Rabbi J.J. Schacter on the Jewish Meaning of Memory: What does it mean to remember the destruction of the Temples?

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, in the year 586 BCE, Nebuchadnezzar’s forces destroyed the First Temple in Jerusalem. It was also on that day, in the year 70 CE, that Roman forces destroyed the Second Temple in Jerusalem. These events the Jewish people, together, as a nation, remember at this time of year. But how can a person remember an event that he or she never experienced? That is the organizing question that the rabbi and historian Jacob J. Schacter asks in his eight-part video course, “The Jewish Meaning of Memory.” That course, like all of Tikvah’s video courses, is available free of charge at courses.tikvah.org. This week, to elevate our study during the Three Weeks,  we are broadcasting its first episode.

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 nowhere is this truer than in the case of Israel and its history: Zionism in the modern university classroom is rarely examined as a movement of national liberation but instead as a caricature of colonialism, racism, repression, and occupation. And outside of the classroom, we’ve seen the most prestigious campuses in the United States transform into nodes of anti-Israel activism and Jew hatred. These are immense and long-standing problems. But instead of just diagnosing their sources and discussing their perils, today we’re going to talk to someone who’s actually done something about it. Robert Satloff saw this crisis clearly. Having published back in 2001 the eminent historian Martin Kramer’s short volume on the corruption of Middle East Studies, Ivory Towers on Sand, Satloff has spent decades watching the field drift toward anti-Israel political advocacy. As the executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, he decided to stop complaining and found his own professional master’s program. Working with Pepperdine University, the Washington Institute has established a completely new graduate program designed to train policy professionals with rigorous scholarship and historical accuracy, without anti-Israel bias. The program offers full scholarships, accepts no foreign funding, is fully accredited, and will convene its inaugural cohort in Washington, DC this fall.

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 how we understand our responsibilities to one another and to the institutions that shape our common life.  To address those questions, this week’s podcast is going to do something a little different. Rather than host a conversation, we bring you a speech by one of the great teachers of American civics: Yuval Levin, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the editor of National Affairs. Speaking at the 2024 Jewish Leadership Conference, Levin offered a meditation on what we can learn from the biblical figure of Nehemiah—drawing on the story the rebuilding of Jerusalem’s walls to understand how we must approach the renewal of American culture today. His central insight is striking: just as Nehemiah’s workers rebuilt Jerusalem with “a trowel in one hand and a sword in the other,” we too must simultaneously rebuild and defend our institutions. This is a speech that bridges ancient biblical wisdom to the challenges of American society, showing how the Hebrew Bible speaks directly to our moment of cultural dissolution and the opportunity for renewal. If you’re inspired by this kind of discussion—the intersection of Jewish ideas and public life—you might want to consider attending this year’s Jewish Leadership Conference, featuring Herzl Prize laureates Ben Shapiro, Bari Weiss, and Dan Senor. You can find information about the 2025 conference at www.jewishleadershipconference.org.

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 immediately—and some of the most incisive and careful analysis appeared outside of the legacy media. Some of the best news coverage in English could be found at the Free Press, the Daily Wire, and the Call Me Back podcast.   Rather than bring on the guests who’ve already offered up their analysis in those venues, we thought it would be valuable to have a series of conversations on dimensions of this war—not only Operation Midnight Hammer, but the last two weeks beginning with the Israeli airstrikes on Iran—that take up some of the deeper, less immediate concerns. War is violent and bloody. But war is also a teacher, and it reveals things about the nations who wage it.   “Living Through History: Learning from the Twelve-Day War” is a series of conversations from the Tikvah Podcast at Mosaic and featuring its host, Jonathan Silver. These include a discussion with Rabbi Meir Soloveichik on what the war reveals about providence and Jewish history; with Hussein Aboubakr Mansour about what the war reveals about the clash of civilizations; with the Israeli ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter, about what the war reveals about the U.S.- Israel relationship at this moment in Zionist history; and with Victor Davis Hanson about what the war reveals about the American interest. Today you can listen to the first, with Rabbi Soloveichik.  

On June 24, members of New York City’s Democratic party will select their nominee for the mayoral election that is scheduled to take place in November of this year. As of last year, 56 percent of registered voters in New York were Democrats, but even that number doesn’t fully express the extent of the Democratic party’s hold over the city’s affairs. Democrats hold a supermajority on the city council and control the three major citywide offices—mayor, comptroller, and public advocate—and all three of New York City’s congressional representatives are Democrats. New York is a Democratic city, and it is widely believed that the winner of the Democratic primary will be heavily favored in the fall vote. Even though the official election isn’t until November, the most important element in that election will be determined next week. Because New York remains the most important Jewish city in the United States, next week’s primary election will have outsized consequences for more Jews than any other municipal election. To discuss the candidates and to explore the Jewish questions that are going to be put before the next mayor, Jonathan Silver is joined by Jay Lefkowitz, a senior partner at Kirkland and Ellis, an adjunct professor at Columbia Law School, and a member of Tikvah’s board of trustees. Lefkowitz also served the George W. Bush administration as the United States envoy on human rights in North Korea and the deputy assistant to the president for domestic policy.The conversation touches on anti-Israel and anti-Jewish violence, domestic terror, and education and funding in haredi schools—all of which are election issues in way or another—and on what matters most to Jewish voters. The conversation touches on anti-Israel and anti-Jewish violence, domestic terror, and education and funding in haredi schools—all of which are election issues in way or another—and on what matters most to Jewish voters.

On April 22, 2025, Islamist terrorists struck Indian civilians in Kashmir. Twenty-six people were killed, most of them Hindu tourists. This attack would trigger what analysts now call the “88-Hour War”—a brief but intense conflict between India and Pakistan that ended only after American diplomatic intervention. This four-day war revealed a shift in the strategic landscape that only decades ago would have been unthinkable. When Indian forces engaged Pakistani positions, they deployed Israeli-made drones. When diplomatic support mattered, Israel stood unambiguously with India. Meanwhile, Pakistan relied heavily on Chinese weapons and Turkish diplomatic backing. The conflicts of the Middle East were being played out on the Indian subcontinent.   On this week’s podcast, Jonathan Silver is joined by Sadanand Dhume, a senior fellow of the American Enterprise Institute and the author of a June 4 article in the Wall Street Journal titled “Mideast Power Plays in India and Pakistan.” In it, Dhume explains that India—once among Israel’s harshest critics and a reflexive supporter of the Palestinian cause—has become Israel’s largest arms customer, accounting for 34 percent of Israeli weapons exports. That story about arms exports then opens up onto a larger story about how two democracies, each seeing themselves as ancient civilizations facing modern terrorist threats, have found common cause. Silver and Dhume discuss the transformation of Israel-India relations from cold-war hostility to strategic partnership, by focusing on the arms trade between them.

On April 13, 2025, an arsonist set fire to the residence of the governor of Pennsylvania. When apprehended, he told law-enforcement officers that he did so using Molotov cocktails. The attack took place just hours after the governor, an American Jew, and his Jewish family, had concluded their Passover seder. The next month, a far-left activist murdered two members of the Israeli embassy staff in the name of Palestine, having gone to a Jewish venue hosting a Jewish event in order to hunt down and kill Jewish people. Not long after, on May 28, a Michigan man was apprehended outside of a Jewish preschool, after threatening Jewish parents and children. It was later discovered that he had attempted to acquire firearms and had planned to kill members of the school. Then there was the most recent news. On June 1, an Egyptian national came to a solidarity walk for Israeli hostages in Boulder, Colorado. There, he threw Molotov cocktails and used a homemade flamethrower in order to burn the attendees. While hurling the explosives, he was recorded yelling “Free Palestine,” and other like phrases. A new season of violence has descended upon the Jews of America. Or, perhaps, one ought to say that a new season of violence has descended upon America with the Jews as its central of target, revealing for all to see the dangers of domestic terrorism. The historian and analyst of anti-Semitism Jeffrey Herf, professor emeritus at the University of Maryland, joins Jonathan Silver to discuss this spike in domestic terrorism. It is his contention that the phenomenon has an antecedent in the 1960s radical movements that, then as now, transformed leftist ideas into violent action. The slogan “globalize the intifada,” has been a hallmark of campus and leftist protest since October 7, but it has slipped the bounds of speech and resulted in violence, with deadly results. Drawing on the work of the writer Paul Berman, Herf goes on to argue that if history is any guide, violence against Jews is likely to increase. He laid this out in an article he published in the Free Press just hours after the Boulder attack.

It’s not uncommon, to put the matter lightly, to find Jewish Americans well represented in the legal field. But the conventional storybook narrative of how Jews rise to occupy positions of promise and prestige in the law tends to emphasize the gradual softening or quieting of religious observance in favor of a broader, more secular American identity.   I remember back in 2010 when Elena Kagan had been nominated by President Obama to serve on the Supreme Court. In response to a question from Senator Lindsay Graham about a domestic terrorist event that took place on December 25, 2009, Elena Kagan—then dean of Harvard Law and since 2010 a Supreme Court justice—explained that, on that day, “like all Jews, I was probably at a Chinese restaurant.” It was funny and charming and played perfectly to the room and the cameras looking on. But Elena Kagan’s remark also illustrates, to me at least, precisely the sort of culturally Jewish secular sensibility that you wouldn’t be surprised to find in elite positions like the ones she’s held. There are, of course, religiously observant Jewish lawyers, some of them extremely accomplished and some of them having contributed greatly to the American constitutional order.    Matthew Solomson is not only a lawyer but a federal judge who represents a different model and different sense of identity, one in which deep Orthodox commitment and distinguished public service not only coexist but reinforce one another. Judge Solomson was elevated to the federal bench in 2020, and last month the president designated him as the chief judge of the United States Court of Federal Claims.   Rather than abandoning his Jewish observance and religious devotion in the name of secular citizenship, Judge Solomson is staking out a different path, and his example suggests that America is strengthened when its citizens bring their deepest commitments—including religious commitments—to bear on public service. In conversation with Jonathan Silver, he addresses the questions his career raises about the very nature of American democracy, the meaning of Jewish life in America, and the possibilities for religious citizens to serve the United States in an increasingly secular age.

In 2019, Netflix released a six-episode miniseries starring the English comedian and actor Sacha Baron Cohen. Cohen played an Israeli spy, Eli Cohen. The latter Cohen was a Jewish immigrant from Egypt who, once in Israel, was recruited and trained by the Mossad. He then assumed the identity of Kamel Amin Thaabet, a wealthy Arab businessman who, having eventually moved to Damascus, became a backer and confidant of key officials in the Baath party. From his home in Syria, Cohen as Thaabet dispatched vast quantities of military and political intelligence to the Israelis throughout the early 1960s. Viewers of the Netflix show, The Spy, see all of this dramatized, as they also see Cohen’s eventual capture, torture, and hanging. The Netflix series, and the story it brings to a new generation of viewers, is true.   Eli Cohen is celebrated as one of Israel’s great intelligence agents, one of its great mistaravim, or those who assume the identity of Arabs to carry out their missions. There are streets and institutions and many children and even, in the Golan, a town in Israel named after Eli Cohen. For 60 years the Israeli government has tried to persuade, bribe, cajole, and if necessary steal the Syrian government’s Eli Cohen file. During the rule of Hafez and Bashar al-Assad, they could not get them. With the fall of the Assad regime, and with a new regime in Damascus looking to curry favor with the United States and the West, earlier this week the Syrians handed over some 2,500 documents from Syria’s Eli Cohen file.   This week, Yossi Melman—a Haaretz reporter, journalist, and author of some eight English-language books on Israeli intelligence—joins Mosaic’s editor Jonathan Silver to talk about Eli Cohen, what Israel has reclaimed, and why this story remains so important some six decades on.

Born in 1928 in Manchester, Paul Johnson was a British Catholic who while at the helm of the New Statesman liked to boast that he had met every British prime minister from Churchill to Blair and every American president from Eisenhower to George W. Bush—the latter of whom awarded Paul Johnson with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2006. After publishing a fascinating, spanning history of Christianity, Paul Johnson grew ever more curious about Judaism, Christianity’s elder brother in faith. That fascination led, in 1987, to the publication of his A History of the Jews, which until now is perhaps the best paced, best written single-volume history of the Jewish idea in English. It was sometimes quipped that it was given as a gift to half the bar mitzvahs in America. Paul Johnson died at the age of ninety-four in January 2023. Shortly after Johnson’s death, the Jewish historian J.J. Kimche published an analysisA History of the Jews. Kimche provokes some very fascinating questions, including why this lifelong Catholic took such a sympathetic view and lively interest—theological, historical, social, cultural—in the Jews. What does such a non-Jew see in Jewish history, and what can we, as Jews, learn from his external perspective on our own past? Kimche joins Mosaic’s editor Jonathan Silver to discuss these questions. Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.