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Home , Bret Stephens, Eric Breindel, Itzik Manger

THE TIKVAH FUND 165 E. 56th Street , New York 10022

Jews and Power: Literature, Philosophy, Politics December 1, 2014 – December 12, 2014

Dean: Eric Cohen Instructors: Ruth Wisse, , and Ran Baratz Visiting Speakers: Bret Stephens, Michael Doran, and Hillel Fradkin

Updated: Nov 26, 2014 I. Description:

Between the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE and the founding of modern nearly two millennia later, the Jewish people survived without a national home. During those many centuries, Jewish language and literature, Jewish law and customs, together sustained Jewish communities dispersed throughout the known world. For the last many centuries—before the founding of modern Israel—the extraordinary achievements of the Jewish people and their prodigious contributions to Western civilization have all taken place without the one thing that most defines a nation: the political and military power to protect its citizens in a sovereign land.

As a result, Jewish thinkers and writers reconceived the meaning of their nation in manifestly moral and communal rather than political terms. Without the mechanisms of government or self-defense, Jewish communities fell prey to the dangers of powerlessness. Generations of exilic sought to live as “a light unto the nations,” seeking toleration and protection from their host rulers. But their political dependency left diaspora Jews vulnerable to being scapegoated—a tendency that has persisted despite the resumption of Jewish sovereignty in Israel.

With the return of sovereignty, what is the proper relation of Judaism and Jewish tradition to political and military power? Does the history of Jewish thought entail a distinctive approach to the responsibilities of leadership and statecraft? How does the literature, culture, and ritual life born in exile relate to the modern Jewish reality, with the Zionist State at the center and yet with significant populations of Jews still living as minority communities in sometimes friendly, sometimes tolerant, sometimes hostile states?

Led by professor Ruth Wisse, Israeli intellectual and Mida editor Ran Baratz, and former deputy national security adviser and Middle East expert Elliott Abrams, this course will explore the dilemmas of Jewish power. Drawing upon the Hebrew Bible, modern Jewish literature, biographies of Jewish statesmen, and various historical case studies, we will explore both the spirit of the Jewish mind and the realities of the modern Jewish political condition.

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THE TIKVAH FUND 165 E. 56th Street New York, New York 10022

II. Institute Calendar

Monday, December 1 Times Lead Instructor Topic Readings 8:45 Welcome Breakfast 9:45-  Psalm 137 12:15 Traditional Sources,  Ruth Wisse Book of Anomalous Politics  Excerpts from Itzik Manger, The Megillah Songs 12:15– Lunch and Participant Introductions 2:30 2:30-5:00 Ran Baratz and Eric The Book of Joshua  The Book of Joshua, chs. 1–11 Cohen

Tuesday, December 2 Times Lead Instructor Topic Readings 9:45- Modern Perceptions of the  Mendele Mocher Sforim, The Mare 12:15 Ruth Wisse Problem of Jews and Power: An Inside Account, session 1 (trans. Joachim Neugroschel) 2:30-5:00  Jabotinsky “On the Fireplace” Jabotinsky on War and Human “Trumpeldor’s Jahrzeit” Ran Baratz Nature “Wanton” “The Legion” “Homo Homini Lupus” [Eng. only] 6:00-8:00 Ruth Wisse in Conversation with Eric Cohen: In the Arena: The Life and Career of Ruth Wisse

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THE TIKVAH FUND 165 E. 56th Street New York, New York 10022

Wednesday, December 3 Times Lead Instructor Topic Readings 9:45-  I.L.Peretz, “Bontshe Shvayg (the Modern Perceptions of the 12:15 Silent)” (1894/ ) Ruth Wisse Problem of Jews and Power: An Inside Account, session 2  , “Gimpel the Fool” 2:00-4:30  Ben-Gurion “Our Defense” Regional Wars (1948, 1967, Ran Baratz “Three Fronts” 1973)  Yigal Alon, “A State With Its Back to the Sea”

5:15 – Bret Stephens, America, Israel, and the Coming Global Disorder 7:15

Thursday, December 4 Times Lead Instructor Topic Readings  Haim Nahman Bialik, “The City of Modern Perceptions of the 9:45– Slaughter” (1903/ Hebrew) Ruth Wisse Problem of Jews and Power: 12:15 An Inside Account, session 3  Lamed Shapiro, “The Cross” and/or “White Challah” (Yiddish) 2:30– The New Middle East  Peace Agreement with Egypt Ran Baratz 5:00  Peres: New Middle East

Friday, December 5 Times Lead Instructor Topic Readings 8:30- Modern Perceptions of the  10:30 Ruth Wisse Problem of Jews and Power: Haim Hazaz, “The Sermon” An Inside Account, session 4 (1943/Hebrew) 10:45-  12:45 Ran Baratz Decline of Israeli Power Baratz: The Return of the Ground Offensive [Heb. only]

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THE TIKVAH FUND 165 E. 56th Street New York, New York 10022

Monday, December 8 Times Lead Instructor Topic Readings 9:45- Modern Perceptions of the  12:15 Ruth Wisse Problem of Jews and Power: Isaac Babel, “Argamak” (1930)/ An Outside Account, session 1 Russian) 2:30-5:00  Seymour Martin Lipset, “A Unique People in an Exceptional Country,” in American Pluralism and the Jewish Community  “A Sketch of the History of Jews in the US,” AJC  Samuel Oppenheim, “The Early History of the Jews in New York, 1654–1664: Some New Matter on the Subject”  Samuel Rabinove, “How—And Why—American Jews Have Contended for Religious Freedom: The Requirements and Limits of Civility”  Frederick J. Zwierlein, “New Netherland Intolerance” Elliott Overview History of the  Moses Seixas’ Letter from Abrams American Jewish Congregation Yeshuat Israel  George Washington’s Letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport  “Anti-Semitism in the : Americans react to the Damascus Blood Libel (1840),” American Jewish Historical Society  “The Jews and Martin Van Buren,” National Jewish Outreach Program  Joakim Isaacs, “Candidate Grant and the Jew,” American Jewish Archives  Naomi W. Cohen, “Jacob H. Schiff: A Study in American Jewish Leadership,” Commentary (Feb 2000)  “Morocco Jews Grateful,” Boston Evening Transcript (June 1, 1906)

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THE TIKVAH FUND 165 E. 56th Street New York, New York 10022

 Max J. Kohler, Jewish Rights at International Congresses (1917)  Naomi W. Cohen, “The Abrogation of the Russo-American Treaty of 1832,” Jewish Social Studies 25 (Jan 1963)  Edmund Morris, Theodore Rex  Martin J. Raffel, “History of Israel Advocacy”

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THE TIKVAH FUND 165 E. 56th Street New York, New York 10022

Tuesday, December 9 Times Lead Instructor Topic Readings 9:45- Modern Perceptions of the  12:15 Ruth Wisse Problem of Jews and Power: Franz Kafka, “A Report to an An Outside Account, session 2 Academy” (1917/German) 2:30-5:00  Riegner Telegram, (August 10, 1942) The National Archives UK  David S. Wyman, The Abandonment of the Jews  “American Jewry and the Holocaust,” Shoah Resource Center, Yad Vashem  Yehuda Bauer, “The Holocaust, America, and American Jewry,” Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs 4 (2012) Elliott The Shoah Abrams  “American Jewish Congress, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum”  Richard Breitman and Allan Lichtman, FDR and the Jews (2013)  Allan Arkush, “Abba Hillel Silver, Man of the Zionist Hour,” Mosaic (2013)  Henry L. Feingold, “Who Shall Bear Guilt for the Holocaust: The Human Dilemma,” American Jewish History (1979) 6:00-8:00 Elliott Abrams in Conversation with Eric Cohen: In the Arena: The Life and Career of Elliott Abrams

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THE TIKVAH FUND 165 E. 56th Street New York, New York 10022

Wednesday, December 10 Times Lead Instructor Topic Readings 9:45-  Toward Jewish Political Self- Moses Hess, Rome and Jerusalem. 12:15 Ruth Wisse Determination, session 1 Selections (1862/German), preface, Letters 1–7, and 12 2:30-5:00  Letters from and to Eddie Jacobson  Richard C. Holbrooke, “President Truman’s Decision to Recognize Israel”  Steven L. Spiegel, The Other Arab- Israeli Conflict  Roger Stone, “Actions Over Words,” Washington Free Beacon American Foreign Policy and Elliott the State of Israel  “Memorandum of Conversation,” Abrams The White House (November 12, 1973)  Rabbi Norman Lamm, “Kissinger and the Jews,” The Jewish Center (Dec 1975)  Gil Troy, “Happy Birthday, Mr. Kissinger,” Tablet (May 23, 2013)  Adam Nagourney, “In Tapes, Nixon Rails Jews and Blacks,” (Dec 10, 2010)

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THE TIKVAH FUND 165 E. 56th Street New York, New York 10022

Thursday, December 11 Times Lead Instructor Topic Readings 9:45-  Theodor Herzl, Old New Land. 12:15 Toward Jewish Political Self- Selections (1902/German), esp. Ruth Wisse Determination, session 2 Book One, Book Two, Part I of Book Three and the final part of Book 5 2:30-5:00  Steven L. Spiegel, The Other Arab- Israeli Conflict  Yossi Klein Halevi, “Jacob Birnbaum and the Struggle for Soviet Jewry,” Azure 17 (2004)  George Perkovich, “Soviet Jewry Elliott The Struggle Over Soviet Jewry and American Foreign Policy,” Abrams World Policy Journal 5 (1988)  William Korey, “The Struggle over Jackson-Mills-Vanik,” The American Jewish Year Book 75 (1974-75)  William W. Orbach, “The British Soviet Jewry Movement,” World Zionist Organization (Fall 1978) 6:00-8:00 Michael Doran and Hillel Fradkin, Muslims and Power

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THE TIKVAH FUND 165 E. 56th Street New York, New York 10022

Friday, December 12 Times Lead Instructor Topic Readings 8:30- Toward Jewish Political Self- Ruth Wisse  10:30 Determination, session 3 Haim Sabato, Adjusting Sights 10:45-  Michael Massing, “The Storm over 12:45 the Israel Lobby,” The New York Review of Books (June 8, 2006)  David Verbeeten, “How Important Is the Israel Lobby?” Middle East Quarterly (Fall 2006)  Mitchell Bard, “Congress and the Middle East: The Pro-Israel and Pro-Arab Lobbies,” Jewish Virtual Library (updated July 2012)  Elliott Abrams, Tested by Zion The Israel Lobby, and the  Elliott Abrams, “Questioning Elliott American Jewish Community Hagel,” Online (Jan Abrams Today 12, 2013)  Rachel Weiner, “Biden: Jewish Leaders Helped Gay Marriage Succeed,” Post Politics (May 22, 2013)  Patrick Brennan, “Joe Biden Attributes Social Liberalism to Jewish Control of Hollywood and ‘Social Media,’” National Review Online (May 23, 2013)  Joel Stein, “Who Runs Hollywood? C’mon,” Los Angeles Times (Dec 19, 2008)

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THE TIKVAH FUND 165 E. 56th Street New York, New York 10022

III. Faculty Biographies

Dean Eric Cohen Eric Cohen has been the Executive Director of the Tikvah Fund since 2007. He was the founder and remains editor-at-large of the New Atlantis, serves as the publisher of the Jewish Review of Books and Mosaic, and currently serves on the board of directors of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, the Witherspoon Institute, and and on the Editorial Advisory Board of . Mr. Cohen has published in numerous academic and popular journals, magazines, and newspapers, including , , Weekly Standard, Commentary, , First Things, and numerous others. He is the author of In the Shadow of Progress: Being Human in the Age of Technology (2008) and co-editor of The Future is Now: America Confronts the New Genetics (2002). He was previously managing editor of and served as a senior consultant to the President’s Council on Bioethics.

Instructors

Ruth R. Wisse Ruth R. Wisse is Professor of and Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard University, and a former director of its Center for Jewish Studies. Her books on literary subjects include an edition of Jacob Glatstein’s two-volume fictional memoir, The Glatstein Chronicles (2010), The Modern Jewish Canon: A Journey through Literature and Culture (2003), and A Little Love in Big Manhattan (1988). She is also the author of two political studies, If I Am Not for Myself: The Liberal Betrayal of the Jews (1992) and Jews and Power (2007). Her latest book, No Joke: Mocking Jewish Humor, a volume in the Tikvah-sponsored Library of Jewish Ideas, was recently published by Princeton University Press.

Ran Baratz Ran Baratz is the founding editor of the Hebrew-language conservative news site Mida and the executive director of the Tikvah Fund’s Political Thought, Economics and Strategy program. Baratz teaches philosophy, history and Zionist thought at numerous Israeli institutions, including at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Cornerstones program. He is also a senior faculty member and advisor at Ein Prat Academy outside of Jerusalem.

Specializing in Greek Philosophy, Dr. Baratz earned his doctorate, summa cum laude, from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has published many op-eds, essays and studies in Israel’s leading newspapers and periodicals.

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THE TIKVAH FUND 165 E. 56th Street New York, New York 10022

Elliott Abrams Elliott Abrams, Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C., served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Adviser in the administration of George W. Bush. He also served as an Assistant Secretary of State in the Reagan administration.

A member of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom and of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, Mr. Abrams teaches U.S. foreign policy at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. He is the author of Undue Process: A Story of How Political Differences Are Turned into Crimes, Security and Sacrifice: Isolation, Intervention, and American Foreign Policy, and Faith or Fear: How Jews Can Survive in a Christian America, 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 Tested by Zion: The Bush Administration and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.

Visiting Speakers Bret Stephens Mr. Stephens is the deputy editorial page editor responsible for the international opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal. He also writes “Global View,” the paper’s weekly foreign-affairs column, and is a member of the Journal’s editorial board. He is a regular panelist on The Journal Editorial Report, a weekly political talk show broadcast on Channel. Mr. Stephens joined the Journal in 1998 as an op-ed editor and moved to the following year, where he wrote editorials and edited a column on the . He left Dow Jones in January 2002 to become editor-in- chief of , a position he assumed at age 28. At the Post, he was responsible for the paper’s news, editorial, international and electronic editions. He oversaw the paper’s most extensive redesign in its then 70-year history and also wrote a weekly column. Mr. Stephens returned to the Journal in late 2004. In January 2005, he was named a Young Global Leader by the . He has won numerous journalism awards, including a 2006 award from the South Asian Journalists Association for his coverage of the Kashmir earthquake, the 2008 Frank Knox Award for his coverage of military affairs, the 2008 Eric Breindel Prize for excellence in opinion journalism, the 2010 Bastiat Prize for his writings on economic subjects, and the for commentary. Mr. Stephens was born in New York and raised in City. He has an undergraduate degree, with honors, from the , and a Master’s from the School of Economics. He lives in with his wife Corinna, a music critic, and their three children.

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THE TIKVAH FUND 165 E. 56th Street New York, New York 10022

Michael Doran Michael Doran, an expert in U.S. policy toward the Middle East, radical Islam, and the Arab-Israeli conflict, is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. He has held academic appointments at Princeton and the University of Central Florida, and most recently served as visiting professor at the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, New York University. He has also held a number of senior U.S. government posts related to Middle East policy and strategic communication. Among his scholarly works are Pan-Arabism before Nasser (1999) and a forthcoming study of the Eisenhower administration and the Middle East.

Hillel Fradkin Dr. Hillel Fradkin is a Senior Fellow with Hudson Institute where he directs its Center on Islam, Democracy and the Future of the Muslim World. He is founder and co-editor (with Husain Haqqani, Eric Brown, and Hassan Mneimneh) of the Center’s Current Trends in Islamist Ideology, the leading journal on contemporary Islamism (sometimes known as militant or radical Islam). He is also general editor of Hudson’s monograph series on contemporary Islam and Islamism. Fradkin received his degree in Islamic Studies from the University of Chicago in 1978 for work done under the direction of the late Pakistani theologian Fazlur Rahman and was also a student of Dr. Muhsin Mahdi of Harvard University. His graduate studies included work on the history of Jewish thought. He received a B.A. in Government from Cornell University. Prior to joining Hudson in 2004 Fradkin was a fellow at several other research institutes. Fradkin was a member of the faculties of the University of Chicago (1986-1998) and Columbia University/Barnard College (1979-1986). He has also taught at Yale University and Georgetown University. He was vice-president of the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and director of its grantmaking program in public policy research (1986-1998). He served in the US Army from 1969- 1972 and was a member of the National Council of the National Endowment for the Humanities. He writes on both classical and contemporary Islam as well as Middle Eastern politics, American foreign and security policy and international relations and has lectured widely both in the US and abroad—including , Great Britain, Germany, Morocco, Turkey and Israel—before academic, public, and governmental audiences. In addition to work on Islamic history and thought he has also written on the history of the problematic relationship of religion and politics as well as the history of Jewish thought.

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THE TIKVAH FUND 165 E. 56th Street New York, New York 10022

IV. Our Mutual Commitment Our pledge to you is that the program will be excellent and that the teachers are, in every case, among the best people in the world teaching the subjects they are teaching. Your pledge to us is that you will invest yourselves in the texts and the seminars, and do the work to the fullest extent of your talents. You have put your everyday work on hold to join us, so we know you come to us with great interest and commitment. We will insist that you continue that commitment—a commitment to attending each and every session, a commitment to coming to class on time, a commitment to doing all the readings—throughout the duration of the Institute. If anyone fails to honor his or her commitment, he or she will be dismissed from the Institute.

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