Tomer Persico on the Image of God: How Genesis gave rise to modern secularism

“God created man in His image: in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” Thus reads verse 27 of the first chapter of Genesis, one of the most important lines ever written in history. The Hebrew phrase rendered as “in God’s image” is b’tselem Elohim, and that is the title of a new book that traces the extraordinary career of this concept, known in Latin as imago Dei, throughout the course of Western civilization. Written by Tomer Persico, a research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, the book is the biography of the idea that all human beings—not just kings or heroes—are created in the image and likeness of God. At the heart of the book is a deep irony: the religious idea of imago Dei contains within it the seeds of secularization; this religious innovation developed into a concept that would marginalize religion itself. The very emphasis on individual conscience and human equality that Judaism and Christianity cultivated eventually led to further questioning of law, and then authority, and then even the disciplines of religious life. That is, over the course of millennia, one of God’s pronouncements led some to question God’s providence and even God’s existence. Now, if you’re listening as an orthodox believer or theological traditionalist, you may be tempted to object: surely modern secularism represents a betrayal of the biblical depiction of the human condition, not an outgrowth of it, and there is much truth to that position. But Persico’s argument is directed primarily at the committed liberal democrat who believes deeply in individual rights, human dignity, and equality, but who may not realize where these convictions come from. To that person, Persico seems to be arguing: even you, especially you, are an inheritor of a biblical idea. Your deepest moral commitments didn’t spring from nowhere. They have a genealogy that begins in Genesis. On today’s podcast Mosaic’s editor Jonathan Silver sits down with Persico to discuss what all this implies.  

On September 17, 2025, Israel announced that the world’s first laser defense system was ready for deployment, and was being integrated into its multitiered missile-defense shield. Iron Beam may be the most significant advance in missile defense since Israel pioneered the concept of intercepting missiles with missiles back in the 1980s. That’s because Iron Beam promises to solve one of modern warfare’s most vexing problems: the economic asymmetry of defense. When a crude, unguided rocket costing a few thousand dollars must be stopped with an interceptor costing between $50,000 and $100,000, the math quickly becomes unsustainable. The scale of rocket, drone, and missile fire into Israel over the last two years, coupled with the yet-unlaunched arsenals that Iran and her proxies have in reserve, would, if each one needed to be defended by traditional interceptors, cripple Israel’s economy. But Iron Beam changes that calculus entirely. Rather than the $40,000–$50,000 interceptor, each laser interception costs roughly two dollars—the price of the electricity that powers it. The system has what military officials call an “endless magazine,” capable of firing continuously as long as it has power. It’s already battle-tested, shooting down over 40 drones from Lebanon during recent conflicts. But this breakthrough also raises profound questions. Israel’s intelligence failures on October 7, 2025 partly stemmed from an overreliance on technological solutions—the belief that smart fences and surveillance systems could replace human judgment and offensive action. As Israel celebrates this remarkable achievement of military innovation, how do we ensure Iron Beam enhances rather than replaces sound strategic thinking? To discuss these questions, Mosaic’s editor Jonathan Silver is joined by Yaakov Katz, former editor of the Jerusalem Post and author of the new book While Israel Slept. Together, they explore what Iron Beam means for Israel’s defense, for military cooperation between Israel and America, and the future of warfare.

What mattered most for survivors of the Holocaust, indeed, what made their survival possible, was not only that the Allies had better ideas about democracy and civilization, though of course Britain, America, and the other Western Allies did. It was that they actually won the war. They defeated the Germans on the field of battle—on sea, land, and air, in the hills and in the streets. It’s not enough for us to rest contentedly on the superiority of our ideas. We also have to fight. But at this moment, the fundamental political fact of the last 80 years—that it was an indispensable and untarnishable achievement for the Allies to have destroyed the Third Reich—is itself under revisionist assault. The Internet talk-show host Tucker Carlson last year promoted the podcaster Darryl Cooper, calling him “America's most honest historian,” and airing his claim that Winston Churchill was the “chief villain” of World War II who “escalated” what Hitler supposedly intended to be a limited conflict. As one of this episode’s guests reports in the Wall Street Journal, when the Holocaust-denying podcaster Jake Shields polled his social-media followers about who they thought was “the biggest villain of World War II,” 40.3 percent chose Churchill over Hitler (25.3 percent) or Stalin (25.9 percent). Darryl Cooper or Jake Shields are teaching a new generation of Americans a grotesquely distorted view of our own history. To understand why that is, what can be done about it, and what’s at stake for Jews and America, Mosaic’s editor Jonathan Silver sat down Rabbi Meir Soloveichik and Andrew Roberts. Roberts is a distinguish historian and the author of more than twenty books. His 2018 biography of Churchill, Walking with Destiny, was the rare work that deserved all of the glowing praise it received, and there is perhaps no person living who knows more about the 20th century’s greatest man than Roberts. On November 1, 2022, he was elevated to a peerage as Baron Roberts of Belgravia. Rabbi Soloveichik is the religious leader of Congregation Shearith Israel, the director of the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought and Yeshiva University, and vice-chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. This conversation took place at a private event held for members of the Tikvah Society. You can learn more about its activities and how to join here.

The relationship between the United States and Israel has long been the subject of intense scrutiny, very often distorted by polemic and conspiracy. One of the most influential articulations of these distortions came in 2007, when the political scientists John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt argued that American foreign policy had been hijacked by a powerful Israel lobby—an argument that, despite its weaknesses, has shaped how many Americans view relations between these two nations. My guest today, the historian and policy scholar Daniel Samet, has written a new book that aims to set the record straight. Drawing on archival research and much evidence, Samet demonstrates that U.S. policy toward Israel during the cold war was not the product of special pleading and manipulation, but of America’s own strategic interests. By examining presidencies from Harry Truman through George H.W. Bush, he shows how American leaders, whatever their personal sympathies, consistently acted to advance U.S. national priorities—and how Israel sometimes fit into that strategy, and sometimes did not. In this episode of the Tikvah Podcast, Samet joins the host and editor of Mosaic Jonathan Silver to discuss how Israel was perceived in Washington during America’s long struggle with the Soviet Union, what lessons that history holds for America’s rivalry with China today, and why misconceptions about the “Israel lobby” persist in our political discourse. Daniel Samet is a Jean Kirkpatrick Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he works on U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. His book, U.S. Defense Policy Toward Israel, was published earlier this year.

In the span of just twelve days, the strategic balance of the Middle East was fundamentally altered. Israel systematically dismantled Iran’s drones, missiles, and air defenses, while American strikes turned its most important nuclear facilities into dust. But for all of that, another aspect of the war may not yet have gotten enough attention, and that is the demonstration of what American energy dominance can make possible. What does it mean that oil did not rise over $100 per barrel, as some predicted it might, and how did American policymakers ensure that it didn’t? The answer to that question lies in part in the creation in February 2025 of the National Energy Dominance Council (NEDC). Our guest today is Richard Goldberg, a senior advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, who recently served as senior counselor to the NEDC. In conversation with Mosaic’s editor Jonathan Silver, Goldberg examines what he calls “a National Security Council for energy,” its role in crafting a whole-of-government approach to coordinating American energy policy, and what it tells us about President Trump’s vision for American power. We are currently living through a three-way strategic competition among the United States, China, and Iran for influence in the Middle East—and energy is the battleground. China is pouring billions into its Belt and Road infrastructure projects across the region while buying Iranian oil in defiance of sanctions. Iran is using energy revenues to fund proxy networks from Iraq to Yemen, threatening the very shipping lanes that global commerce depends on. The Trump administration’s answer is to turn American energy abundance into a strategic weapon. To this end, it has signed an energy- and AI-cooperation agreement with Israel—designed to combine Israeli innovation with American infrastructure to dominate the technologies of the future. The administration is also working to cut off Iran’s energy lifelines, ending waivers that allowed Iraq to buy Iranian oil and gas. It’s also pushing massive infrastructure projects like the India-Middle East-Europe Corridor that would run through Israel and bypass both Iranian threats and Chinese influence. Coordinating and advancing these policies is the work of the NEDC, and Goldberg was in the room during the twelve-day war and the U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, as well as for the signing of that unprecedented U.S.-Israel energy-cooperation agreement during Prime Minister Netanyahu’s July visit to Washington. Now that he no longer holds public office, he can talk about the experience.

This week, as students in North America are returning to campus and settling into the rhythms of the fall semester, some of them are going to open their copies of Homer’s epic poems of the Trojan War, the Iliad and Odyssey. They will read of the Trojan commander Hector’s poignant farewell to his wife Andromache, of the Greek warrior Achilles’ terrible rage, of Odysseus’ long journey home, and of his wife in Ithaca, Penelope, who has endured his absence for some twenty years. For many students, these will be powerful stories—windows into an ancient world of honor and virtue and hubris—but for all that, distant stories. When read from the air-conditioned dorm room or plush campus library, the dust and blood and bronze of the Trojan War are abstract. But what happens when these same texts are read by young men and women who do know the weight of putting on armor, who have themselves kissed loved ones goodbye before departing for battle? Who must walk away from their own infant children in order to defend the country? What happens when the students who stand before Homer’s text are not just dispassionately analyzing the soul of the warrior but are warriors themselves? Mosaic’s editor Jonathan Silver speaks in this episode with Ido Hevroni, a professor of literature at Shalem College in Jerusalem. For over a decade, Hevroni has guided Shalem students through Homer’s epics, watching them grapple with these eternal questions of personal pride and public duty, private love and public defense, glory and sacrifice. But now, after October 7, his students find themselves in active combat, and he finds that it is Homer who is helping to explain their own experience back to themselves. And it is their experience in the tanks and tunnels of Gaza that is teaching them to read Homer with new eyes. Hevroni recently wrote about teaching the Odyssey in the pages of Mosaic, and that essay was published in honor of Ido’s own teacher, Amy Apfel Kass, z”l, whose yortsayt on the fifth of Elul falls on the day that this conversation was originally broadcast. This discussion, too, is dedicated to her memory.  

In “A College Guide for the Perplexed,” our feature essay this month at Mosaic, our focus is on higher-education reform, the future and fate of the humanities, and helping parents of Jewish students figure out the best places to pursue university studies. This is not the first time that Mosaic has dealt with these and related issues. In May 2024, my Mosaic colleague Andrew Koss wrote a searching, provocative essay in which he looked specifically at the field of Jewish studies. In the spring of that year, when campuses had exploded in pro-Hamas, anti-Jewish activism, how did professors of Jewish studies react? How should they have reacted? Andrew probes the history and sociology of this academic discipline in his blockbuster essay “Jewish Studies against the Jews.” Later that month, we invited one of the eminent figures in the field of Jewish studies, the UCLA historian David N. Myers, to discuss the essay with Andrew. Professor Myers, as Mosaic’s editor Jonathan Silver notes in his introductory remarks to that conversation, is prominent not only in his scholarship but also in his public commentary—on questions of Israeli public policy and defense policy, and American public policy—that is very different from our general orientation at Mosaic. We were grateful that he joined us, despite those differences, and at the end of their interaction, some of the core tensions and disagreements between Andrew and David come to the surface. Their conversation was broadcast exclusively for Mosaic subscribers. Today we’re airing as a podcast this dialogue about whether and why Jewish studies as a field has turned against Jews on campus and beyond.

Between the year 63 before the Common Era, and the year 136 of the Common Era, the Jewish people waged three revolts against the mightiest empire in the world. In retrospect, we can see that these were not only local uprisings, but civilizational confrontations that would echo through history—struggles that pitted the Jewish people’s fierce determination to live as a free nation in their ancestral homeland against Rome’s inexorable drive to impose order across its vast dominions. What makes these revolts so fascinating is not merely their military drama, but the profound questions they raise about how different civilizations remember and interpret the same events. Recall the way that Rome understood its purpose and its mission, the grand aspirations that fueled Rome’s rise and Rome’s bloodstained greatness. As Vergil puts it in the Book VI of the Aeneid (in John Dryden’s poetic rendering): But, Rome, ’t is thine alone, with awful sway, To rule mankind, and make the world obey, Disposing peace and war by thy own majestic way; To tame the proud, the fetter’d slave to free: These are imperial arts, and worthy thee. When Roman historians recorded these conflicts in Judea, they saw rebellious subjects disrupting the peace that Rome had brought to the world. They saw the Jews as ingrates and troublemakers, who refused to appreciate the benefits of imperial rule. But when Jewish historians look back on this period they tend to see something altogether different: a tragic tale of national resistance—a struggle for freedom—to defend the honor of God, His people, and His land. These competing narratives reveal something essential about the nature of historical memory, and the separate moral universes of these rival civilizational traditions. To illuminate and explain this conflict, Mosaic’s editor Jonathan Silver speaks with Barry Strauss, formerly a longtime professor of classics at Cornell University, and now a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. His forthcoming book is Jews vs. Rome: Two Centuries of Rebellion Against the World’s Mightiest Empire, to which he brings deep expertise in Roman military history, and also a keen appreciation for the strategic dimensions of these conflicts.

On July 29, Gallup published a new poll showing American support for Israel’s military action in Gaza at a historic low. But a strong majority (71 percent) of Republicans say they approve of Israel’s conduct in Gaza, and that is up from 66 percent in September. Of Israel’s military action in Iran, 78 percent of Republicans approve. And 67 percent of Republicans have a favorable opinion of Israel’s prime minister. Even as the broader American public continues to cool on Israel, Republican support for Israel’s conduct of the war isn’t just holding steady—it’s actually strengthening. Earlier this week, the speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, visited Judea and Samaria, and had dinner with the prime minster in the biblical city of Shiloh. Here’s what makes Gallup’s findings so remarkable: if you spent any time on right-wing social media over the past months, you’d expect to see Republican support for Israel cratering. But peer beneath the surface of the online discourse, and a more complicated picture emerges. Republican voters not only remain steadfast but are actually becoming more supportive, even as influential voices—influential especially with the young—are striking out in a very different direction. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, once a reliable Trump ally, now calls the Gaza war a genocide. Tucker Carlson’s social-media engagement spikes whenever he advances an anti-Israel narrative, hosts an anti-Israel guest, or moots anti-Israel conspiracy theories.  Even some longtime pro-Israel voices from the right have made themselves unwitting tools of Hamas and Iranian propaganda. Our guest this week is the Hudson Institute senior fellow Michael Doran, and our subject is Israel and the American right. Of course, the disjuncture between Republican voters and the most prominent and loudest voices in Republican media is not a new story. When you train your eyes on that fact, the entire Trump era, from his 2016 campaign forward, has seen the emergence of a new media elite whose views simply do not convey the attitudes of their base as well as the president himself does. But of course the Trump era will end in a few years, and the contours and debate within the post-Trump right over attitudes toward Israel is being shaped right now.

This month at Mosaic, we hosted a very important set of conversations, spurred on by a very important essay: “The Enchantment of the Arab Mind,” by the Egyptian-American writer Hussein Aboubakr Mansour. Mansour traces the roots of jihadism to European, and especially German, philosophy, transmitted through 20th-century Arab radicalism. Earlier this week, we broadcast a conversation about the essay with Hussein and two eminent professors: Bernard Haykel from Princeton University and Ze’ev Maghen from Bar-Ilan University. The discussion was at times contentious in the best, and most illuminating, of ways. For anyone interested in intellectual history and the history of the Middle East, this is one of the most fascinating conversations we’ve ever convened. 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.