The Jewish Family

In this essay, the second of a two-part series on Abraham, Leon Kass reads the stories of God’s promise to Abraham, the birth and banishment of Ishmael, Sodom and Gomorrah, Isaac’s circumcision, and the sacrifice of Isaac in a…

As Catholic theologian, social critic, and First Things editor R.R. Reno sat in the synagogue pews one Saturday morning, watching his daughter assume her place in the people of Israel as a bat mitzvah, he was provoked to…

Few Jewish doctrines sound as strange to modern ears as that of “matrilineal descent,” the notion that membership in the Jewish people is passed on through the mother even as other specific qualities of Jewishness (like whether one is a…

Through his leadership of the Tzohar Rabbinical Organization, Rabbi David Stav has been at the forefront of debates over the relationship between religion and state in Israel, pushing for reforms in the State's handling of marriage, conversion, and…

The Tikvah Fund once again had the privilege of learning from prize-winning novelist Dara Horn at our recent week-long seminar Jewish Thought, Jewish Literature, Jewish Politics. After leading university students in a stimulating study of love, sexuality, and family guided by readings from…

As part of its ongoing series on “Jewish Ideals & Current Dilemmas in Contemporary Zionism,” the Tikvah Overseas Seminars hosted two of Israel’s leading rabbinic activists to discuss recent legislation regarding marriage and conversion in Israel.

Dara Horn has won acclaim for her imaginative novels and for the richness of their Jewish foundations. As part of the 2014 Summer Fellowship, Horn sat down to discuss Yiddish literature, American Judaism, her writing process, reactions to…

In Sholem Aleichem’s short story “Today’s Children,” Tevye’s eldest daughter Tsaytl yearns to marry a lowly tailor over a wealthy butcher. For her father Tevye this poses a real dilemma. In this clip the novelist Dara Horn discusses…

Yuval Levin of National Affairs and Rabbi Meir Soloveichik explore in this clip the tensions between the social aim of liberty and the need for child-rearing. Bringing in Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and John Locke, Levin and Soloveichik…

Dara Horn tells the tale of Sholem Aleichem to the participants in Tikvah’s advanced institute “The Future of the Family.” Brought up in a shtetl—and Horn clarifies just what a shtetl is—Aleichem came by chance into fortune and…

Do individuals get married or are families joined? That’s a tension evident in many Yiddish stories, including Sholom Aleichem’s Tevye stories. As Dara Horn explains, Tevye speaks as if he is going to be married because he abides by…

The Tikvah Fund’s executive director Eric Cohen explored the deeper meaning and practical consequences of eight significant transformation in Western family life: the invention of contraceptive technologies, the advance of women in the workplace, the expansion of the…