Best The Leon Foundation of Excellence Podcasts (2025)

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Jay Lefkowitz on New York City’s Democratic Primary 28:59

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1d ago28:59

28:59

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…

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Sadanand Dhume on Israeli Arms and the India-Pakistan Conflict: How two democracies found common cause 44:51

9d ago44:51

44:51

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 i…

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Jeffrey Herf on the Transformation of Radical Speech into Violence 45:33

16d ago45:33

45:33

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 murd…

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Judge Matthew Solomson on Orthodox Judaism and American Public Service: A conversation with one of the highest-ranking observant Jews in the federal judiciary 59:57

23d ago59:57

59:57

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 identit…

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Yossi Melman on Israel’s Most Famous Spy: What we learn from the Eli Cohen files 33:03

30d ago33:03

33:03

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, hav…

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J.J. Kimche on Paul Johnson’s Legacy of Philo-Semitism 42:47

1M ago42:47

42:47

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 pu…

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Ari Heistein on the American War on the Houthis, and the Israeli One 44:21

1M ago44:21

44:21

On May 4, 2025, a ballistic missile traveling up to sixteen times faster than the speed of sound struck ground close to the terminal at Ben-Gurion airport, halting flight traffic and leaving a crater at the point of impact. It was the first time that the airport buildings themselves have been so close to a successful missile attack. This particular…

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Michael Doran on Donald Trump's Middle East Policy 39:17

2M ago39:17

39:17

President Trump and his team came into the White House determined to reverse the course of American foreign policy. Most every president does. It’s what President Obama wished to do vis-à-vis President Bush, President Trump vis-à-vis President Obama, and President Biden vis-à-vis President Trump. Where Biden was for, Trump would be against; where B…

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Benedict Kiely on Pope Francis and the State of Jewish-Catholic Relations 47:57

2M ago47:57

47:57

The Catholic cardinal Jorge Mario Bergolio ascended to the papacy in 2013. In honor of Saint Francis of Assisi, he chose as his papal name Francis. For a dozen years he was the head of the Catholic Church and a major figure in the moral and cultural life of the West. After a prolonged illness, Pope Francis died on April 21 of this year. There are o…

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Leon Kass on How Exodus Created the Jewish National Narrative 1:07:47

2M ago1:07:47

1:07:47

This week the Jewish people is not just celebrating, but reenacting the Exodus from Egypt that our ancestors undertook many generations ago. The complex, ritualized retelling of this story can be found in the Haggadah, the text that structures the Passover’s ceremonial meal, or seder. But of course the defining telling of this story is to be found …

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Dara Horn on Her New Graphic Novel 44:43

2M ago44:43

44:43

Later this week Jewish families all over the world will sit down at the seder table and, guided by the text of the Haggadah, recapitulate in a highly ornate and ritualized form the Israelite redemption from oppression in Egypt. The text of the Haggadah itself is fascinating, not only because of its sources and composition and what it emphasizes and…

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Tevi Troy on How Republican Administrations Argue about Israel 40:05

3M ago40:05

40:05

Is the Trump administration pro-Israel? There’s a great deal of evidence to believe it is. It’s given Israel the armaments and rhetorical support it needs to fight on until total victory in Gaza. It has targeted the Houthis in Yemen. It has a record of taking action—economic, diplomatic, and military—against Iran and so has a degree of credibility …

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Micah Goodman on What He’s Learned about Israel in the Past Year-and-a-Half 41:15

3M ago41:15

41:15

In the months leading up to the October 7 attacks, Israel was bitterly divided along the tribal lines that had been hardened by the government’s effort to reform the country’s judiciary. There were major protests, acts of civil disobedience, and boycotts, coupled with enormous frustration, distrust, anger, and resentment among Israelis. Then, as yo…

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Mark Gottlieb and Anna Moreland on Judaism, Christianity, and Forgiveness 41:59

3M ago41:59

41:59

To expect women and men of flesh and blood to live lives of ethical perfection is to expect too much. Lapses in judgment, ignorance, vice, and sin are inescapable parts of the human condition. Each year, on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, we recite the Al Het prayer, enumerating over 40 sins that we have committed. Sinning is natural, or, …

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Ronna Burger on Reading Esther as a Philosopher (Rebroadcast) 1:00:03

3M ago1:00:03

1:00:03

Today, as Jews celebrate the holiday of Purim, they’ll also study the book of Esther, named for the young queen whose Jewish identity was unknown to her husband—Persia's king—and his court. The book of Esther tells the story of how she and her cousin Mordechai outwitted the king's second-in-command, the vizier Haman, who sought to destroy the Persi…

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Reihan Salam on Rebuilding Urban Conservatism 42:27

4M ago42:27

42:27

New York City in the 1970s and 1980s was, to put it lightly, not a very safe or nice place to live. Drugs, crime, and public-sector mismanagement made it dangerous and unpleasant, and even the very wealthy were not entirely immune from the disorder. In the 1990s and early 2000s, the city rebounded in an incredible way, and a great deal of that civi…

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Hussein Aboubakr Mansour on Why the End of Palestinian Nationalism Can Bring Hope to Palestinians 42:31

4M ago42:31

42:31

Last February, the Egyptian-American intellectual Hussein Aboubakr Mansour wrote an article in which he considered the possibility of a new idea of Palestinian nationalism. The IDF was destroying Hamas. The remnant of the Palestinian Authority’s legitimacy and trust among the frustrated Palestinians—already weak—was decaying at an accelerated rate.…

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David Bashevkin on Orthodox Jews and the American Religious Revival 1:00:13

4M ago1:00:13

1:00:13

A few weeks ago, this podcast featured a conversation between Rabbi Meir Soloveichik and the New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, moderated by Mosaic’s editor Jonathan Silver. The subject was Douthat’s new book, Believe, a work of monotheistic apologetics, which argues that everyone should be religious. Among the many topics discussed was the rem…

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Diana Mara Henry and Gabriel Scheinmann on One Jew Who Fought Back against the Nazis 1:07:13

4M ago1:07:13

1:07:13

On February 8, 2025, three hostages ascended from the dungeons of Hamas and returned to freedom in Israel: Eli Sharabi, age fifty-two; Or Levy, age thirty-four; and Ohad Ben Ami, age fifty-six. They had been held captive for sixteen months. When the three men were first seen, and their images instantly projected onto social media and news sites and…

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Cynthia Ozick on "The Conversion of the Jews" (Rebroadcast) 34:15

4M ago34:15

34:15

In July of the year 1263, the Dominican friar Pablo Christiani met to debate Rabbi Moses ben Nahman, sometimes known as Nahmanides, to discuss whether Jesus was the messiah, and thus whether Christianity or Judaism had a greater claim to truth. They conducted this debate in the court of King James of Aragon, who famously guaranteed the rabbi’s free…

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Amit Segal on Israel’s 60-Year-Old Prisoner Dilemma 35:25

5M ago35:25

35:25

On January 15, Israel and Hamas agreed to a temporary cease-fire. About 30 Israeli hostages would be released, each one in exchange for some 30 to 50 convicted terrorists in Israeli prisons. Of course, this is a controversial arrangement that sets a terrible precedent to incentivize future hostage-taking. At the same time, imagine if your mother or…

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Ross Douthat and Meir Soloveichik on the State of American Belief 1:13:07

5M ago1:13:07

1:13:07

Ross Douthat occupies one of the most fascinating roles in the religious life of the American public. He is a serious Christian, a devout Catholic, a learned student of American religious history, and a perspicacious observer of the spiritual drives that are an inescapable aspect of the human condition. But what makes his role so fascinating is tha…

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Michael Doran on Jimmy Carter and the Middle East 41:19

5M ago41:19

41:19

Jimmy Carter was born in Plains, Georgia on October 1, 1924. After graduating from the U.S. Naval Academy and serving in the Navy, he returned to his home state, where in 1971 he was elected governor. He became president of the United States in 1977 and remained in office until 1981. His legacy on matters relating to the U.S.-Israel relationship is…

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Brad Wilcox on Americans without Families 41:03

5M ago41:03

41:03

The holidays are always times for Americans to come together with their families. Anyone can summon archetypal images of a dining table with three generations—grandparents, parents, and children—together with siblings and the extended family they bring with them—cousins, aunts, and uncles. But family formation has been growing less common in Americ…

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Our Favorite Conversations of 2024 1:03:49

6M ago1:03:49

1:03:49

In 2024, we convened 42 new conversations, taking up some of the great questions of modern Jewish life, questions of war and peace, of Israel’s security and Israel on the global stage, and of Jewish survival and flourishing in the diaspora. This year Mosaic’s editor and the podcast’s host, Jonathan Silver, spoke with military officials, activists, …

The Leon Foundation Of Excellence Podcasts

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The Tikvah Podcast

Tikvah

1
Generation Courage

The Leon Foundation of Excellence

1
Jay Lefkowitz on New York City’s Democratic Primary 28:59

1
Sadanand Dhume on Israeli Arms and the India-Pakistan Conflict: How two democracies found common cause 44:51

1
Jeffrey Herf on the Transformation of Radical Speech into Violence 45:33

1
Judge Matthew Solomson on Orthodox Judaism and American Public Service: A conversation with one of the highest-ranking observant Jews in the federal judiciary 59:57

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Yossi Melman on Israel’s Most Famous Spy: What we learn from the Eli Cohen files 33:03

1
J.J. Kimche on Paul Johnson’s Legacy of Philo-Semitism 42:47

1
Ari Heistein on the American War on the Houthis, and the Israeli One 44:21

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Michael Doran on Donald Trump's Middle East Policy 39:17

1
Benedict Kiely on Pope Francis and the State of Jewish-Catholic Relations 47:57

1
Leon Kass on How Exodus Created the Jewish National Narrative 1:07:47

1
Dara Horn on Her New Graphic Novel 44:43

1
Tevi Troy on How Republican Administrations Argue about Israel 40:05

1
Micah Goodman on What He’s Learned about Israel in the Past Year-and-a-Half 41:15

1
Mark Gottlieb and Anna Moreland on Judaism, Christianity, and Forgiveness 41:59

1
Ronna Burger on Reading Esther as a Philosopher (Rebroadcast) 1:00:03

1
Reihan Salam on Rebuilding Urban Conservatism 42:27

1
Hussein Aboubakr Mansour on Why the End of Palestinian Nationalism Can Bring Hope to Palestinians 42:31

1
David Bashevkin on Orthodox Jews and the American Religious Revival 1:00:13

1
Diana Mara Henry and Gabriel Scheinmann on One Jew Who Fought Back against the Nazis 1:07:13

1
Cynthia Ozick on "The Conversion of the Jews" (Rebroadcast) 34:15

1
Amit Segal on Israel’s 60-Year-Old Prisoner Dilemma 35:25

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Ross Douthat and Meir Soloveichik on the State of American Belief 1:13:07

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Michael Doran on Jimmy Carter and the Middle East 41:19

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Brad Wilcox on Americans without Families 41:03

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Our Favorite Conversations of 2024 1:03:49