikvah projects and partner organizations. Just click on the “Meet & Greet” section of the conference website, and you can see a schedule of live conversation opportunities.

This brochure gives you a brief overview of each organization.

Thanks being part of this growing community of Jewish, Zionist, and conservative ideas.

Eric Cohen Executive Director The Tikvah Fund

1 Sunday, March 14

Rabbi Hershel Lutch, 10:30am - 11:00am Executive Director www.tikvahonlineacademy.org

Tikvah Online Academy offers the highest-level learning on Jewish culture and civilization, the history and heroes of Israel, the future of American democracy, the fight against anti-Semitism, and the principles of a free economy and free society. For many years, Tikvah has advanced its mission through a wide variety of residential seminars and summer programs. Tikvah Online Academy brings this kind of learning—with small classes, master teachers, and spirited discussions—to an even larger number of students through live, intensive, online seminars. We offer programs for middle school, high school, and Israel gap-year students.

Rabbi Yehoshua Pfeffer, 11:00am - 11:30am Director & Editor-in-Chief www.iyun.org.il/en/

Tzarich Iyun and the Tikvah Fund’s Haredi Division seek to promote the development of Haredi communities that are faithful to their basic values, including both a com- mitment to, and deeply conservative instincts about, matters of family and morality, while also emphasizing the need for taking responsibility on personal, communal, and civic levels. As the Haredi proportion of Israel’s population continues to grow, it is clear that Haredi participation in general Israeli society is key to everybody’s future, but achieving this while retaining the core positive values of Haredi society demands much thought, a range of institutions, and real leadership. Our division is active in all of these areas, operating a Haredi-intellectual journal, running leadership programs that teach the language of civic responsibility, and partnering in building new institutions. We have already made significant achievements in each of these areas, but there remains far more work to be done. 2 Sunday, March 14

Aylana Meisel,Chair 11:30am - 12:00pm https://lawforum.org.il/

On matters relating to the judiciary, the foundations of democratic regimes, and the proper relationship between the individual and the state, Israeli public discourse is often one-sid- ed, shallow, and monolithic. An orthodoxy promoting judicial activism and supremacy is advanced in academia, the media, and Israel’s intellectual elite. But many concerned citizens, and specifically many jurists, disagree with this worldview and its underlying assumptions.

Inspired by the Federalist Society, the Israel Law and Liberty Forum offers lawyers, judges, students, and others a platform for advancing an alternative approach to Israeli law and policy. The Forum advances a conservative legal worldview based on four core principles: the separation of powers, judicial restraint, individual liberty, and limited government. Ad- visory board members include former Israeli Minister of Justice Daniel Friedman, Nobel Prize winner Professor Israel Aumann, and Professors Richard Epstein, Randy Barnett, Philip Hamburger, Peter Berkowitz, and Steven Calabresi.

Amiad Cohen, CEO, 12:00pm - 12:30pm Tikvah Israel & Publisher hashiloach.org.il | shiboletpress.com Continuing a tradition of fruitful intellectual exchange between the West and the Jewish people, Tikvah has proudly partnered with Sella Meir Press to create the Shibboleth Library in Israel. Our new book press translates the very best of contemporary English-language conservative thought into Hebrew, and will soon publish original Hebrew-language conservative work. In its first two years, Shibboleth has published translations of Friedrich Hayek, Roger Scruton, Jordan Peterson, Jerry Mueller, and others, including many bestselling volumes. Shibboleth allows Israelis to systematically engage with a conservative system of thought and values otherwise absent from Israeli public discourse.

Founded to enrich Israeli public policy discourse, the Hashiloach journal offers a new platform for excellent long-form conservative writing. Rigorous but accessible, Hashiloach fos- ters a unique community of readers and writers through its publications, events, and writing workshops. We publish original work on public affairs through a conservative lens, amplify other conservative voices, and translate classic conservative articles from English. Our work is regularly referenced in Israeli academic, cultural, governmental, and legal discourse. 3 Sunday, March 14

Sacha Roytman, Executive Director & 1:30pm - 2:00pm Tamara Berens, Krauthammer Fellow https://combatantisemitism.org/

The Combat Anti-Semitism Movement (CAM) is a non-partisan, global grassroots movement of individuals and organizations, across all religions and faiths, united to combat anti-Semitism. Our unique platform creates partnerships throughout the world, strategically implementing new and creative solutions to combat the world’s oldest hatred. We leverage the collective power of our broad-based coalition to unite individuals of all backgrounds in this fight. CAM fights anti-Semitism in whatev- er form it occurs and across the ideological spectrum, including efforts to deny the Jewish people their right to self-determination in Israel, their ancestral homeland.

Jason Bedrick, 2:00pm - 2:30pm Director of Policy https://www.edchoice.org/

EdChoice is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to advancing a K–12 education system where all families, regardless of race, origin, or family income are free to choose a learning environment—public or private, near or far, religious or secular—that works best for their children. Founded 25 years ago by Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman and his wife Rose, we work to educate and train the public and policymakers about educational choice policies—such as school vouchers, tax-credit scholarships, and K-12 education savings accounts—including how they work and why they are needed.`

4 Sunday, March 14

Dr. Ronen Shoval, 2:30pm - 3:00pm Executive Director https://www.argaman.institute/ The Argaman Institute was founded to serve as a home and intellectual incubator for study, research, and writing on core issues facing Israeli society today. We aim to cultivate a new generation of Zionist and conservative intellectuals, and offer participants exposure to texts, teachers, and a discourse not found anywhere in Israeli academia.

Argaman uniquely enables participants to delve into the great works of conservative and liberal thought—pillars of the modern world—while providing generous grants allowing them focus on their academics. Programs currently include a survey course on foundational conservative texts for college students; an intensive seminar and research track on conservatism and culture for humanities students; and an advanced level course in political economy for future academics and public servants seeking to learn and apply the principles of free-market thinking. Admission to these opportunities is competitive. `

3:00pm - 3:30pm Abe Socher, Editor www.jewishreviewofbooks.com

The Jewish Review of Books was created in 2010 with a single goal in mind: to publish insightful and innovative articles about the most important and thought-pro- voking books and ideas. In our pages, leading writers and critics discuss Jewish thought, literature, culture, and politics as well as history, poetry, and the arts, with wit and erudition.

6 Sunday, March 14

Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, 3:30pm - 4:00pm leading Jewish thinker and educator

Rabbi Meir Soloveichik is one of the most thoughtful, wide-ranging, and influen- tial Jewish thinkers in the world today. His essays and lectures, video courses and seminars, podcasts and conversations, cover an incredible range of subjects—from Jewish theology and philosophy, to the meaning of American Jewry and the Hebra- ic spirit of the nation, to the history and meaning of Zionism. This spring, we will be launching a major new website for Rabbi Soloveichik’s educational initiatives, filled with online courses, live events, essays, books, and more.

Alan Rubenstein, 4:00pm - 4:30pm Executive Director https://tikvahcollege.org/

For too many Jewish students on American college campuses, opportunities to engage with Judaism vacillate between the mediocre and the toxic. Tikvah provides the antidote to this through programs that put the triumph of Jewish civilization and the heroism of the Jewish state at the forefront.

Our Tikvah-Beren Collegiate Forum gives students the chance to join peers from campuses around the country in seminars and speaker events that highlight Jewish excellence in the modern age. We also model for them a balance of Jewish pride and American patrio- tism by looking in a fair-minded way at the accomplishments of American statesmen and leaders and the close ties between America and Israel as two countries rooted in the He- brew Bible and aspiring to be a light to the nations.

For the most ambitious and talented students, we offer a Tikvah-Beren Summer Fellowship in residence at Tikvah to dive deeply into Jewish thought and literature, political thought and strategy, and a mentored research project with senior figures from the Tikvah network. 7 Monday, March 15

Gabe Scheinmann, 9:30am - 10:00am Executive Director alexanderhamiltonsociety.org

The Alexander Hamilton Society (AHS) is a non-partisan, not-for-profit, national organization that seeks to identify, educate, and launch young men and women into foreign policy and national security careers imbued with the Hamiltonian per- spective of strong and principled American leadership in global affairs. We operate first and foremost on college campuses across the country, where our student-led chapters host some of the nation’s most eminent scholars and practitioners of U.S. foreign policy for debates with some of their own faculty. Our over 50 chapters host nearly 200 events a year on campuses and our nearly 1,000 alumni are serving across our national security and foreign policy space.

10:00am - 10:30am Rabbi Mitch Rocklin, Chair

The Jewish Coalition for Religious Liberty is a non-denominational organization of Jewish communal and lay leaders, seeking to protect the ability of all Americans to freely practice their faith. JCRL also aims to foster cooperation between Jewish and other faith communities in an American public square in which all supporters of freedom are free to flourish. In only three years, JCRL’s founders have submitted 22 legal briefs in state and federal cases up to and including Supreme Court cases. We have recruited a volunteer network of accomplished attorneys and written many op- eds in Jewish and general media outlets in defense of religious liberty. We have also worked to spur public statements and action on religious liberty affairs by Jewish communal leadership.

8 Monday, March 15

Yuval Levin, Director, Social, Cultural, and 10:30am - 11:00am Constitutional Studies www.aei.org

The division of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enter- prise Institute is devoted to helping the right recapture the initiative in the battle for the future. In an era of uncertainty and flux, our scholars are focused on the defense and application of fundamental American ideals. We are working to restore Ameri- ca’s constitutional order; to energetically protect the space in which family, community, religion, and civil society can enable our country to prosper; and to help a rising generation appreciate and build on its inheritance. We work upstream of public policy, defending the institutions required to sustain our free society—institutions which now find themselves under constant attack from the left. Through books, essays, articles, and papers our scholars are advancing the case for America. And through direct engagement with policymakers, journalists, students, and the wider public we are taking our case to the public square. Our work is focused on three areas in par- ticular: Ȉ American constitutional governance: Helping a new generation of judges restore the constitutional order; reining in the administrative state; reforming Congress to help re-establish its place as the first branch; and recovering an ideal of civic republicanism and engaged citizenship Ȉ Family, religion, and civil society: Advancing the case for substantive fed- eralism and subsidiarity; defending religious liberty; strengthening the pre- conditions for stronger families and communities Ȉ The future of the American right: Convening the various factions of Ameri- can conservatism to find ways to overcome differences and apply enduring ideals to new challenges

9 Monday, March 15

Jonathan Silver, Editor & 11:00am - 11:30am Tikvah Podcast Host mosaicmagazine.com

Mosaic is an online magazine of Jewish ideas, religion, politics, and culture. It offers long-form, defining essays on questions of pressing significance for Jews, Judaism, and the Jewish state, and it hosts the popular Tikvah Podcast. Mosaic also publishes Editors’ Picks, a daily selection of the most important Jewish items from around the web. Mosaic contributors and podcast guests include Natan Sharansky, Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, Ron Dermer, Ruth Wisse, Martin Kramer, Michael Doran, Yoram Hazony, and Amos Yadlin.