MASTER
 
 

A Great Jewish Debate: Jewish Values and American Politics

By The Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center: Winter/Spring 2024 (other events)

Thursday, March 7 2024 6:30 PM 7:45 PM EST
 
ABOUT ABOUT

Does the Jewish teaching to “welcome the stranger” mean I have to support open immigration?

Can Jews, in good conscience, put economic freedom over economic justice?

Should “good Jews” oppose abortion rights?

How should we balance support for Israel against domestic political concerns?

If I want to follow Jewish tradition and support our community, should I vote Democrat or Republican in 2024? 

At a moment when political differences have become partisan Grand Canyons, two of American Jewry’s most prominent social policy thinkers will join us to debate such issues.

Committed to the Talmudic teaching of Eilu v’Eilu, principled disagreement, Rabbi David Saperstein, a Reform leader and former Obama appointee, and Dr. Tevi Troy, an Orthodox Jew who served in the Bush administration, will model the type of respectful discord all too uncommon in these contentious times . . . and even demonstrate how we might forge a Jewish path to greater bipartisan cooperation and tolerance.

Best-selling author Dr. Tevi Troy formerly served as a senior White House aide, Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services and Liaison to the Jewish Community in the Bush administration. The author of five books on the presidency, including the forthcoming The Power and the Money: The Epic Clashes Between American Titans of Industry and Commanders in Chief, he is currently Senior Fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Visiting Fellow at the Mercatus Center and a Senior Scholar at Yeshiva University’s Straus Center.

For 40 years, Rabbi David Saperstein served as Director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism. In 2014, he was appointed by President Obama to serve as the first non-Christian US Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom. Between 2019 and 2020, he was President of the World Union for Progressive Judaism.