Another Very Heimische Zalman Bernstein TGIF (1): The Tikvah Fund Goes Hillsdale College (8/26)
David Shasha
Millstone Scholars Program: The Tikvah Fund Wants Your Elementary School-age Children for the New Catholic Fascism!
For those who might have missed it, last month I posted an item on Tikvah’s awesome-o College advisory program, which was very Catholic Nationalist in orientation:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/CkL8BHMhI4s/m/RjwyaXYMAQAJ
This week I posted Kathryn Joyce’s excellent three-part series in Salon on Hillsdale College and its connection to DEATH SENTENCE and the larger Trumpist project to destroy American Education, public or otherwise:
https://groups.google.com/g/Davidshasha/c/n9ziQ0rPfxY
Along with those articles I also posted a DEATH SENTENCE special, as he seeks to turn Florida into a Torquemada hell:
https://groups.google.com/g/Davidshasha/c/3SV5-mxKlU0
It is in this context that we should process Tikvah’s Millstone Scholars Program, which was announced on Monday:
https://tikvahfund.org/millstone/program/#curriculum
See if you can see the Hillsdale Alt-Right DEATH SENTENCE Trumpscum commonality:
What is the Millstone Scholars Program?
The Millstone Scholars Program is a unique one-year opportunity for 7th and 8th grade students to study the great ideas and leaders of Jewish and Western civilization, Zionism, and the heroic story of modern Israel. Students will meet in their local community cohorts of Millstone Scholars for weekly in-person high level seminars with exceptional peers and master teachers. Designed for students in public or private (non-Jewish) schools, Millstone Scholars engage in a one-year sequence of an in-person core seminar and online electives, combined with special events and guest speakers who share their experiences as Jewish, Israeli, and North American leaders. Millstone Scholars is a national honors program, with regional clusters around the country. In an era of declining Jewish identity and rising anti-Semitism, the Millstone Scholars Program aims to create confident and knowledgeable Jewish leaders of the future.
Who is Eligible to Apply?
The inaugural class of Millstone Scholars will begin in Fall 2022. We will accept applications from students entering 7th and 8th grades in Fall 2022 and who currently attend public or private (non-Jewish) schools. Our locations for the 2022-23 academic year will include (i) Manhattan, (ii) Brooklyn, (iii) Great Neck, (iv) Livingston, and (v) Stamford, with plans to expand around the country soon. A highly selective program, we will choose no more than 15 students in each regional cohort. Applications are due by Friday, August 5, 2022.
What is the Program Structure and Curriculum?
The Millstone Scholars Program is a one-year trimester sequence between September and June, aligned with the public school calendar. The program includes three central elements:
Core In-Person Seminar: “How Jewish Ideas Changed the
World”
Every student will participate in a core seminar—meeting
weekly, in-person, in your community—that explores how Jewish ideas have shaped
Western civilization. The three parts of this core curriculum will be, in
sequence, 1) the Bible in conversation with Western civilization, 2) the Jewish
experience in North America, and 3) Zionism. Students will explore foundational
Jewish texts alongside those from Greek, Roman, and Enlightenment philosophy;
painters like Rembrandt; statesmen like Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln; and
Zionist leaders like Herzl, Ben Gurion, and Menachem Begin.
The Four Pillars – Online Electives
Every student will choose four online elective courses—spread
out throughout the academic year —in Tikvah’s four core pillars: (i) Jewish
thought and philosophy, (ii) Zionism and Modern Israel, (iii) the spirit of
North American Democracy, and (iv) the Great Books of Western Civilization.
These courses allow students to explore topics of greatest interest to them and
to meet Millstone Scholar peers from around the world.
The Herzl Colloquia—A Leadership Forum
Twice each trimester, Millstone Scholars will participate
in conversations with renowned leaders from Jewish and American life—drawn from
some of the most significant institutions in the worlds of scholarship and
academia, law and public policy, business and entrepreneurship.
Students who begin the program in 7th grade will have the opportunity for additional unique programming in 8th grade. There will also be parent learning opportunities through ongoing seminars for parents to engage with the material their children are learning and to explore together issues of deepest concern as Jewish parents today.
Through this intensive Millstone Scholars program, our mission is to train and network a group of learned and confident young North American Jewish leaders of tomorrow.
Here is the curriculum:
The Millstone Scholars curriculum is rooted in the following beliefs: that Jewish ideas shaped Western civilization and the world; that young North American Jews have the right and responsibility to understand their own exceptional Hebraic heritage; and that young men and women in 7th and 8th grade are capable of college-style seminars and discussions. We are looking for intellectually curious students and families who believe in Jewish excellence.
Every Millstone Scholars student will participate in our core seminar—a weekly discussion class, in-person, in your local community. Together with a master teacher, students will read carefully chosen selections from the formative texts of the Jewish people—ranging from the Torah to the Talmud and medieval period to modern thinkers and leaders —in an intellectual adventure that explores how Jewish ideas changed the world. We will discuss the Biblical Creation story and the Apollo 8 astronauts; the story of Abraham and the ideas of Aristotle; the leadership of Rebekah and the longings of Homer’s Penelope; the Exodus from Egypt and the American Founding; the teachings of the Ten Commandments and the paintings of Rembrandt; the foundational stories of the Jewish people and the writings of Edgar Allen Poe; the rise of the ancient Israelites and the heroic leaders who created modern Israel.
The Four Pillars
Jewish Philosophy | Zionism & Israel | Democracy in North America | Western Civilization
In addition to the core seminar, Millstone Scholars will complete four elective courses, allowing them to study specific topics of greatest interest to them, in conversation with exceptional students from around the world, in online seminars offered on weekday evenings and on Sundays. Millstone Scholars will have a vast catalogue of online seminars to choose from, and they will have to complete at least one course in each of our “four pillars”: (i) Jewish thought and history, (ii) Zionism and modern Israel, (iii) the spirit of North American democracy, and (iv) the great ideas of Western Civilization.
Why are these four pillars so important? Because we believe that:
The CLASSIC TEXTS OF JEWISH CIVILIZATION—including the Hebrew Bible, rabbinic thought, and Jewish philosophy—offer enduring wisdom about the meaning of being human.
The ZIONIST PROJECT is one of the great moral, cultural,
and political triumphs in human history, and every young Jew should understand
the achievements and challenges of modern Israel.
AMERICA IS AN EXCEPTIONAL NATION, influenced by Hebraic
ideas from the colonial era onward and affording Jews unprecedented liberty and
equality.
The FOUNDATIONAL IDEAS OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION—from Greek philosophy to Renaissance art to political economy—are essential ingredients in shaping modern Jewish citizens.
I take it they will not be teaching The 1619 Project!
Though they probably will have some Meir Soloveichik Sephardi-hate:
https://www.commentary.org/articles/meir-soloveichik/yiddish-is-a-language-of-faith/
And it is certain they will be teaching The 1620 Project:
https://www.commentary.org/articles/meir-soloveichik/jewish-ideas-america-1620-project/
The blessed children will be speaking with the top Neo-Con Chickenhawk New Fascist Straussians – all of whom will be quite familiar to SHU readers by now:
A Leadership Forum for Millstone Scholars
Twice each trimester, Millstone Scholars will participate in live, in-depth conversations with great leaders from Jewish and North American life—drawn from some of the most impactful institutions in the worlds of scholarship and academia, law and public policy, business and entrepreneurship.
Elliott Abrams
Elliott Abrams is the chairman of the Tikvah Fund, as well as chairman of the Vandenberg Coalition and Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C.. He served as Special Assistant to the President and NSC Senior Director for the Near East and North Africa in the first term of George W. Bush, and as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor in the second term. In the Trump administration he served in the State Department as Special Representative for Iran and for Venezuela. He is the author of Undue Process, Security and Sacrifice, and Faith or Fear, and writes widely on U.S. foreign policy with special focus on the Middle East and the issues of democracy and human rights. His most recent book is Realism and Democracy: American Foreign Policy After the Arab Spring.
Prof. Leora Batnitzky
Leora Batnitzky is Perelman Professor of Religion and Chair of the Department of Religion at Princeton University as well as the Director of Princeton’s Tikvah Project on Jewish Thought. She is the author of Idolatry and Representation: The Philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig Reconsidered (Princeton, 2000), Leo Strauss and Emmanuel Levinas: Philosophy and the Politics of Revelation (Cambridge, 2006), and How Judaism Became a Religion: An Introduction to Modern Jewish Thought (Princeton). Her current project focuses on the conceptual and historical relations between modern religious thought (Jewish and Christian) and modern legal theory (analytic and Continental). She received a B.A. in philosophy from Barnard College, Columbia University and a B.A. in biblical studies from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Her M.A. and Ph.D. are in religion from Princeton University.
Prof. Robert P. George
Professor George holds Princeton’s celebrated McCormick Chair in Jurisprudence and is the founding director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. He is chairman of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). He has served on the President’s Council on Bioethics and as a presidential appointee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights. He has also served on UNESCO’s World Commission on the Ethics of Science and Technology, of which he continues to be a corresponding member. He is a former Judicial Fellow at the Supreme Court of the United States, where he received the Justice Tom C. Clark Award. He is the author of In Defense of Natural Law, Making Men Moral: Civil Liberties and Public Morality, The Clash of Orthodoxies: Law, Religion and Morality in Crisis, and Conscience and Its Enemies: Confronting the Dogmas of Liberal Secularism. A graduate of Swarthmore College and Harvard Law School, he also received a master’s degree in theology from Harvard and a doctorate in philosophy of law from Oxford University.
Roger Hertog
Roger Hertog is president of the Hertog Foundation and chairman emeritus of the Tikvah Fund. One of the founding partners of the investment research and management firm Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., which he joined in 1968, Mr. Hertog served as the firm’s president before its merger with Alliance Capital Management in 2000. In 2006 he retired from the successor company, AllianceBernstein, and is currently vice-chairman emeritus. An alumnus of the City College of New York, Mr. Hertog was previously chairman of The New-York Historical Society and The Manhattan Institute; he has also served on the boards of the American Enterprise Institute, the New York Philharmonic, the New York Public Library, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation and the Washington Institute for Near-East Policy. In 2007 Mr. Hertog was awarded the Medal of the National Endowment for the Humanities in recognition of his philanthropic efforts. In 2010 he received the William E. Simon Prize for Philanthropic Leadership.
Moshe Kopell
Moshe Koppel is a member of the department of Computer Science at Bar-Ilan University and serves as chairman of the Kohelet Policy Forum. He received his Ph.D. in mathematics from Courant Institute and did post-doctoral work in the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Dr. Koppel’s main areas of research in computer science include machine learning and social choice theory. His work on authorship attribution is used widely in commercial, legal and security applications. Dr. Koppel has also published two books and many articles on Rabbinic literature, with special emphasis on logic and probability. He also co-founded and co-edited the journal Higayon, which is devoted to these topics. Dr. Koppel’s political activity includes co-drafting two proposed constitutions for Israel, including a joint proposal with Michael Eitan, formerly chairman of the Knesset’s Constitution and Law committee. Several laws that Dr. Koppel drafted have been passed by the Knesset.
Naomi Schaefer Riley
Naomi Schaefer Riley is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where she focuses on child welfare and foster care issues. Specifically, her work analyzes the role of faith-based, civic, and community organizations in changing the foster care and adoption services landscape. She also studies how socioeconomic factors affect foster care placement and services and the impact of the opioid crisis on child welfare. She is concurrently a senior fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum. Her writing and research focuses on parenting, higher education, religion, philanthropy and culture, and she has been published in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Boston Globe, LA Times, and Washington Post, among other publications. Her latest book is No Way to Treat a Child: How the Foster Care System, Family Courts, and Racial Activists are Wrecking Young Lives.
Rabbi Dr. Meir Soloveichik
Rabbi Dr. Meir Y. Soloveichik is director of the Zahava and Moshael Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University and the rabbi of Congregation Shearith Israel, the oldest Jewish congregation in the United States. 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. In August 2012, he gave the invocation at the opening session of the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida. He is the son of Rabbi Eliyahu Soloveichik, grandson of the late Rabbi Ahron Soloveichik, and the great-nephew of the late Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik.
Prof. Ruth Wisse
Recently retired from her position as Martin Peretz Professor of Yiddish Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard, Professor Wisse is currently Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Tikvah Fund. Her books on literary subjects include an edition of Jacob Glatstein’s two-volume fictional memoir, The Glatstein Chronicles (2010), The Modern Jewish Canon: A Journey through Literature and Culture (2003), and A Little Love in Big Manhattan (1988). She is also the author of two political studies, If I Am Not for Myself: The Liberal Betrayal of the Jews (1992) and Jews and Power (2007). Her latest book, No Joke: Making Jewish Humor, a volume in the Tikvah-sponsored Library of Jewish Ideas, was recently published by Princeton University Press.
Rabbi David Wolpe
Named one of the 500 Most Influential People in Los Angeles in 2016 and again in 2017, Most Influential Rabbi in America by Newsweek and one of the 50 Most Influential Jews in the World by The Jerusalem Post, David Wolpe is the Max Webb Senior Rabbi of Sinai Temple. Rabbi Wolpe previously taught at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York, the American Jewish University in Los Angeles, Hunter College, and UCLA. A columnist for Time.com, he has been published and profiled in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post’s On Faith website, The Huffington Post, and the New York Jewish Week. He has been featured on The Today Show, Face the Nation, ABC This Morning, and CBS This Morning. In addition, Rabbi Wolpe has appeared prominently in series on PBS, A&E, History Channel, and Discovery Channel. Rabbi Wolpe is the author of eight books, including the national bestseller Making Loss Matter: Creating Meaning in Difficult Times. His book David, the Divided Heart was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Awards, and has been optioned for a movie by Warner Bros.
Absolutely no Liberals allowed!
And Sephardim will remain in the kitchen – far from the Adult Jewish Table.
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David Shasha