Jews & Conservatism The 2021 Online Conference on - MARCH 14-15, 2021 - The Tikvah Fund
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The 2021 Online Conference on
Jews & Conservatism
MARCH 14-15, 2021
From the Executive Director
The Jewish Leadership Conference is one of many projects
led by the Tikvah Fund. Our mission: to educate the rising
generation of young Jews, in America and Israel, about the
great challenges facing the Jewish people; to advance the most
serious conservative thinking about Jewish history and culture,
politics and economics, military strategy and world affairs;
and to strengthen Jewish leaders in the cultural, religious, and
policy arenas.
During the Jewish Leadership Conference on Sunday, March
14, and Monday, March 15, we invite you to meet and speak
with the leaders of some of our most important Tikvah projects
and partner organizations. Just click on the “Meet & Greet”
section of the conference website, and you can see a schedule
of live conversation opportunities.
This brochure gives you a brief overview of each organization.
Thanks being part of this growing community of Jewish,
Zionist, and conservative ideas.
Eric Cohen
Executive Director
The Tikvah Fund
1
Sunday, March 14
Rabbi Hershel Lutch,
10:30am - 11:00am Executive Director
www.tikvahonlineacademy.org
Tikvah Online Academy offers the highest-level learning on Jewish culture and civi-
lization, the history and heroes of Israel, the future of American democracy, the fight
against anti-Semitism, and the principles of a free economy and free society. For
many years, Tikvah has advanced its mission through a wide variety of residential
seminars and summer programs. Tikvah Online Academy brings this kind of learn-
ing—with small classes, master teachers, and spirited discussions—to an even larger
number of students through live, intensive, online seminars. We offer programs for
middle school, high school, and Israel gap-year students.
Rabbi Yehoshua Pfeffer,
11:00am - 11:30am Director & Editor-in-Chief
www.iyun.org.il/en/
Tzarich Iyun and the Tikvah Fund’s Haredi Division seek to promote the development
of Haredi communities that are faithful to their basic values, including both a com-
mitment to, and deeply conservative instincts about, matters of family and morality,
while also emphasizing the need for taking responsibility on personal, communal,
and civic levels. As the Haredi proportion of Israel’s population continues to grow,
it is clear that Haredi participation in general Israeli society is key to everybody’s
future, but achieving this while retaining the core positive values of Haredi society
demands much thought, a range of institutions, and real leadership. Our division
is active in all of these areas, operating a Haredi-intellectual journal, running lead-
ership programs that teach the language of civic responsibility, and partnering in
building new institutions. We have already made significant achievements in each of
these areas, but there remains far more work to be done.
2
Sunday, March 14
Aylana Meisel,Chair
11:30am - 12:00pm https://lawforum.org.il/
On matters relating to the judiciary, the foundations of democratic regimes, and the proper
relationship between the individual and the state, Israeli public discourse is often one-sid-
ed, shallow, and monolithic. An orthodoxy promoting judicial activism and supremacy is ad-
vanced in academia, the media, and Israel’s intellectual elite. But many concerned citizens,
and specifically many jurists, disagree with this worldview and its underlying assumptions.
Inspired by the Federalist Society, the Israel Law and Liberty Forum offers lawyers, judges,
students, and others a platform for advancing an alternative approach to Israeli law and
policy. The Forum advances a conservative legal worldview based on four core principles:
the separation of powers, judicial restraint, individual liberty, and limited government. Ad-
visory board members include former Israeli Minister of Justice Daniel Friedman, Nobel
Prize winner Professor Israel Aumann, and Professors Richard Epstein, Randy Barnett, Philip
Hamburger, Peter Berkowitz, and Steven Calabresi.
Amiad Cohen, CEO,
12:00pm - 12:30pm Tikvah Israel & Publisher
hashiloach.org.il | shiboletpress.com
Continuing a tradition of fruitful intellectual exchange between the West and the Jewish
people, Tikvah has proudly partnered with Sella Meir Press to create the Shibboleth Library
in Israel. Our new book press translates the very best of contemporary English-language
conservative thought into Hebrew, and will soon publish original Hebrew-language conser-
vative work. In its first two years, Shibboleth has published translations of Friedrich Hayek,
Roger Scruton, Jordan Peterson, Jerry Mueller, and others, including many bestselling
volumes. Shibboleth allows Israelis to systematically engage with a conservative system of
thought and values otherwise absent from Israeli public discourse.
Founded to enrich Israeli public policy discourse, the Hashiloach journal offers a new plat-
form for excellent long-form conservative writing. Rigorous but accessible, Hashiloach fos-
ters a unique community of readers and writers through its publications, events, and writing
workshops. We publish original work on public affairs through a conservative lens, amplify
other conservative voices, and translate classic conservative articles from English. Our work
is regularly referenced in Israeli academic, cultural, governmental, and legal discourse.
3
Sunday, March 14
Sacha Roytman,
Executive Director &
1:30pm - 2:00pm Tamara Berens,
Krauthammer Fellow
https://combatantisemitism.org/
The Combat Anti-Semitism Movement (CAM) is a non-partisan, global grassroots
movement of individuals and organizations, across all religions and faiths, united
to combat anti-Semitism. Our unique platform creates partnerships throughout the
world, strategically implementing new and creative solutions to combat the world’s
oldest hatred. We leverage the collective power of our broad-based coalition to
unite individuals of all backgrounds in this fight. CAM fights anti-Semitism in whatev-
er form it occurs and across the ideological spectrum, including efforts to deny the
Jewish people their right to self-determination in Israel, their ancestral homeland.
Jason Bedrick,
2:00pm - 2:30pm Director of Policy
https://www.edchoice.org/
EdChoice is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to advancing a K–12
education system where all families, regardless of race, origin, or family income
are free to choose a learning environment—public or private, near or far, religious
or secular—that works best for their children. Founded 25 years ago by Nobel
Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman and his wife Rose, we work to educate
and train the public and policymakers about educational choice policies—such as
school vouchers, tax-credit scholarships, and K-12 education savings accounts—in-
cluding how they work and why they are needed.`
4
Sunday, March 14
Dr. Ronen Shoval,
2:30pm - 3:00pm Executive Director
https://www.argaman.institute/
The Argaman Institute was founded to serve as a home and intellectual incubator
for study, research, and writing on core issues facing Israeli society today. We aim to
cultivate a new generation of Zionist and conservative intellectuals, and offer par-
ticipants exposure to texts, teachers, and a discourse not found anywhere in Israeli
academia.
Argaman uniquely enables participants to delve into the great works of conserva-
tive and liberal thought—pillars of the modern world—while providing generous
grants allowing them focus on their academics. Programs currently include a survey
course on foundational conservative texts for college students; an intensive seminar
and research track on conservatism and culture for humanities students; and an ad-
vanced level course in political economy for future academics and public servants
seeking to learn and apply the principles of free-market thinking. Admission to these
opportunities is competitive.
`
Abe Socher, Editor
3:00pm - 3:30pm
www.jewishreviewofbooks.com
The Jewish Review of Books was created in 2010 with a single goal in mind: to pub-
lish insightful and innovative articles about the most important and thought-pro-
voking books and ideas. In our pages, leading writers and critics discuss Jewish
thought, literature, culture, and politics as well as history, poetry, and the arts, with
wit and erudition.
6
Sunday, March 14
Rabbi Meir Soloveichik,
3:30pm - 4:00pm leading Jewish thinker
and educator
Rabbi Meir Soloveichik is one of the most thoughtful, wide-ranging, and influen-
tial Jewish thinkers in the world today. His essays and lectures, video courses and
seminars, podcasts and conversations, cover an incredible range of subjects—from
Jewish theology and philosophy, to the meaning of American Jewry and the Hebra-
ic spirit of the nation, to the history and meaning of Zionism. This spring, we will be
launching a major new website for Rabbi Soloveichik’s educational initiatives, filled
with online courses, live events, essays, books, and more.
Alan Rubenstein,
4:00pm - 4:30pm Executive Director
https://tikvahcollege.org/
For too many Jewish students on American college campuses, opportunities to engage
with Judaism vacillate between the mediocre and the toxic. Tikvah provides the antidote
to this through programs that put the triumph of Jewish civilization and the heroism of the
Jewish state at the forefront.
Our Tikvah-Beren Collegiate Forum gives students the chance to join peers from campus-
es around the country in seminars and speaker events that highlight Jewish excellence in
the modern age. We also model for them a balance of Jewish pride and American patrio-
tism by looking in a fair-minded way at the accomplishments of American statesmen and
leaders and the close ties between America and Israel as two countries rooted in the He-
brew Bible and aspiring to be a light to the nations.
For the most ambitious and talented students, we offer a Tikvah-Beren Summer Fellowship
in residence at Tikvah to dive deeply into Jewish thought and literature, political thought
and strategy, and a mentored research project with senior figures from the Tikvah network.
7
Monday, March 15
Gabe Scheinmann,
9:30am - 10:00am Executive Director
alexanderhamiltonsociety.org
The Alexander Hamilton Society (AHS) is a non-partisan, not-for-profit, national
organization that seeks to identify, educate, and launch young men and women
into foreign policy and national security careers imbued with the Hamiltonian per-
spective of strong and principled American leadership in global affairs. We operate
first and foremost on college campuses across the country, where our student-led
chapters host some of the nation’s most eminent scholars and practitioners of U.S.
foreign policy for debates with some of their own faculty. Our over 50 chapters host
nearly 200 events a year on campuses and our nearly 1,000 alumni are serving
across our national security and foreign policy space.
10:00am - 10:30am Rabbi Mitch Rocklin, Chair
The Jewish Coalition for Religious Liberty is a non-denominational organization of
Jewish communal and lay leaders, seeking to protect the ability of all Americans
to freely practice their faith. JCRL also aims to foster cooperation between Jewish
and other faith communities in an American public square in which all supporters of
freedom are free to flourish. In only three years, JCRL’s founders have submitted 22
legal briefs in state and federal cases up to and including Supreme Court cases. We
have recruited a volunteer network of accomplished attorneys and written many op-
eds in Jewish and general media outlets in defense of religious liberty. We have also
worked to spur public statements and action on religious liberty affairs by Jewish
communal leadership.
8
Monday, March 15
Yuval Levin, Director,
Social, Cultural, and
10:30am - 11:00am Constitutional Studies
www.aei.org
The division of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enter-
prise Institute is devoted to helping the right recapture the initiative in the battle for
the future. In an era of uncertainty and flux, our scholars are focused on the defense
and application of fundamental American ideals. We are working to restore Ameri-
ca’s constitutional order; to energetically protect the space in which family, commu-
nity, religion, and civil society can enable our country to prosper; and to help a rising
generation appreciate and build on its inheritance. We work upstream of public pol-
icy, defending the institutions required to sustain our free society—institutions which
now find themselves under constant attack from the left. Through books, essays,
articles, and papers our scholars are advancing the case for America. And through
direct engagement with policymakers, journalists, students, and the wider public we
are taking our case to the public square. Our work is focused on three areas in par-
ticular:
Ȉ American constitutional governance: Helping a new generation of judges
restore the constitutional order; reining in the administrative state; reforming
Congress to help re-establish its place as the first branch; and recovering an
ideal of civic republicanism and engaged citizenship
Ȉ Family, religion, and civil society: Advancing the case for substantive fed-
eralism and subsidiarity; defending religious liberty; strengthening the pre-
conditions for stronger families and communities
Ȉ The future of the American right: Convening the various factions of Ameri-
can conservatism to find ways to overcome differences and apply enduring
ideals to new challenges
9
Monday, March 15
Jonathan Silver, Editor &
11:00am - 11:30am Tikvah Podcast Host
mosaicmagazine.com
Mosaic is an online magazine of Jewish ideas, religion, politics, and culture. It offers
long-form, defining essays on questions of pressing significance for Jews, Judaism,
and the Jewish state, and it hosts the popular Tikvah Podcast. Mosaic also publishes
Editors’ Picks, a daily selection of the most important Jewish items from around the
web. Mosaic contributors and podcast guests include Natan Sharansky, Rabbi Meir
Soloveichik, Ron Dermer, Ruth Wisse, Martin Kramer, Michael Doran, Yoram Hazony,
and Amos Yadlin.
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