On June 20 and June 22, 2023, the Zahava and Moshael Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought hosted its annual summer seminars for high school students, Jewish and Western Texts in Conversation. Held in Manhattan, the respective programs for women and men brought together over forty students to participate in unique interdisciplinary seminars and activities, learn at the collegiate level and engage with the YU Straus Center’s renowned faculty.

The program began with breakfast and words of welcome from Dr. Shaina Trapedo, Straus Resident Scholar and Recruitment Officer. Her session, titled “Talking Talmud with the Founding Fathers,” explored the relationship between Founding Fathers Thomas Jefferson and John Adams and their written exchanges about the Hebrew Bible and its exegetical tradition. In discussion, students explored what the correspondence between Jefferson and Adams reveals about the extent to which the history, morality, and aesthetics of the Hebrew Bible were the subject of interest to the Founding Fathers and the framing of the Declaration and Constitution. Throughout the day, seminars covered a variety of themes, texts, and questions centered around the connection between Torah and various cultural and political elements of Western thought as a sampler of the breadth and depth of Straus Center courses.

In his seminar “Torah and Western Thought: the Ethos of the YU Straus Center,” Straus Director Rabbi Dr. Meir Soloveichik explored the profound impact the Torah has had on the West, more so than any other text. Rabbi Soloveichik emphasized that the worldview of the Torah has the potential to influence the trajectory of America's future while remaining an essential pillar of America’s founding. In her second session of the day, titled “Torah and Poetry: Psalms and the American Founding,” Dr. Trapedo shifted the conversation to a contemporary lens, inviting students to think about how recent auction prices of literary works including Shakespeare’s Folio, the Bay Psalm Book, and the Codex Sasson Bible might give us insight into how society views and values different types of wisdom, and their perceived monetary and moral value in the 21st century.

The next session, “Torah and Art: Yetziat Mitzrayim and the Birth of Jewish Political Thought,” featured an on site visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art with Rabbi Soloveichik. Throughout the tour, Rabbi Soloviechik showed students how often overlooked artifcants and hieroglyphics founds in the Egyptian collection reveal the deeper political aspects of the Exodus– including the Paschal lamb, the ten plagues, and iconic unleavened bread of the Seder– which have been central to Jewish life and faith for centruies.

Following the tour, a session on “Torah and Zionism: Israel’s Declaration,” was delivered by Dr. Neil Rogachevsky, Straus Center Associate Director and author of Israel’s Declaration of Independence: The History and Political Theory of the Nation’s Founding Document. He emphasized the importance of the Declaration from the political perspective; without a political state, the trajectory of the Zionist movement would have been halted. While idealistically, the Declaration could have detailed a more specific outline for the future state of Israel, this document was born out of necessity.

Finally, “Torah and Literature: Myth and Monotheism,” led by Straus Center Clinical Assistant Professor Rabbi Dr. Dov Lerner, featured an analysis of monotheism and the significance of the repetition in throughout Tanakh and our daily liturgy that “God is one.” Rabbi Lerner explained the danger of a Dualistic society in which the belief in a “good” god and a “bad” god exacerbates rather than addresses the issue of theodicy. The belief in one God is essential to understanding that while the world is complex and unpredictable, God is at once omnipotent and incomprehensible.  The respective seminars concluded with a panel featuring Straus Scholars Allie Orgen (SCW '24), Yonatan Kurz (YC ‘23), and Reuben Hartman (YC ‘23) where they highlighted their favorite elements of the Straus Scholar program, various classes they took and seminars they attended, as well as leadership roles, fellowships, and internships they were involved in throughout their time in the program.

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