New Article: Tikvah Fund Values: Religious Radicals Rabbi Meir Soloveichik and Senator Mike Lee at The Hoover Institute
David Shasha
Tikvah Fund Values: Religious Radicals Rabbi Meir Soloveichik and Senator Mike Lee at The Hoover Institute
It has become quite clear that Rabbi Meir Soloveichik has proudly embraced Right Wing Evangelical Christian values in the larger framework of his very aggressive Conservative political advocacy.
We continue to see us how deeply entrenched he is in the world of the religious extremists:
Here is the on-line synopsis of his Hoover Institute program with Utah Senator Mike Lee, entitled "Church, Synagogue, And State" – On Religion And American Government:
Today, Americans are generally taught to think about the "separation of church and state." But this is only one part of the Nation's story. And to focus exclusively on this "separation" risks missing the crucial contributions that religious belief and religious believers - including Judaism and Jewish Americans - have made to the American founding.
Last year, in a speech criticizing those who would invoke religion as a barrier to government office, Senator Mike Lee invoked Jonas Phillips, "a penniless Jewish immigrant, an indentured servant, a hard-working businessman, and an American patriot who served in the Philadelphia Militia during the Revolutionary War," who urged George Washington and the framers not to allow religious tests for public office.
Many years after Phillips's successful plea, Phillips's grandson, Uriah Levy, purchased Monticello from Thomas Jefferson's descendants, helping to preserve this part of America's founding heritage-an account recalled recently by Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal. Rabbi Soloveichik further explores these themes in "Jewish Ideas and the American Founders," a new online course presented by the Tikvah Fund.
The Hoover Institution is honored to host both Senator Lee and Rabbi Soloveichik for a discussion of the proper relationship between religion and American government, and the contributions that biblical ideas have made to American political thought.
Senator Mike Lee is a United States Senator from the State of Utah.
Rabbi Meir Soloveichik is Rabbi of Congregation Shearith Israel in New York City, the oldest congregation in the United States; he is the director of the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University.
The discussion will be moderated by Adam White, a Hoover Institution research fellow. This is part of Hoover's DC speaker series, Opening Arguments: Conversations on American Constitutionalism.
Special thanks to the Tikvah Fund for collaborating with us on this event.
I have already presented a critical reading of Soloveichik’s WSJ article on Jonas Phillips that is at the center of the discussion:
And a follow-up – just for good measure:
Soloveichik has very deftly obscured the Sephardic element in early American Jewish history as he repeatedly seeks to promote a markedly Ashkenazi-centric agenda, reminiscent of the work of Jonathan Sarna and Rabbi Zev Eleff:
The Right Wing think-tank Claremont Institute published an article on Soloveichik’s view of America and Judaism written by Elliot Kaufman that shows us the connection between the religious radicals and the Orthodox rabbi:
https://www.claremont.org/crb/basicpage/your-god-is-our-god/
Here is the complete article, entitled “Your God is Our God”:
“The story of the West,” explains Meir Soloveichik, rabbi of New York’s Congregation Shearith Israel and director of the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University, “is as much indebted to Jerusalem as it is to Athens.” In his newest online course, a series of lectures on Jewish Ideas and the American Founding produced by the Tikvah Fund, Soloveichik effectively and energetically elaborates America’s unique and exceptional relationship with the Jews.
Having taken this course online as well as in person, I can report that the online iteration is crisper, more organized, and more accessible for non-Jews. Anyone interested in the American vision of religious liberty and the impact of Hebrew scripture on the founders will find much to learn and admire.
The Tikvah Fund divided this lecture series into eight one-hour videos. In each, Soloveichik’s lecture is interspersed with one-on-one conversations with the Tikvah Fund’s Jonathan Silver, whose questions bring out Soloveichik’s edifying best. The lectures are untraditional, and better for it. Each one tells a story more than it covers a topic. Soloveichik begins by introducing us to Jonas Phillips, “the most important American Jew you’ve never heard of.” In 1787, Phillips complained to George Washington that the Pennsylvania state legislature’s mandatory Christian oath precluded Jews from serving. A patriot himself, Phillips argued that “The Jews have been true and faithful whigs…have bravely faught and bleed for liberty which they can not enjoy.” Phillips captured the essence of American exceptionalism on religious liberty: unless the Jews could participate in public life without foreswearing their faith, they had neither religious liberty nor the full privileges of American citizenship. Instead of having to check their Judaism at the door, Jews would contribute their unique ideas and practices for the benefit of their fellow Americans.
Jews were tolerated in some of Europe’s more enlightened nations, where religious minorities were allowed “freedom of worship.” They could not, however, bring their faith into the public square. America, Soloveichik explains, walked a different path. Since the Constitution banned religious tests for national officeholders, religious minorities were recognized and accepted as part of the national fabric. Writing to Newport, Rhode Island’s Jewish community in 1790, George Washington noted that “It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights.”
America established religious freedom not as a compromise to keep the peace, or a sop to minority groups, but as a requirement of a just society. Backed by the Constitution, Washington promised Jews such as Jonas Phillips that they would find in America the freedom to be both full citizens and fully Jewish. America kept that promise, but only in part because of the Constitutional guarantees. The American people, whose basic affection for the Biblical Israelites, Hebrew scripture, and the Jews themselves has been unparalleled, did much of the heavy lifting.
Above all, the American message to the Jews has been, “Your story is our story and your God is our God.” Soloveichik’s lecture on the proposed official seals of the United States hammers this point home: Benjamin Franklin suggested a picture of Moses extending his hand as the Red Sea overwhelms Pharaoh and his army. Underneath lies his caption: “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.” Franklin’s seal performs a sort of “transference,” whereby a Jewish story is universalized into a teaching about the rights of man, secured under God in emancipation from tyranny.
Thomas Paine carried this further, borrowing from one stream of the Jewish rabbinic tradition to argue that serving an earthly king is idolatrous. “But where says some is the King of America?” writes Paine in Common Sense, “I’ll tell you Friend, he reigns above.” For such a short course, the lecture on Paine lingered too long on the rabbinic intricacies. But the larger point emerged all the same: we are only free when God is our king, and when He guarantees our universal rights above the dictates of human governments, as He did for the Jews in Egypt.
Jefferson’s recommendation for a seal, however, offers a different teaching. His seal pictures the Israelites trekking through the wilderness, after they have defeated Pharaoh. Rather than focusing on the emancipation, this emphasizes the journey that followed: to Sinai for the Law, and to the Holy Land for self-governance. The message, Soloveichik explains, is that we need freedom not for its own sake, but to achieve a destiny. By looking to Hebrew Scripture, two eminent American Founders teach us that our freedom, established and safeguarded by placing God over man, implores us to embark upon the difficult, disciplining journey to a higher end. “Taken together,” we are told, “they give us a political theology of freedom.”
It would be interesting to have heard more here from Harvard’s Eric Nelson, whose book The Hebrew Republic is often cited in lectures but rarely explored. Viewers who wish to continue their education on this topic―and many will―may consider turning there or to the publications of the Herzl Institute, the latest of which revives John Selden, England’s great Christian Hebraist, to explore the effect of Jewish ideas on Western political thought.
More than anything, Soloveichik’s eight-hour course left me with a deep appreciation for America and what it has done for the Jews―not as a favor, but out of a conviction that gets to the heart of what America was founded to be. A different viewer might well come away with the same appreciation, but for what the Jews have done for America. Anyone who thinks the unique U.S. support for Israel can be traced to mere lobbying will be made to reconsider. After all, we learn that in 1819, over 75 years before Herzl published The Jewish State, John Adams wrote to a Jewish correspondent, “I could find it in my heart to wish that you had been at the head of a hundred thousand Israelites indeed as well discipin’d as a French Army & marching with them into Judea & making a conquest of that country & restoring your nation to the domination of it―For I really wish the Jews again in Judea an independent nation.”
As George W. Bush told the Israeli Knesset upon the Jewish State’s 60th anniversary, “The source of our friendship runs deeper than any treaty. It is grounded in the shared spirit of our people: the bonds of the Book, the ties of the soul.” For an immersion into these ties and the exceptional relationship they have produced, turn to Meir Soloveichik and his new course for the Tikvah Fund.
Rather than espouse the value of Religious Freedom as the right to be free of religion and religious tests, as was the case with Jonas Phillips and his demand to practice Judaism and not Christianity, Soloveichik and his supporters like Kaufman seem to have gotten a very different lesson which elevates religion as a requirement for Americans:
The message, Soloveichik explains, is that we need freedom not for its own sake, but to achieve a destiny. By looking to Hebrew Scripture, two eminent American Founders teach us that our freedom, established and safeguarded by placing God over man, implores us to embark upon the difficult, disciplining journey to a higher end. “Taken together,” we are told, “they give us a political theology of freedom.”
Is this form of religion identical to Christianity, or is it something different?
And what is this “destiny” that undergirds our “freedom”?
The confusion here is over whether Americans are required to be religious and if Jews are to espouse Jesus Christ as God; the very issue that Jonas Phillips was fighting against.
The idea here seems to be to promote religion and not to leave religion to individual conscience; leaving the door open to asserting the base political demands of the Evangelical Christians.
We have recently seen how this has played out with the aggressive push from Jewish Conservatives on the Hobby Lobby Bible museum:
Here again, we see the prominent role played by The Tikvah Fund and its publishing wing Mosaic magazine.
The presentation of religion in the synopsis to the Hoover program with Senator Lee puts it in the following manner:
Today, Americans are generally taught to think about the "separation of church and state." But this is only one part of the Nation's story. And to focus exclusively on this "separation" risks missing the crucial contributions that religious belief and religious believers - including Judaism and Jewish Americans - have made to the American founding.
Last year, in a speech criticizing those who would invoke religion as a barrier to government office, Senator Mike Lee invoked Jonas Phillips, "a penniless Jewish immigrant, an indentured servant, a hard-working businessman, and an American patriot who served in the Philadelphia Militia during the Revolutionary War," who urged George Washington and the framers not to allow religious tests for public office.
Lee has been brazenly peddling his fundamentalist religious values in the public square, as we can see in the text of the speech he gave in the well of the Senate:
https://www.dailywire.com/news/20822/watch-sen-mike-lee-gives-incredible-speech-against-frank-camp
Here is the full text of the speech which very cleverly sought to defend the intrusive Christian role in government and attack those who wish to separate religion from politics:
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about the fascinating men and women of America’s Founding Generation. I want to share with you one of their stories.
Jonas Phillips was a penniless Jewish immigrant, an indentured servant, a hard-working businessman, and an American patriot who served in the Philadelphia Militia during the Revolutionary War. During the British occupation of New York, he snuck messages past the censors by writing in Yiddish.
Years later, Phillips addressed a letter to George Washington and the delegates at the Constitutional Convention.
He urged them not to include a religious test in the Constitution as a requirement for public service, because no man, he wrote, should be “deprived or abridged of any Civil Right as a Citizen on account of his Religious sentiments.”
Jonas Phillips wrote this letter because Pennsylvania, the state where he lived, required officials to swear that the New Testament was inspired by God. As a faithful Jew, Jonas Phillips could not do that.
“By the above law,” he wrote, “a Jew is deprived of holding any public office or place of government.”
Thankfully, Jonas Phillips’ letter, and Jonas Phillips’ prayer ultimately would be answered. Days earlier, the convention had voted unanimously to ban religious tests for federal office.
The language the Framers inserted into the Constitution was unequivocal: “No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”
When the Founders wrote “ever,” they meant it.
I feel the need to stress this point because of the alarming behavior of some of my colleagues.
Yesterday, Notre Dame Law Professor Amy Coney Barrett came before the Senate Judiciary Committee. She had been nominated to be a circuit court judge. Her nomination has been endorsed by prominent legal scholars from across the political spectrum, including Neal Katyal, President Obama’s acting solicitor general.
Nonetheless, at Ms. Barrett’s confirmation hearing a number of my Democratic colleagues insinuated that her Catholic faith would prevent her from applying the law freely and fairly.
“Dogma and law are two different things,” remarked one of my colleagues. “When you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you. And that’s a concern.”
Another of my colleagues even asked Ms. Barrett to confess her faith under oath. “What’s an ‘orthodox Catholic?’” this Committee member asked. “Do you consider yourself an ‘orthodox Catholic’?”
If these remarks had been some sort of bizarre aberration, I might have passed over them in polite silence. But I feel compelled to speak out because I see a pattern emerging. A pattern of hostility toward people of faith who come before this body.
Just a few months ago, another eminently qualified nominee, Russell Vought, appeared before the Budget Committee to be considered for a post at the Office of Management and Budget.
One of my Senate colleagues used his time to question the nominee, not about management or budgets, but about his evangelical Christian beliefs.
“In your judgment,” asked this senator, “do you think that people who are not Christians are going to be condemned?”
Mr. Vought explained that he was an evangelical Christian and adhered to those beliefs. But that wasn’t good enough for his questioner, who later stated he would vote against Mr. Vought’s nomination because he was not “what this country is supposed to be about.”
These strange inquisitions have nothing to do with the nominees’ competency, patriotism, or ability to serve Americans of different faiths equally. In fact, they have little to do with this life at all. Instead they have to do with the afterlife. To my knowledge, the OMB and the Seventh Circuit have no jurisdiction over that.
This country is divided enough. Millions of Americans feel that Washington, D.C. and the dominant culture despise them. And how could they not, when they see their leaders sitting here, grilling patriotic citizens about their faith like inquisitors? How could they not feel like their values are not welcome in this chamber?
Religious freedom is of deep concern to me as a Mormon. My church has weathered extraordinary religious persecution, much of it sponsored by the government. The first Latter Day Saints were exiled from home after home. In 1838, the governor of Missouri ordered that Mormons be driven from the land or “exterminated.”
Our first leader, Joseph Smith, once said, “the civil magistrate . . . should punish guilt but never suppress the freedom of the soul.” That, of course, was before he was martyred by a bigoted mob.
Our country’s ban on religious tests is a strong bulwark for religious freedom. As an original provision of the Constitution, it predates even the Bill of Rights. . . and it applies not just to some religious adherents, but to all of them, equally.
The religious tests raised against Mr. Vought and Ms. Barrett do not favor one sect of Christian over another, as was sadly common for much of our nation’s history. Rather, they favor the secular, progressive creed clung to so confidently by the nation's ruling elites. This creed has its own clerics, its own dogmas, its own orthodoxy, and, as these nominees have discovered, it has its own heresies, too.
More and more, the adherents of this creed seek to use the power of government to steamroll disfavored groups—especially dissenters from their political dogmas.
So they force evangelical caterers to bake cakes celebrating same-sex marriages, as in the case that is before the Supreme Court now. And they force nuns to purchase contraceptive coverage. And sue religious hospitals that won’t perform abortions or sex-reassignment surgeries.
Yes, the secular, progressive creed has proven that it is capable of triumphalism and intolerance, just like the creeds that have gone before it. Not because its adherents are uniquely wicked . . . to the contrary: Because they are human.
There is a way out of this vicious cycle of religious intolerance, Mr. President. And that is for all of us to treat one another with civility and respect, while jealously defending the rights of conscience—for ourselves, our neighbors, and all our fellow citizens. For Christians, Jews, Muslims, atheists, and all others.
This body can do its part by supporting legislation like the First Amendment Defense Act and the Marriage and Religious Freedom Act, which would protect people who have conscience objections to recent cultural changes.
But at a minimum, this body can do its part by respecting the constitutional rights of citizens who come before it. Lest we forget, we work for them, not the other way around. I trust my colleagues, Republican, Democrat, and independent, will take this to heart. Because religious freedom puts all Americans on the same footing. It helps men and women stand upright, honest before the law—and before God.
We can see how Lee duplicitously deploys the Jonas Phillips example to help promote the radical Christian agenda against the formal separation of Church and State enshrined in the Constitution.
In this manner, the radical religious faction has sought to populate our public institutions with individuals who would impose their Christian values on our government and its laws and reject legal decisions coming from our judicial system.
It is worthwhile to note that the Kaufman Claremont article presents the figure of John Selden, a British Christian Hebraist who was recently the subject of a Tablet magazine profile that called him “Rabbi John Selden,” as it ignored the actual Sephardic Jews who played an important role in British pedagogical history:
Not surprisingly, Tablet magazine is another member of The Tikvah Fund publishing wing:
We can thus see how Kaufman is closely connected to the larger Tikvah Fund world, a radical political nexus that I have discussed many times:
The Tikvah Fund has been quite active in promoting Neo-Conservatism in the Jewish world:
We have recently seen how David Brooks and Rabbi Jonathan Sacks have figured into the very dangerous Right Wing political cabal:
Soloveichik, current leader of the formerly-Sephardic Congregation Shearith Israel, has proudly displayed his loyalty and devotion to Trump and his corrupt agenda:
As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words:
https://static.timesofisrael.com/www/uploads/2017/12/AP17342065547859.jpg
It would be hard to find a more loyal Trump supporter in the Jewish community than Soloveichik.
Rather than working to promote the classical Sephardic tradition in his position at Shearith Israel, Soloveichik has sought to strengthen his ties with the Christian extremists and to elevate the Ashkenazi tradition at our expense.
For Sephardim, The Tikvah Fund process is both baffling and deeply distressing, as we continue to be oppressed by the Ashkenazi radical agenda that seeks to dispossess us of our history and culture. But more than this, we see the ongoing fusion of Orthodox Jewish political values and the Right Wing Christian agenda.
As Sephardic history continues to be suppressed by Ashkenazi racists like Soloveichik and his Tikvah Fund cohorts, these Neo-Conservatives push an alliance with the Christian radicals in a way that imposes a religious agenda on all Americans.
It is a truly frightening development that speaks to Trumpworld values and the union of radical Jews and Christians who wish to impose a religious system on this country.
David Shasha