The Work of a Generation

I am grateful to Yuval Levin, Yoram Hazony, Yedidia Stern, and Meir Soloveichik for their thoughtful, serious, and penetrating comments on “The Spirit of Jewish Conservatism.” All four are important thinkers; each is a leader of an important Jewish or conservative institution; and I have read, conversed with, and learned from each of them for many years. Their responses raise a variety of points, and I will try to address many of those points. But I want to focus first on what seem to me the two biggest questions: is God central to Jewish conservatism, and what is the relationship between Jewish economic thinking and conservative economic thinking?

Let me begin with God, the Beginning of all beginnings. In his response to my essay, Yoram Hazony writes the following:

I am troubled . . . by one central issue. I do not understand the absence of God and Scripture from Cohen’s list of central “values and ideas” that he wants Jewish conservatives to conserve. To me, if his ambitious vision is to succeed, these have to be positioned at the head of the line.