Queen Esther Goes to Hobby Lobby Trumpworld Via Tikvahland: Meir Soloveichik and Stuart Halpern Do the YU Straus Center Neo-Con Dance
David Shasha
Queen Esther Goes to Hobby Lobby Trumpworld Via Tikvahland: Meir Soloveichik and Stuart Halpern Do the YU Straus Center Neo-Con Dance
As you will see in this extensive post, the infrastructure of the YU Tikvah White Jewish Supremacy led by Sephardi-hater Rabbi Meir Soloveichik is quite vast.
Complete texts of the articles and web resources cited follow this note.
I recently received an e-mail announcement from his YU Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought on a new book publication Esther in America edited by his loyal henchman Stuart Halpern:
https://korenpub.com/products/esther-in-america
I included Halpern’s very Soloveichik-esque Lehrhaus article on Religious Freedom, Cotton Mather, and the “Puritan Purim” in SHU 945.
https://thelehrhaus.com/scholarship/puritan-purim/
But I must have missed his Tikvah Tablet article “American Purim,” which was also published in February 2020:
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/holidays/articles/american-purim
The Lehrhaus article is Halpern’s “learned” contribution to the new book, while the Tablet article further promotes the grandiose Neo-Con vision that has become emblematic of the Soloveichik approach to the New Convivencia in its connection to the former president and his miscreant Christian ways.
It is an approach embodied by SCOTUS Trumpscum Coney Barrett, as he has clearly telegraphed to us:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/fomWxZTWdq0/m/PIk-NtmmAwAJ
Halpern’s Tablet article focuses on a Soloveichik favorite, the eccentric Mordechai Manuel Noah, called a Jacksonian Jew by our dear friend Jonathan Sarna, hence the Purim connection, as it merrily runs roughshod over Sephardim and American Jewish History in the usual Sarna manner:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/Ll4A67gD2WA/m/ViFq6CCeBAAJ
Indeed, it fiercely attacks the idea of Diaspora Judaism in a determinedly HASBARAH key, as it also finds a very clever way to address Arab anti-Jewish sentiment, confidently adhering to the New Convivencia Islamophobic prejudice.
The Neo-Con attack on GOLUS, in Zionist thought called Shelilat ha-Galut, is interesting given that the Book of Esther is a model example of how to survive the Diaspora without a king or prophet, as I have written in my Purim Notes:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/h2iHV2k37XE/m/bNOzneNeAQAJ
Halpern has recently written yet another Purim article, this time for Newsweek, which manages to namecheck Sojourner Truth and Lincoln in the duplicitous manner that has become endemic to Soloveichik’s sham “Religious Liberty” approach:
https://www.newsweek.com/reading-esther-todays-america-opinion-1561938
For those who might have missed it, here is Soloveichik’s classic First Things lecture on “Lincoln’s Almost Chosen People” with my comments:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/_IBSAmJd4l4
The conclusion to the Newsweek article bizarrely links Hillary Clinton and Mike Pence with a plea for religious extremism that is the true Tikvah way. It will leave you scratching your head.
In order to provide some further context to the Halpern articles, I point to his new book’s Table of Contents which features many Right Wing Neo-Con Jewish names that will already be familiar to SHU readers:
Halpern works under Soloveichik at the YU Straus Center, which brings together the many strands of this Right Wing Jewish institutional network in one convenient Washington Heights address.
The Center’s personnel posting is filled exclusively with Neo-Con Ashkenazi Jews, including clerical staff.
The biographical listings also include the latest articles written by its very busy personnel; reflecting the substantial media presence that this network affords beyond the usual parochially Tikvah outlets:
https://www.yu.edu/straus/our-team
The proverbial New Convivencia icing on the cake is the February Esther in America book event at the Hobby Lobby Bible Museum, which once again shows us how Soloveichik and his New Jews for Jesus cabal is tied to the radical wing of the Trump Christianity:
https://www.museumofthebible.org/events/esther-in-america
It is a reactionary faction that can also be seen in Tikvah’s Whites-only Jewish Leadership Conference:
https://www.jewishleadershipconference.org/
The JLC’s annual conference is a veritable who’s who of the movement:
Ruth Wisse
Elliott Abrams
Yoram Hazony
Gen. Jack Keane
Rabbi Meir Soloveichik
Victor Davis Hanson
Matthew Continetti
Caroline Glick
Dan Senor
Leon Kass
Mem Bernstein
Yuval Levin
Eric Cohen
Jonathan Silver
Roger Hertog
All proving to us that there is life for the Far Right radical Neo-Cons after the loss of their fearless leader Trump.
These institutional resources speak for themselves, as they are suffused with the usual racism and Ashkenazi Jewish ethnocentrism that is characteristic of the debased White Jewish Supremacy.
Sephardim who continue to support YU and the larger Tikvah Fund project should be ashamed of themselves when they see how they have been completely cut out of the institutional process; which continues to expand exponentially to include young Neo-Con Jews, all Ashkenazim, who sign on to the program and quickly move up the ladder of White Jewish Supremacy.
It is not just that Sephardim are excluded from the institutional construct, but that the Sephardic heritage is completely absent from the intellectual and religious content presented in such initiatives, as we so clearly see in the new YU Esther book.
It is a brazen form of White Jewish Intersectionality which has effectively instituted a Cancel Culture when it comes to the Sephardic tradition; reminding us that all the blather about Free Speech from Tikvah stalwarts like Bari Weiss and Alana Newhouse is just more hot air coming from the racist Ashkenazim.
We have consistently seen how Whore of Trump Newhouse has gone on with the Lysol charade to the bitter end:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/GAVQSVcYeYU
I was quite struck to see that her ignorant and incoherent “Everything is Broken” article was re-posted by Trump Alt-Right Fascist Yoram Hazony:
https://nationalconservatism.org/essays/
As we see from the list of essays posted on his Nat Con Talk site, our dear friend Hazony is also a big fan of Newhouse loyalist scribe Michael Lind.
Lind’s latest Tikvah Tablet opus, “America’s New Corporate Tyranny,” is a typically unhinged diatribe against iconic Trump foes Amazon, Google, Twitter, and Facebook:
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/americas-new-corporate-tyranny
We will note that the article was written after the January 6th Insurrection, showing us just how committed Newhouse is to the New Fascist Movement in the post-Trump era.
Fetid birds of a feather do stick together!
Indeed, the ever-whining Newhouse ally Bari Weiss just did an interview with the equally deplorable Megyn Kelly where she once again supported Trumpism and attacked The New York Times:
And Trumpworld was quite happy to support her right back!
https://www.oann.com/former-new-york-times-writer-bari-wess-slams-outlet/
“Jews don’t count” should actually be “Sephardic Jews don’t count,” but what is one word between friends!
The Soloveichik Tikvah YU cabal thus presents us with a militant form of reactionary Right Wing ideas in a Trumpist American context; creating a monolingual Ashkenazi-centric discourse that does not permit any thought deviations.
David Shasha
Puritan Purim
By: Stuart Halpern
Cotton Mather had much to say on how women should behave. In fact, he had much to say on many topics, writing 469 books over his 65 years. As historian Mark Noll has quipped, Mather “never had a thought he felt was unworthy of publication.” Mather’s fittingly titled Ornaments for the Daughters of Zion, or, The Character and Happiness of a Vertuous Woman: in a Discourse Which Directs the Female-Sex how to Express, The Fear of God, in Every Age and State of their Life; and Obtain both Temporal and Eternal Blessedness, was published in Boston in 1692. In it, the popular Puritan minister, accomplished scientist, prolific author, owner of the largest private library in the colonies, grandson of Massachusetts Bay Colony spiritual leaders Richard Mather and John Cotton, and son of Harvard President Increase Mather, laid out his vision for womanhood.[1] In his usage of biblical archetypes to describe the proper behavior of the ideal female (the very phrase “Daughters of Zion” is used in the Bible to connote Jerusalem and its inhabitants)[2] including maids,[3] wives,[4] mothers,[5] and widows,[6] Mather demonstrated a particular affinity for a rather surprising biblical character. While in his later Magnalia Christi Americana (1702) Mather used the precedent of Nehemiah, the Persian Jew who rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem in the time of the Second Temple, to describe Massachusetts Bay Colony governor John Winthrop’s building the walls of New England (“our American Jerusalem”), here Mather found his prototype in the form of another Persian Jew, the beautiful and wise Queen Esther.[7] Despite his characteristic verbal gymnastics, however, Mather’s attempt to fully appreciate Esther’s heroism falls short.
In Ornaments for the Daughters of Zion, a conduct and virtue manual, Mather, New England’s most “intellectually and spiritually dynamic pastor” and the greatest North American scholar of his era,[8] brings up Esther multiple times. The first is in praise of the women of his era, whose “beautiful countenance” does not preclude their “good understanding.” Such individuals follow in the ancient footsteps of biblical women including Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Esther, who possessed the same “benefits” of good looks and good insight and who simultaneously “feared God.” Mather then invokes Esther (juxtaposed to a reference to the Sotah ritual) as paradigmatic for women, who should demonstrate resolve and integrity in the face of suspicious husbands, refusing to upset the patriarchal order:[9]
She will even Abstain from all appearance of Evil; and as ’tis abominable unto her to Entertain the least groundless and causeless Jealousie of her Husband… She affects to be an Esther, that is, A hidden One. But if a foolish and forward Husband will wrong her, with unjust suspicions of her Honesty, she will thence make a Devout Reflexion upon her Disloyalty to God; but at the same time very patiently vindicate her Innocency to man; and the more patiently because the Water of Jealousie procures greater Blessings to those that have it Unrighteously and Abusively imposed upon them.
In a similar vein, in the same section, Mather again invokes Esther by taking the prototype one step further. Not only, as described above, does an “Esther” patiently and respectfully (as she is, after all, “a hidden one”) disavow suspecting husbands of any suspicions they might have regarding her behavior, Esther also models for women their ability to inspire proper behavior in, and even provide salvation for, their husbands.
Opportunities are those that a Woman has to bring over her Husband unto Real and Serious Godliness, and a Good Woman, will use those Opportunities. An Esther, a Witty Esther, what can’t she do with the most haughty Husband in the World?… If her Husband be a Carnal, Prayerless, Graceless man, she will not leave off her Ingenious Perswasions, till it may be said of him, Behold, he Prayes!… If her Husband be under the Power of any Temptation, she will do what she can to prevent his Destruction.”
Mather, of course, was much concerned with preventing societal destruction. He played an active role in the hysteria that emerged in and around Salem, Massachusetts after local women were accused by young girls of witchcraft. The fallout from these accusations, an episode that became known as the Salem Witch Trials, resulted in the executions of 14 women and 5 men in the same year Ornaments for the Daughters of Zion was published.[10] Mather was a pillar of Puritan patriarchy. In Ornaments he even cites Ahasuerus’ decree in Esther 1:20 that “all the Wives give to their Husbands Honour both to Great and Small” as properly demonstrating the “reverence” a wife should have for her husband. As Harvard historian and scholar of early America Laurel Thatcher Ulrich notes, women were thought to play an invisible role in history, “because their bodies impel them to nurture. Their job is to bind the wounds, stir the soup, and bear the children of those whose mission it is to fight wars, rule nations, and define the cosmos.” As a contemporary of Mather put it in 1650 describing the unobtrusive, home-centered role women were expected to play, “Woman’s the center & lines are men.”[11]
And yet, Mather saw in the biblical Esther a woman of independent action to be admired. As scholar of religion Ariel Clark Silver notes, Mather’s Esther is obedient while at the same time proactive. She is a “good conqueror” who obeys rules but is spiritually independent of her husband, providing him with salvation. Looking past figures in the Christian tradition including Mary, Mather offered his fellow Puritans a heroine from the Hebrew Bible who modelled a willingness to stay faithful unto death, overcome challenges and adversity, and provide salvation for others. For his era, this emphasis on Esther – a figure from a story largely marginal to Christians – coupled with his very interest and concern for the inner spiritual lives of women, made Mather rather unique – one might say he was progressive in positioning Esther as a proto-feminist.[12]
Ornaments was not the last time Mather would meditate on Esther. His magnum opus, Biblia Americana, the first biblical commentary written in America, which ran a very Mather-ian 4,500 pages and which he worked on from 1693 until his death in 1728, recapped the story and provided the scholarly interpretations current in Mather’s time. In it, Mather cites, among his many sources, the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds, Mekhilta, Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer, Zohar, Onkelos, Seder Olam Rabbah, Saadiah Gaon, Rashi, Ibn Ezra, Radak, Nahmanides, Moses of Coucy, Gersonides, Bahya ben Asher, Abravanel, and Seforno, remarking that “the writings of the rabbins [sic] are often very helpful to us.”[13] In comments ranging from why Mordekhai did not bow down to Haman,[14] to how the myrrh was utilized by the virgins in Ahasuerus’ harem,[15] to how Esther could ask the Jews to fast for three days straight,[16] to the “miraculous” timing of Haman’s arriving before Ahasuerus when the king was unable to sleep,[17] to the custom of reacting to the mention of Haman’s name during the reading of the Megillah on Purim,[18] Mather, as always, had much to say. Strikingly, however, very little centered on Esther herself. While Mordekhai and Ahasuerus’ actions and intentions are elaborated upon in Mather’s retelling (Mordekhai “exhorted [the Jews] unto Fasting, and Humiliation, and Repentance, & to follow the Example of the Ninivites,” and Ahasuerus, upon seeing Haman fall upon Esther’s bed, “turned every thing to the worst Sense, and made the Posture of his Petition but the Aggravation of his Crime”), Esther as an actor in her eponymous tale is a hidden one, meriting only the mention that “Her Beauty was extraordinary.”[19]
This interpretation of Esther and the legacy of her actions, however, misses the true significance of her story. When Esther is called upon by Mordekhai, it is not, as Mather offers in his Ornaments of the Daughters of Zion, to prevent the destruction of her husband, but to risk everything to provide salvation for her nation. And she does so despite the danger approaching her husband, to whom she is subject, presents.[20] As Mordekhai states in his only recorded words in the entire Megillah:
Do not imagine that you, of all the Jews, will escape with your life by being in the king’s palace. On the contrary, if you keep silent in this crisis, relief and deliverance will come to the Jews from another quarter, while you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows, perhaps you have attained to royal position for just such a crisis. (4:13-14)
Esther the Persian, who until this point hid her Jewish identity, is called upon to save her people as they stand on the precipice of destruction. She is to be Haddasah once more. As The New York Times ethicist Kwame Anthony Appiah writes, “identities work only because, once they get their grip on us, they command us, speaking to us as an inner voice; and because others, seeing who they think we are, call on us, too.”[21] It is Mordekhai’s beseeching Esther to plead on behalf of her people (4:8), and the courage demonstrated by Esther in entering the king’s throne room unannounced and revealing her identity to Ahasuerus at her party, that lead to the salvation of the entire nation.[22] Contra Cotton Mather’s reading, it is the destruction of Mordekhai and the Jewish people that Esther prevents, not that of her husband.
In 1912, two hundred and twenty years after Cotton Mather published Ornaments for the Daughters of Zion, thirty-eight Jewish women, led by fifty-two-year-old Henrietta Szold, gathered in Harlem, New York on Purim day.[23] These women, sensing they were living in an historical era of Jewish national significance, gathered to found a new organization dedicated to promoting Zionism in America and improving the health and welfare of their brethren in Palestine. As political scientist Samuel Goldman has documented, staking a position rather unique among Christians of the time, Cotton Mather’s father, Increase Mather, “never wavered in his conviction that God’s promise to restore the Jews to their ancient homeland would one day be fulfilled.”[24] With the flowering of the eventual State of Israel in sight, these women evoked the biblical figure whose dedication to her people inspired their own efforts in ensuring Jewish national survival. They, after some time, decided to name their organization Hadassah. In what can best be described as historical coincidence with a sprinkling of divine humor not unlike the events of Megillat Esther itself, the women had changed the organization’s name from what they had agreed upon that Purim day. The original name for Hadassah, the charitable women’s organization now 330,000 U.S. members strong? Daughters of Zion.
Notes
[1] Never one to spare words (in his Diary he admits “I am exceedingly sensible that the Grace of Meekness is very defective in me”), Mather later published subsequent works on women, including Elizabeth in Her Holy Retirement (1710) and Bethiah: The Glory which Adorns the Daughters of God (1722), a sequel to Ornaments. Mather’s visage, like his pen, was prolific. He was the first American whose portrait others bought and hung in their homes. See Rick Kennedy, The First American Evangelical: A Short Life of Cotton Mather (Grand Rapids, 2015), vi. Noll’s remark about Mather appears in his A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada (Grand Rapids, 1992), 86.
[2] E.g., Zekhariah 9:9 “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem.”
[3] “She prudently avoids the reading of Romances, which do no less naturally than generally inspire the minds of young people.”
[4] “She will therefore not be too much from home, upon concerns that perhaps to him are unaccountable; but if the angels do inquire, where she is, her Husband may reply, as once Abraham did, my wife is in the tent.”
[5] “’Tis possible, her Children may Sin; but this causes her presently to reflect upon the Errors of her own Heart and Life.”
[6] “The Kindred of her Expired Husband are also still Welcome and Grateful to her, upon his account.”
[7] While composing Magnalia Christi, a history of the founding of Massachusetts Bay Colony written in biblical style that described New England as a redemptive society, Mather took to wearing a skullcap and calling himself “rabbi.” At the same time, he was composing a textbook geared towards converting Jews to Christianity. See Arthur Hertzberg, The Jews in America: Four Centuries of an Uneasy Encounter: A History (New York, 1989), 39-41. Louis H. Feldman argues that Josephus’ Jewish War was a particularly influential influence on both Mather and his father in their historical writings and that Cotton took “an extraordinary interest” in Josephus, considering him “a kindred personality, full of soul-searching and very defensive about his actions, very similar to Paul, whose friend, Mather claims, interestingly without evidence, Josephus was.” See Feldman, “The Influence of Josephus on Cotton Mather’s Biblia Americana: A Study in Ambiguity,” Shalom Goldman, ed. Hebrew and the Bible in America: The First Two Centuries (Hanover, 1993). Feldman describes Cotton Mather’s desire to convert Jews to Christianity as “very nearly an obsession for him.”
[8] Kennedy, 86; Hertzberg, 27.
[9] In the colonial era, obedience to one’s husband was both a religious and legal requirement and the husband represented the household to the outside world, though on occasions wives acted as “deputy husbands” giving instructions to workers, negotiating with Native Americans, and settling accounts. See Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England 1650-1750 (New York, 1991).
[10] The degree of involvement has been subject to much scholarly debate stemming from the work of Robert Calef, a contemporary of Mather’s whose decade-long negative portrayal of the latter, eventually published in a book, colors the modern popular perception (inspiring, for example, Mather appearing in Marvel Comics as a scowling villain wearing a green cape). Mather’s recent biographer Kennedy notes how Cotton did not support the push to swiftly execute the accused witches, and was a kindly figure who often visited prisons, hosted countless visitors, including a young Benjamin Franklin, in his vast study, and even housed some of the young women who claimed to be possessed by demons in his own home in an effort to cure them. Per Kennedy, Cotton never attended the trials, though he did preach at one of the executions, and wished to err on the side of leniency with the “witches.” “If Cotton’s advice had been followed [during the trials], it is safe to assume that matters in Salem would have turned out better” (63). In the words of Feldman, “Cotton Mather has had a bad press.”
[11] Ulrich, Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History (New York, 2007), xxi. The title of Ulrich’s book stems from a phrase she coined in an article in a 1976 edition of American Quarterly that surveyed the literature about women in Mather’s era. The phrase was then tweaked (with “seldom” replaced by “rarely”) and popularized by journalist Kay Mills, who used it as an epigraph in her history of women in America From Pocahontas to Power Suits.
[12] See Ariel Clark Silver, The Book of Esther and the Typology of Female Transfiguration in American Literature (Lanham, 2018), 32-36.
[13] Feldman, 143-144.
[14] “It is not easy to find reason for Mordecai’s refusing to pay unto Haman the Respect which he required & exposing his whole Nation to an Extirpation…. Probably it was because Haman was the race of the Amalekites, and under the Curse denounced by God upon that Nation; and therefore, he thought it not proper to give that Honour unto him.”
[15] “Myrrhe, from whence not only a Noble Oyl [oil] was drawn, but being beat unto a Powder, such a Fumigation was made with it.”
[16] “Josephus understands it as only an Abstinence from Delicacies, and a Contentment with Hard & Coarse Fare.” For an analysis of Mather’s extensive usage of Josephus, see Feldman, 122-155.
[17] “Haman should come in at the very Nick of Time, & so determine the Honour, and be made the Instrument of it [ch. 6]; This was from the Keeper of Israel, who never slumbers nor sleeps! [Psalm 121:4].”
[18] “The Book of Esther is read in all their Synagogues: & when the Name of Haman occurs, they clap their Hands, and cry out, Let his memory perish.”
[19] Citations from Harry C. Maddux and Reiner Smolinski (ed.), Biblia Americana: America’s First Bible Commentary. A Synoptic Commentary on the Old and New Testaments. Volume 4: Ezra-Psalms (Heidelberg, 2013), 139-166. For an extensive discussion of the sources Mather drew upon, particularly in his discussion of Mordekhai’s refusal to bow, see Introduction, 3-7.
[20] For an elaboration of Esther’s identity evolution, see Joshua A. Berman, “Hadassah Bat Abihail: The Evolution of Object to Subject in the Character of Esther,” Journal of Biblical Literature 120:4 (2001): 647-669.
[21] The Lies that Bind – Rethinking Identity (New York, 2018), 218.
[22] See Linda Day, Three Faces of a Queen: Characterization in the Books of Esther (Sheffield, 1995) for a discussion of how the Greek translations of Esther emphasize God’s historical relationship with the Jewish people in their telling of the story.
[23] For more on Szold’s story see Pamela S. Nadell, America’s Jewish Women: A History from Colonial Times to Today (New York, 2019), Mishael Zion, Esther: A New Israeli Commentary (Jerusalem, 2019), 67.
[24] God’s Country: Christian Zionism in America (Philadelphia, 2018), 14. Goldman notes that Cotton “initially echoed his father’s arguments about the salvation of all Israel, but eventually concluded that the Jews had no further part to play in God’s design.” (41)
Rabbi Dr. Stu Halpern is Senior Advisor to the Provost of Yeshiva University and Senior Program Officer of YU's Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought. He has edited 16 books, including Proclaim Liberty Throughout the Land: The Hebrew Bible in the United States; Gleanings: Reflections on Ruth; Books of the People: Revisiting Classic Works of Jewish Thought; and Torah and Western Thought: Intellectual Portraits of Orthodoxy and Modernity (all with Koren Publishers and YU Press). He has lectured in synagogues, Hillels and adult Jewish educational settings across the U.S., Europe and Israel. He is currently at work on a collection of chapters from various contributors on the reception history of the Scroll of Esther in American history, in which this essay will appear.
From The Lehrhaus, February 20, 2020
American Purim
By: Stuart Halpern
And Mordecai went forth from the presence of the king in royal apparel of blue and white, and with a great crown of gold, and with a rob of fine linen and purple; and the city of Shushan shouted and was glad. (Esther 8:15)
Bible, square and compass, borne by a master mason, the Judge of Israel in black, wearing the judicial robes of crimson silk, trimmed with ermine, and a richly embossed gold medal suspended from the neck. The procession enters the church… (“Ceremonies at the laying of the corner stone of the city of Ararat on September 2, 1825,” Niles’ Register, Baltimore, Maryland, Nov. 26, 1831)
The bear and the Indians were late. Mordecai Manuel Noah, the Philadelphia-born prominent playwright, journalist, editor, sheriff, lawyer and diplomat (having briefly served as consul at Tunis, one of the Barbary States in North Africa), had chartered a small boat from Grand Island in upstate New York to participate in the flotilla celebrating the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825. The boat, which he named Noah’s Ark, contained, beyond a bear and Native Americans, two eagles, two fawns, and assorted fish, birds and other animals. The five-ton ship never reached its intended destination of New York City, however, having been damaged attempting to navigate one of the canal’s locks, and had to turn back.
Noah’s failed Ark encapsulated his larger project, definitively detailed by historian Jonathan Sarna, which was attempting to establish a Jewish homeland on Grand Island itself (Noah’s maternal grandfather was the revolutionary war veteran Jonas Phillips, who in 1787 had addressed the Constitutional Convention to advocate for religious liberty). His intention was to improve the conditions of the Jews of the world by creating a haven for them, which, through their presence on the island, would develop the island’s natural resources for the benefit of all Americans. Additionally, a substantive presence on the island would serve as a bulwark against potential British aggression. Having spent many years advocating, in high-profile public settings and various media outlets (well-beyond the small American Jewish community of his time) for the creation of a state for his brethren in America, Noah believed the “chosen country” for the Chosen People was the United States, that is, at least until the Jews could return to their ancient homeland in Israel. To that end, he wrote to all three living ex-Presidents for their thoughts on Jewish American rights, and indeed, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison all wrote back affirming the equality of the Jews of America before the law. Adams response included his telling the ambitious Noah
I could find it in my heart to wish that you had been at the head of a hundred thousand Israelites indeed as well disciplin’d as a French army—& marching with them into Judea & making a conquest of that country & restoring your nation to the dominion of it—For I really wish the Jews again in Judea an independent nation.
As historian Jenna Weissman Joselit has noted, the economic and humanitarian components of Noah’s plan to purchase the island from New York State, which had bought it from the Seneca Nation, went hand in hand, inspiring the Christian Intelligencer to liken Noah to a latter-day Moses or Joshua who would “lead his people through the wilderness to their Canaan in America, flowing with milk and honey.” Noah’s request to acquire the island was considered by the state assembly in 1820, and the Albany Daily Advertiser’s coverage of the story stated that the plan would allow for the Jews to “have their Jerusalem” and “erect their temple” in peace and prosperity on Grand Island. The plan, alas, was rejected as lawmakers didn’t want to undervalue the land in advance of the completion of the Canal and were hesitant to create a settlement where Jews dwelled apart from their Christian neighbors.
Noah was undaunted, and in 1824 however, Samuel Leggett, a wealthy friend of Noah’s, purchased 2,000 acres for $16,985 (at the time an enormous amount). Newspapers announced that “the foundation stone” of a city to be called Ararat, named for the mountain range upon which the biblical Noah’s ark rested after the flood (Genesis 8:4), would be laid in close to the time of the canal’s official opening (Noah had originally considered naming the site “New Jerusalem”). On September 2, 1825, an elaborate ceremony was planned for Leggett’s land on Grand Island and a crowd of locals and a delegation of Indians gathered in anticipation. However, not enough boats could be gathered to bring to the island all those who desired to witness the ceremony, and so the proceedings were quickly shifted to nearby Buffalo’s only building large enough to house the day’s celebration—St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. Thus, soldiers, masons, political leaders, military men, clergy, and musicians proceeded to the church, with Noah, the self-proclaimed “Judge of Israel,” at the helm, his ornate costume borrowed from a production of Shakespeare’s Richard III. Cannons were fired, and a three-hundred-pound sandstone block, upon which was engraved the first verse of the Shema, was put on St. Paul’s communion table, along with wine, oil, and corn. Noah, in his speech, called upon Jews to settle in this
“land of milk and honey” [Ex. 3:8] where Israel may repose in peace, under his “vine and fig tree” [Micah 4:4] and where our people may so familiarize themselves, with the science of government, and the lights of learning and civilization, as may qualify them for that great and final restoration to their ancient heritage, which the times so powerfully indicate… Deprived as our people have been for centuries of a right in the soil, they will learn with particular satisfaction, that here they can till the land, reap the harvest, and raise the flocks which are unquestionably their own; and in the full and unmolested enjoyment of their religious rights, and of every civil immunity, together with peace and plenty, they can lift up their voice in gratitude to him, who sustained our fathers in the wilderness and brought us in triumph out of the land of Egypt; who assigned to us the safe keeping of his oracles, who proclaimed us his people, and who has ever walked before us like a “cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night” [Ex. 13:21].
In announcing the “re-establish[ment of] the Government of the Jewish Nation…under the auspices and protection of the United States of America” Noah noted that this “asylum” would be “temporary and provisionary. The Jews never should and never will relinquish the just hope of regaining possession of their ancient heritage, and events in the neighborhood of Palestine indicate an extraordinary change of affairs.”
But in the meantime, there would be Ararat. Noah, a devout Jew, called upon the major rabbinic figures of Europe to lead their flocks to the island and issued a series of rulings, including granting “equal rights of privileges” to the “black Jews of India and Africa” as well as to nonrabbinic sects, including Samaritans and Karaites, and the “Indians of the American continent…the descendants of the lost tribes of Israel.” The speech appeared in newspapers across America, signed by the “Judge of Israel” and his secretary, Abraham B. Seixas, the nephew of Shearith Israel’s first American born religious leader and a mentor of Noah’s, Gershom Mendes Seixas. Noah’s rhetoric, coming fifty years after the birth of the America, purposely hearkened back to the founding principles of that very nation, and he compared the potential of the “Hebrew nation” of Ararat to enhance the American project through agriculture and industry to the efforts of the original pilgrims who first arrived at Plymouth Bay seeking religious freedom.
Alas, the European rabbis did not heed Noah’s call, with one rabbi, Abraham de Cologna, the Chief Rabbi of Paris, charging Noah with “treason against the Divine Majesty” for attempting to restore Jewish sovereignty before the Messianic Era and suggesting Jews “are too much attached to the countries where they dwell, and devoted to the governments under which they enjoy liberty and protection, not to treat as a mere jest the chimerical consulate of a pseudo restorer.” Noah’s Ararat plan, despite the theatrics, never got off the ground, just as Noah’s Ark never made it to its intended destination. Grand Island was sold, relatively cheaply, as timberland in 1833. Noah’s boundless energies shifted in subsequent years to other efforts, but his hope was never lost. In 1837 he spoke of how
The Jewish people must now do something for themselves; they must move onward to the accomplishment of that great event long foretold – long promised – long expected; and when they DO move, that mighty power which has for thousands of years rebuked the proscription and intolerance shown to Jews, by a benign protection of the whole nation, will still cover them with his invincible standard… Once again unfurl the standard of Judah on Mount Zion, the four corners of the earth will give up the chosen people as the sea will give up its dead, at the sound of the last trumpet. Let the cry be heard in Jerusalem, as it was in the day of the Saracen and the lion-hearted Richard of England, and the rags and wretchedness which have for eighteen centuries enveloped the persons of the Jews, crushed as they were by the persecution and injustice, will fall to the earth; … When taking their rank once more among the nations of the earth, with the good wishes and affectionate regards of the great family of mankind, they may by their tolerance, their good faith, their charity and enlarged liberal views, merit what has been said in their behalf by inspired writers, “Blessed are they who bless Israel.”
And so it was, in 1844, at the age of fifty-nine, that Mordecai Manuel Noah, who years earlier had said “if there be any person possessing greater facilities and a more ardent zeal in attempting to restore the Jews to their rights as a sovereign and independent people, to such will I cheerfully surrender the trust,” once again launched a plan for Jewish autonomy, this time with a new destination in mind. In front of packed crowds at the New York Tabernacle, Noah, in his “Discourse on the Restoration of the Jews,” predicted the Ottoman Empire would fade, and the British Empire would assume control of Palestine, thereby setting the stage for a Jewish return to their biblical homeland. Speaking to his predominantly Christian audience, he proclaimed
We have lost all–country, government, kingdom, and power. You have it all – it is yours. I was once ours–it is again to be restored to us. Dismiss, therefore, from your hearts all prejudice which still lurks there against the favoured people of God… and consider their miraculous preservation…. Is it nothing to have had such fathers and founders of their faith as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; such mothers as Sarah and Rebecca, Leah and Rachel; such illustrious women as Miriam and Deborah, Ruth and Esther?… Is it nothing, my friends, to have outlived all the nations of the earth, and to have survived all who sought to ruin and destroy us? Where are those who fought at Marathon, Salamis, and Platea? Where are the generals of Alexander – the mighty myriads of Xerxes? Where are the bones of those which once whitened the plains of Troy? We only hear of them in the pages of history. But if you ask, Where are the descendants of the million of brave souls who fell under the triple walls of Jerusalem? Where are the subjects of David, and Solomon, and the brethren of Jesus? I answer, Here! Here we are – miraculously preserved – the pure and unmixed blood of the Hebrews, having the Law for one light, and God for our Redeemer…. Who can be an infidel when he looks on the Jews, and sees in them, and the Bible yet firmly in their grasp, the consummation of all the Divine promises made to them as a nation? I should think that the very idea, the hope, the prospect, and, above all, the certainty of restoring Israel to his own and promised land, would arouse the whole civilized world to a cordial and happy cooperation. Mankind would spring from the couch of ease and slumber to see the ensign displayed, and would exclaim, “The day has come! The promise is fulfilled!”
Calling upon Americans to “pave the way” for a Jewish restoration of Zion, Noah’s speech received a positive review from none other than the renowned American writer Edgar Allen Poe, who called his thinking “extraordinary… full of novel and cogent thought.” Noah even held a fundraising campaign in 1848 at Shearith Israel, one-hundred years before the birth of the modern State of Israel, stating “It would be the proudest day of my life, if I could be present at laying the corner-stone of the new Temple of Jerusalem.” The next year, in an address at the Hebrew Synagogue in Crosby Street, he envisioned an era in which
…every country on earth will give up its great men among the Jewish people, and a combination of talent, wealth, enterprise, learning, skill, energy, and bravery will be collected in Palestine, with all the lights of science and civilization, and once more elevate those laws which Moses had consecrated to liberty and the republican form of government. Let us commence the great work, and leave its consummation to our great Shepherd and Redeemer.
Despite support from influential leaders, including many Christians, this attempt too made no progress, and Noah passed away roughly two years later, and, following a fittingly elaborate funeral, was buried in Shearith Israel’s Manhattan cemetery. Credited by many, including the late historian Benzion Netanyahu, with anticipating modern Zionism, Noah’s story had a particular impact on Israel Zangwill, the playwright most famous for his The Melting Pot, a work, set on the holiday of Purim, that wrestled with Jewish identity, persecution, and assimilation. Zangwill, in turn, was an early supporter of Theodor Herzl and the Zionist cause, and chaired the 1895 meeting in which Herzl first presented his plan for the Jewish state.
At its essence, Mordecai Manuel Noah’s story, one explicitly connected by Noah himself to the biblical Noah in the naming of both his Ark and Ararat, a timeless American Jewish story if there ever was one, actually recalls a different biblical predecessor, Mordechai in the Book of Esther. As Adam Kirsch notes in his discussion of Esther,
To secular, assimilated Jews, in particular, the Esther story has an uncanny familiarity, like an old nightmare that has never been entirely forgotten. After all, Mordecai and Esther, like American Jews today, live in a cosmopolitan, pluralist society where Jews seem defined less by their religious beliefs than by their ethnic loyalties. Just as it is common for American Jews to have first names drawn from Christian or Greco-Roman sources, so these characters are named after Babylonian deities: Mordecai from Marduk, the chief god of Babylon’s mythology, and Esther from Ishtar, the goddess of love…. In some essential ways, Jewish life in twenty-first-century America may resemble the Persia of twenty-five hundred years ago more closely than the Poland of three hundred years ago.
Mordecai Manuel Noah’s being removed as diplomat to Tunis, as then Secretary of State James Monroe himself wrote in 1815, was due to the perception that Noah’s religion would hinder his functioning in the position. The perceived liability of the Jews to the kingdom of Shushan, despite the positive governmental role Mordechai played in saving the king’s life (2:21-23), serves at the core of Haman’s accusations against the Jews to Ahashverosh. And of course, questions at the nexus of Jewish loyalty and liability have long-plagued America’s Jewish community (Noah was often referred to as “Noah the Jew” and “Shylock” throughout his lifetime). The lesson that Noah learned the hard way, that, in Sarna’s words, “beneath the veneer of American tolerance lay a considerable layer of anti-Jewish prejudice,” despite political involvement and advocacy, has been relearned in subsequent generations. The first Jew to openly confront the challenges and opportunities of American freedom, Mordecai Manuel Noah, like the biblical Mordechai, through his actions, attempted to make the case that Jews could be robed in the clothing of leaders, spokespeople, and guardians of their country – for the benefit of their Jewish brethren, and the benefit of all citizens of the realm. Whether that case was a convincing one, in the eyes of their respective Jewish communities or in the minds of the citizenry of their respective home countries, remains open to debate.
Judah Jeitteles, an Austrian leader of the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) who some historians credit with coining the very term “haskalah,” wrote in 1826 in the Hebrew journal Bikkurei Ha’Ittim of the efforts of the American Noah. Echoing the language of Esther 2:5, Jeitteles informed his readers that there was an “ish Yehudi (a Jewish man) who dwelled in the medina (nation) of North America, and his name was Mordecai Manuel Noah.” This Mordecai, who “was sending letters to all the families of the Jews,” was, in Jeitteles’ opinion, a charlatan to be ignored. Drawing explicitly on the Talmudic critique of Mordechai (Megillah 16b), that Mordechai’s leadership was only accepted by most Jews as their leader and not by all the Jews, based on the final verse of Esther stating that Mordechai was “popular with the multitude of his brethren (rov ehav),” Jeitteles wrote that “if this was said about Mordechai in those days, how much more so in our days, with regards to Mordechai who dwells in America who is prophesying dreams and nothingness…it should be said that he is not accepted by all his brethren, nor most of his brethren, nor few of his brethren!”
As Michael Eisenberg, a contemporary venture capitalist and American émigré to Israel noted in his polemic commentary on Esther, beyond the possible questioning of Mordechai as a leader, the ending of the Megillah is further tinged with pessimism and even tragedy, an assimilationist tale of Jews barely retaining their national identity. Unlike the book of Ruth and its ending genealogy leading to the birth of King David, Esther ends with no look towards a viable future for the Jews of Shushan. Mordechai doesn’t leverage his political power to pave the way for a return of the Jews to Israel, where the Second Temple was already standing, but rather is absorbed into the economic and political machine that is the Persian empire. In fact, in his introduction to Eisenberg’s book, the Religious Zionist Rabbi Benjamin Lau suggests that contemporary Jews should consider reading, during the mincha prayers on Purim, the first two chapters of the biblical book of Nehemiah, which describe Nehemiah receiving permission from the Persian king to return to Israel and rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, as a way to properly end the holiday.
Mordecai Manuel Noah sharpens the question raised by the biblical Mordechai: Can there be viable Jewish continuity in the diaspora, even in a country with the freedoms and protections of America? (In a tragic turn, two of Noah’s sons married Christians and one of his grandchildren, Florence Elizabeth Noah, married Junius Brutus Booth, nephew of Abraham Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth). According to Eisenberg and Israeli bible scholars including Rabbi Dr. Jonathan Grossman and Rabbi Menachem Leibtag the very purpose of the megillah is a satirical one—to demonstrate that efforts to build vibrant Jewish life outside of Israel are quixotic. Whether it is the notorious absence of God’s name in the megillah as reflective of the hiddenness of His presence outside of Israel, Esther 10:1’s description of Ahashverosh’s levying of a tax (mas) that evokes the mention of Pharaoh placing taskmasters over the Israelites after the death of Joseph (sarei misim) in Exodus 1:11, or the megillah’s description of the repeated efforts of Mordechai and Esther to establish the observance of the holiday (9:29-31) reflecting a hesitancy of the wider Jewish community to formally establish a diaspora-focused new holiday, all signs in this reading of Esther point to there being as much of a promising future for Shushan’s Jews as there was the chance that the a ceremony in St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in upstate New York would lead to the first Jewish homeland in 1,800 years. According to other scholars, however, Esther argues not against Jewish diaspora life but for it, albeit reliant upon sound strategic political maneuvering by the Jews of Persia, who, this theory goes, couldn’t realistically pack up and move to Israel, nor should they feel compelled to attempt to do so.
On March 21, 2016, the Town Board of Grand Island, alongside a delegation of Jews, Christians and Muslims, announced plans to celebrate “Mordecai Manuel Noah Day” on July 19, Noah’s birthday, with a dinner at Byblos Niagara Resort and Spa. The plan was the brainchild of Michael Barsoum, pastor and founder of Community of St. Paul on the island, and of many who continue to be inspired by Noah’s tale. Born in Egypt into a Coptic Christian family, Barsoum was taught to hate Jewish people during his childhood. Forced to flee due to religious persecution in the 1980’s, he reexamined his feelings towards Jews, and came to admire their survival despite countless persecutions, including the Holocaust. “I am a refugee myself,” he told a report for the Buffalo News. “My heart is always for people who are persecuted and people who are deprived of their religious liberties.” After designing and leading hate prevention seminars in Toronto, Barsoum moved to Grand Island, where he continues his interfaith efforts. “Mordecai Manuel Noah Day,” he and the town hoped, would send a message of tolerance and freedom throughout the world. In fact, the Buffalo News reported, Barsoum created two books for people to sign for the occasion, “one for religious people, and the other for nonbelievers.” He planned to deliver the books to the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem.
Alas, like so many efforts to bridge Grand Island and Jerusalem, so many efforts to have feet planted in the “land of the free” and eyes raised towards the Promised Land, Barsoum missed the proverbial boat. When I reached out to the reporter who wrote the story for the News to find out if Barsoum ever made it to Israel with the signed books, he graciously wrote back “I spoke to Nate McMurray, Grand Island’s Town Supervisor, and it sounds like Michael had good intentions, but got burned out, and didn’t follow through on some stuff.” Like Mordecai Manuel Noah and his biblical namesake, he never made it to Jerusalem.
Rabbi Dr. Stuart Halpern is Senior Adviser to the Provost of Yeshiva University and Senior Program Officer of Y.U.'s Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought. His edited books include the recently released Esther in America, the first full-length treatment of the Megillah’s interpretation in and impact on the United States, as well as Gleanings: Reflections on Ruth and Proclaim Liberty Throughout the Land: The Hebrew Bible in the United States.
From Tablet magazine, February 25, 2020
Reading Esther in Today's America
By: Stu Halpern
Stop me if you've heard this one before: A deeply narcissistic man somehow becomes the ruler of a large and wealthy empire. He seems primarily concerned with his own personal wealth and power, so all around him the nation goes to the dogs. Half the government is busy pleasing the temperamental boss; the other half is seized with fantasies of overthrowing his regime. Everywhere you look, you see nothing but sickening groupthink, with decency and courage nowhere to be found.
Except, that is, in one remarkable young woman: Esther.
The Biblical book that bears her name is always a pleasure to read, but this year her tale ought to resonate much more with weary Americans in search of a drop of hope in an otherwise grim year.
If it's been a while since you've had the pleasure of Esther's company, here's a summary of her achievements: Tapped to participate in a kingdom-wide search for a new queen, she outshines all other candidates not only with her beauty and brilliance but with her humility, asking for no expensive gifts. She wins, of course, and when she learns that Haman, the king's wicked adviser, has condemned all the Jews to death, she risks her own life to speak up on behalf of her people. Being brilliant, she devises a plan so inspired that before long Haman hangs on the same tree he'd prepared for Esther's cousin, Mordecai.
There are many reasons to cheer for such a strong and resourceful heroine, but, read in our current political and cultural climate, Esther's story packs a particular poignancy. She reminds us that even when a society seems to have succumbed to intolerance, even as people allow their partisan affiliations and ideological hatreds to cloud their judgment and veil their humanity, even as government seems all-around incompetent to stop the descent into violence, all it takes is one decent and committed person to save the day.
Were we to take heart and find comfort in Esther's bravery, we would not be the first Americans to do so. Walking into a hall packed to the gills with a hostile rabble on September 7, 1853—during a women's rights gathering crashed by so many disruptors that history has dubbed it the "Mob Convention"—Sojourner Truth evoked the Biblical heroine who inspired her to stand up to her hissing, racist detractors.
"There was a king in the Scriptures," Truth said, "and then it was the kings of the earth would kill a woman if she come into their presence; but Queen Esther come forth, for she was oppressed, and felt there was a great wrong, and she said 'I will die or I will bring my complaint before the king.'"
Sojourner Truth won not only the evening's debate, but, more importantly, her historical mission for justice and equality.
It's little wonder, then, that Esther's story resonated with Abraham Lincoln as well. Nine days before he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln was approached by a pastor from Chicago named William Weston Patton, accompanied by a group of other clergymen. Patton, citing Mordecai's call to Esther to risk everything to ensure the survival of her people, told the president:
"Who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" And your memorialists believe that in divine providence you have been called to the presidency to speak the word of justice and authority which shall free the bondman and save the nation.
Lincoln listened, finding courage of his own and, like Esther, abolished a great evil.
Admiration for Esther has extended into the modern era and across the political aisle. In recent years, both Hillary Clinton and Mike Pence have expressed their esteem for her story.
And so, as government agencies, big businesses and cultural institutions struggle to chart a path forward for an anxious and discontent republic, Americans can return to the Bible for solace, as they have since our country's earliest days. In Esther they will find the story of an ordinary believer thrust into extraordinary circumstances, daring to defend divergent points of view and defy the powerful and malicious. Loyal to her people and dedicated to saving her society from its own depredations, her courageous choices continue to urge us to find strength and redemptive possibility in the least expected of places.
Rabbi Dr. Stu Halpern is the Senior Advisor to the Provost and Senior Program Officer of the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University. He is the editor of Esther in America (Maggid Books), the first full-length treatment of the biblical story's impact on United States history and culture.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
From Newsweek, January 18, 2021
New Book Announcement
Esther in America; The Scroll’s Interpretation and its Impact on the United States
Edited by Stuart Halpern
https://korenpub.com/products/esther-in-america
Table of Contents
ESTHER IN EARLY AMERICA
Puritan Purim: Cotton Mather and His Proto-Feminist Esther
Rabbi Dr. Stuart W. Halpern
American Artaxerxes: Esther in Early Modern Political Hebraism
Israel Ben-Porat
Haman in the American Revolution
Dr. Eran Shalev
Mordecai’s Ark: An American Tale?
Rabbi Dr. Stuart W. Halpern
Esther the Queen, Hester Prynne, and The Scarlet Letter as Biblical Commentary
Rabbi Tzvi Sinensky
EMANCIPATION AND PROCLAMATIONS
From the Palace of Shushan to Uncle Tom’s Cabin: Esther as American Abolitionist
Dr. Ariel Clark Silver
Finding Her Voice: Black Female Empowerment and the Book of Esther
Dr. Erica Brown
Lincoln, Esther, and the Rav: A Study in Statesmanship
Rabbi Dr. Meir Y. Soloveichik
FEMINIST ESTHER
Vashti Comes to America
Rabbi Tzvi Sinensky
An “Essentially Feminine” Hero: The Rise of Esther in American Jewish Life, 1870–1900
Rabbi Dr. Zev Eleff
The Esther Aesthetic and Jewish Beauty Queens in Early Twentieth-Century America
Dr. Shaina Trapedo
Speaking Away Silence: Esther and the Beginning of the End of Trauma
Malka Fleischmann
DIASPORA LIFE AND DUAL IDENTITIES
Saint Esther in Latin America
Dr. Emily Colbert Cairns
It’s Kind of a Funny Story
Dr. Dara Horn
Mordecai as Foster Father: Exegetical Insights from New York’s First Jewish Orphanage
Rabbi Alex Maged
A Tale of Two Readings: Diasporic Duality in the Book of Esther
Rabbi Shmuel Hain
POP CULTURE PURIM
Hidden Heroine: Interpretations of Queen Esther in Two Children’s Picture Books
Dr. Emily Schneider
Esther in American Art
Dr. Samantha Baskind
Esther Goes to Hollywood: An American Midrash About a Wicked Antisemite, a Wise King, and Love Everlasting
Yosef Lindell
PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS AND PURIM
Esther in the White House: The Scroll of Esther and Surviving Palace Intrigue at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Dr. Tevi Troy
The Purim Crisis of 1948: Harry S. Truman, Freda Kirchwey, and Chaim Weizmann
Philip Getz
THE MEGILLA AND MODERN MORALITY
Haman Redrawn: Remembering Esther and the Holocaust in America
Rabbi Mishael Zion
When God Stopped Talking to His People: Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik on the Book of Mordecai and Esther
Rabbi Shalom Carmy
Esther and Self-Endangerment in American Medical Experimentation
Rabbi Dr. Jason Weiner
The Lubavitcher Rebbe and the Messianic Potency of the American Purim
Rabbi Dr. Yosef Bronstein
Rabbi Norman Lamm on Purim’s Call for Moral Responsibility
Rabbi Dr. Ari Lamm
America’s Hamanite Moment
Dr. Liel Leibovitz
A Letter in a Scroll: Textual Ethics and the Esther Exception
Rabbi Dov Lerner
Hobby Lobby Bible Museum ZOOM Program “Esther in America,” February 11, 2021
https://www.museumofthebible.org/events/esther-in-america
Dr. Stu Halpern’s (Yeshiva University) new book, Esther in America: The Scroll’s Interpretation in and Impact on the United States, and the role the beloved biblical book has played in American social and political history will be examined by Dr. Erica Brown (The George Washington University’s Mayberg Center for Jewish Education), Liel Leibovitz (Tablet magazine), Dr. Tevi Troy (presidential historian and former White House aide), and the author. This program will be held virtually using Zoom. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email with information on how to join the Zoom webinar.
The Zahava and Moshael Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought
https://www.yu.edu/straus/our-team
Rabbi Dr. Meir Y. Soloveichik: Director
Rabbi Dr. Meir Y. Soloveichik is director of the Zahava and Moshael Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University and rabbi at Congregation Shearith Israel in Manhattan. He graduated summa cum laude from Yeshiva College, received his semikha from RIETS, and was a member of its Beren Kollel Elyon. In 2010, he received his doctorate in religion from Princeton University. Rabbi Soloveichik has lectured throughout the United States, in Europe, and in Israel to both Jewish and non-Jewish audiences on topics relating to Jewish theology, bioethics, wartime ethics, and Jewish-Christian relations. His essays on these subjects have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Commentary, First Things, Azure, Tradition, and the Torah U-Madda Journal.
A Former Catholic Dances With the Torah — The Wall Street Journal
Leave Judge Barrett’s Faith Out of This — The New York Times
The Common Cause of Religious Americans — Commentary
Rabbi Dr. Stu Halpern: Senior Program Officer
Rabbi Dr. Stu Halpern is Senior Advisor to the Provost (the chief academic officer) of Yeshiva University and Senior Program Officer of the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought, and is responsible for developing educational and communal initiatives that bridge Torah and general studies. Dr. Halpern received his undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania, a master’s degree in Psychology in Education from Teachers College at Columbia University, a master’s degree in Bible from the Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies, an MBA in Nonprofit Management from Touro University, a doctorate in education from the Azrieli Graduate School of Education and Administration, and rabbinic ordination from Rabbi Chaim Brovender. He has edited or co-edited 16 books, including Gleanings: Reflections on Ruth; Books of the People: Revisiting Classic Works of Jewish Thought; and Torah and Western Thought: Intellectual Portraits of Orthodoxy and Modernity, and has lectured in synagogues, Hillels and adult Jewish educational settings across around the world.
Memories of Rabbi Sacks, zt”l — The Jewish Link
Dr. Neil Rogachevsky: Associate Director
Neil Rogachevsky received his PhD in French history from the University of Cambridge in 2014. His dissertation, “The French Army and the Plebiscite of 1870,” is a study of civilian-military relations in the French Second Empire. In addition to Cambridge, Dr. Rogachevsky did graduate work at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, Georgetown, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the University of Toronto. His academic work has appeared in French History as well as in the volume Diaspora Lobbies and the U.S. Government, published in 2014 by NYU press. A native of Toronto, Dr. Rogachevsky received his BA from McGill University. Dr. Rogachevsky is also a journalist and essayist whose writings have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Mosaic, The American Interest, The Atlantic, Commentary, Haaretz and other publications. Curriculum Vitae
Peter Beinart's Wedge — Mosaic
The Man Who Willed a State — Mosaic
The Not-So-Strange Death of Israel’s Labor Party — American Affairs
Dr. Matt Holbreich: Resident Scholar
Prof. Matthew Holbreich, earned his PhD in political science in 2011 from the Department of Political Science at Notre Dame University, where he was a Lilly Presidential Scholar. His dissertation, “Tocqueville and the French Tradition of Political Liberty,” argues that Rousseau, Constant, Guizot, and Tocqueville articulated a version of freedom that combines individuality and community. He is currently pursuing a JD at NYU School of Law, where he is a Jacobson scholar. Prof. Holbreich’s involvement with the Straus Center includes collaborating with Straus Center director Rabbi Soloveichik and Jonathan Silver on Proclaim Liberty, a source reader of foundational American documents inspired by the Jewish Bible; and serving as a guest lecturer in various Straus Center courses and programs, in which he has lectured on the Founding Fathers and Abraham Lincoln.
In the Valley of the Dry Bones: Lincoln's Biblical Oratory and the Coming of the Civil War — The History of Political Thought
Dr. Chaya Sima Koenigsberg: Resident Scholar
Chaya Sima Koenigsberg is a resident scholar at the Straus Center. She received her BA in psychology from Yeshiva University’s Stern College for Women and MA and PhD in Jewish philosophy from Yeshiva University’s Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies. Chaya Sima’s doctoral research focused on midrashic esotericism in medieval Jewish thought and her dissertation, “Prayer as a Prism,” conceptualized the relationship between the Written and Oral Torah in the thought of R. Eleazar of Worms (The Rokeah). While pursuing her graduate studies, Chaya Sima served as a member of the Judaic studies faculty and 9th grade advisor at Manhattan High School for Girls in NYC and Shevach High School in Queens, NY. She holds a teaching certificate from Michlalah Jerusalem College for Women in Israel, completed the Educational Leadership Advancement Initiative program through the Lookstein Center at Bar-Ilan University, and is currently a Visiting Research Scholar at Fordham University. Chaya Sima’s lectures and courses for the Straus Center bridge her love of Torah and interests in philosophy, art, and music.
Home Shuling — YU Torah To-Go
Rabbi Dov Lerner: Resident Scholar
Rabbi Dov Lerner is a resident scholar as the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought—the responsibilities of which include teaching courses in the college, mentoring students, conducting research, and publishing material reflective of the center’s emphases. He received a BA in English literature from Yeshiva University and his semikha from RIETS, and went on to receive an MA in religion from the University of Chicago, where he served as the Hillel’s Orthodox Advisor on campus. He is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Chicago writing on Malbim’s Exegetical Pedagogy, and serves as the Rabbi of the Young Israel of Jamaica Estates.
Dignity in Flames — First Things
Sarah Wapner: Impact and Recruitment Officer
Sarah Wapner is the Impact and Recruitment Officer at the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought. She previously taught politics, history, and Judaic studies at Bnei Akiva Schools of Toronto, where she also coached the Model United Nations team. A native of Toronto, Sarah received her undergraduate degree from the University of Toronto, where she majored in political science and Jewish studies. Sarah is an alumna of summer fellowships at the Tikvah Fund, the Hertog Foundation, and the American Enterprise Institute, and she served as a consultant for Tikvah's College Division. Sarah is a graduate of the Pardes Center for Jewish Educators, and she currently sits on the Tikvah Young Professionals Advisory Board.
Samuel Gelman: Communications and Program Officer
Samuel Gelman is the Communications and Program Officer at the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought of Yeshiva University, where he is responsible for curating programming that bridges the Western and Jewish traditions. He earned his BA in political science from Yeshiva College and was the 2019 Isaac Breuer College of Hebraic Studies valedictorian. He has been published in Moment Magazine and TVLine and has done research for Tablet and Yad Vashem.
Jojo Rabbit and the Nice Nazi — Moment Magazine
Palm Springs: Build Your Own Palace in Time — Moment Magazine
How Should We Use the Term ‘Concentration Camp’? — Moment Magazine
Enna Korik: Executive Secretary
Enna Korik is the Executive Secretary for the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought of Yeshiva University and is responsible for providing administrative support to the Straus team. She received a Bachelor of Business Administration — BBA — from Baruch College and has been with YU since 2003. During her career at YU, Enna worked at Yeshiva College, the Stern College for Women admissions departments, and at Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology.
Rabbi Marc Eichenbaum: Rabbinic Intern
Rabbi Marc Eichenbaum joined the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought as a rabbinic intern after working as the rabbinic intern at the Young Israel of Lawrence-Cedarhurst. Rabbi Eichenbaum received his BA in psychology from Yeshiva University while being part of the Masmidim Honors Torah Studies Program and his semikha from RIETS. He is the recipient of the Dressler Scholarship for Clinical Social Work, which is awarded to students seeking to impact the Jewish community as future leaders, and is an AIPAC Leffell rabbinic fellow, where he trains to incorporate Israel advocacy into the Synagogue. In addition to working at the Straus Center, Rabbi Eichenbaum is a doctoral student in the School-Clinical Child PsyD program at the Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology and a Jewish law teacher at Stella K. Abraham High School for Girls.