Applications for Summer 2027 are now open!
In 2027, Tikvah Summer Programs will be hosted in four locations: Princeton, Vanderbilt, Washington, D.C., and Jerusalem.
What Makes a Tikvah Summer Unique:
- Seminar-Style Learning: All courses are based on discussions of enduring questions and abiding debates in Jewish thought, Western civilization, or public affairs, often engaged through the study of primary texts. Through their questions, observations, and interventions around the seminar table, students take the lead, and our teachers facilitate the conversation.
- Committed Faculty: Tikvah prides itself in bringing together world-class faculty who care deeply about the formation of advanced high school students. Our teachers participate in the program outside of the seminar room. Faculty share meals with students, discuss books and ideas, and offer guidance on continued intellectual development in both high school and college.
- Enriching Jewish Community: Tikvah engages students from a variety of backgrounds in serious study of the Jewish tradition. Regardless of prior experience, each student is challenged to examine Jewish perspectives on the ethical, intellectual, and political life.
Tikvah Students:
- Are Intellectually Curious: They have questions about culture, politics, history, Zionism, philosophy, and religion and want to have these questions taken seriously by their peers and teachers.
- Value Reading: They believe that wisdom can be found in the books, essays, and speeches of the past, and that wrestling with difficult texts and ideas builds character and moral seriousness.
- Are Growth-Oriented: They want to be challenged to become stronger Jews and better friends, citizens, and students.
- Seek Community: Our network of Tikvah students endures long after high school, and many of our alumni remain connected through college and beyond.
Who Should Apply?
Tikvah Scholars are current 10th, 11th, and 12th grade students who value:
- Intellectual curiosity and academic excellence; a genuine hunger for ideas and a track record of serious achievement
- Moral seriousness; a sense that ideas matter, that Jewish civilization matters, and that personal responsibilities to the past and the future matter
- Civic spirit; a desire to lead, to contribute and to shape the Jewish people and the societies in which we live
- Courage; a willingness to think independently, to ask hard questions and to stand for unpopular truths
The Tikvah Scholars Difference
At Tikvah, our animating conviction is that Jewish excellence and Western civilization are inseparable and that the defense of Israel requires knowledge of Zionist history and Middle Eastern strategy. The flourishing of American democracy depends on citizens who understand its philosophical foundations and the transmission of Jewish tradition requires engagement with its deepest texts and most challenging questions.
