Watch Our Conversation on Meir Kahane, Jacob Taubes, and the American Jewish Frustration with Boredom

Meir Kahane and Jacob Taubes were prophets of an unsettling vision. To them, human history did not follow a trajectory of incremental progress, where things generally improve over time. Rather, Jewish history taught them that human events can change radically, for good or bad, and that such change was not the result of a general, progressive providence, but of a transcendent yet unpredictable God—the God of the Hebrew Bible.

In line with their vision, Kahane and Taubes liked to pose “uncomfortable questions for comfortable Jews,” as Samuel Goldman reminds us in his feature essay this month. To more deeply understand these two fascinating and controversial figures, and how their ideas and legacies affect American Jews today, we’re bringing Goldman together in conversation with the Harvard scholar J.J. Kimche and the Jewish studies professor Sara Yael Hirschhorn, each of whom wrote reviews of a recent biography of Kahane.

The discussion took place on Thursday, July 21, at 12 pm Eastern time. You can read and watch it below.