2018 Conference
This October, over 800 Jewish conservatives joined the Jewish Leadership Conference for our second annual conference on Jews and Conservatism. We explored the power of conservative ideas to strengthen the Jewish people and to revitalize American civic life. And we discussed how Jewish ideas and Jewish leadership can strengthen conservatism and renew the institutions of civil society in the United States, in Israel and beyond. Thank you for spending the day with us in New York City, and strengthening this growing community that believes in American exceptionalism and Jewish excellence.
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2018 CONFERENCE SPEAKERS
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Natan Sharansky
Refusnik, Human Rights Pioneer, Israeli Leader, and Chairman of the Jewish Agency, Natan Sharansky is the winner of the Inaugural Tikvah Prize.
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Roger Hertog
Co-chairman of the Jewish Leadership Conference, President of the Hertog Foundation, Chairman of the Tikvah Fund. Noted businessman and philanthropist.
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Ayelet Shaked
Israel’s Minister of Justice since May 2015, Minister Shaked is a member of the Bayit Yehudi (Jewish Home) party in the Israeli Knesset.
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Ruth Wisse
Award-winning professor of Yiddish literature, author on Jewish history and culture with books including Jews and Power and If I Am Not For Myself: The Liberal Betrayal of the Jews, Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Tikvah Fund.
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Rabbi Meir Y. Soloveichik
Director of the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University, Rabbi of Shearith Israel congregation in New York City, writer on theology, ethics, and Jewish-Christian relations.
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William Kristol
William Kristol is the editor at large of The Weekly Standard, is a regular on ABC’s This Week and on ABC’s special events and election coverage, and appears frequently on other leading political commentary shows.
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Rich Lowry
Rich Lowry was named editor of National Review in 1997. He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and a variety of other publications.
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Daniel Johnson
Author, journalist, and founding editor of Standpoint, a monthly British cultural and political magazine.
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Elliott Abrams
Senior at the Council on Foreign Relations and former Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Adviser in the administration of George W. Bush.
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Eric Cohen
Co-Chairman of the Jewish Leadership Conference and has been the Executive Director of the Tikvah Fund since 2007.
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Jonathan Silver
Senior Director at the Tikvah Fund, where he hosts the Tikvah Podcast on Great Jewish Essays and Ideas, Tikvah’s library of Online Courses, and oversees a range of educational programs and publishing ventures.
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Alan Cooperman
Director of religion research at Pew Research Center, he is an expert on religion’s role in U.S. politics and was a co-author of the Pew study, “A Portrait of American Jews.”
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Robert Nicholson
Executive Director of The Philos Project, an American nonprofit that seeks to promote positive Christian engagement in the Middle East, and co-publisher of Providence: A Journal of Christianity and American Foreign Policy.
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Melanie Phillips
Melanie Phillips, journalist, broadcaster and author, is Britain’s best known and most controversial champion of traditional values in the culture war.
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Rabbi Yehoshua Pfeffer
Heads of the Tikvah Fund’s chareidi education division in Israel, teaches at Yeshivas Chedvas HaTorah, and editor-in-chief of the new Tzarich Iyun (“Needs Further Study”) online journal.
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Seth M. Siegel
Author of the New York Times bestseller Let There Be Water: Israel’s Solution for a Water-Starved World. Noted businessman, activist, and writer.
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Martin Kramer
Founding president of Shalem College in Jerusalem, prolific author and teacher.
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Yoram Hazony
President of the Herzl Institute in Jerusalem and chairman of the Edmund Burke Foundation. Author of The Virtue of Nationalism and noted philosopher, Bible scholar and political theorist.
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Caroline Glick
Senior contributing and chief columnist for the Jerusalem Post, and a senior columnist at Breitbart and Maariv. She is the author of The Israeli Solution: A One State Plan for Peace in the Middle East, (Crown 2014).
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Dan Senor
Co-author of bestseller Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle. Co-founder and a member of the board of directors of the Foreign Policy Initiative. Former advisor to Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney, and the administration of George W. Bush.
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Jonathan Haidt
Social psychologist at the NYU-Stern School of Business. Received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1992, and spent most of his career (1995-2011) at the University of Virginia.
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Peter Berkowitz
The Tad and Dianne Taube Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. 2017 winner of the Bradley Prize. Dean of students for the Hertog Political Studies Program and for The Public Interest Fellowship.
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Arthur C. Brooks
President of the American Enterprise Institute and bestselling author of 11 books, including The Conservative Heart: How to Build a Fairer, Happier, and More Prosperous America (Broadside Books, 2015).
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Matthew Continetti
Matthew Continetti is editor and co-founder of The Washington Free Beacon and a columnist for Commentary magazine.
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Elliot Kaufman
Elliot Kaufman is the inaugural Joseph Rago Memorial Fellow at The Wall Street Journal Editorial Page.
2018 Program Sessions
- Jewish Ideas and the American Public Square
- The Political Lessons
of the Soviet Jewry Movement - Religion and Nationalism:
A Conservative View - The Moral Case
for Conservative Ideas - The Education
of a Jewish Conservative - The Demographic Future of American Jewry: Strategy and Insights from the Pew Report
- Keynotes
- A Tribute to the Legacy of
Charles Krauthammer Z"L - Judges, Lawmakers, and
the Future of Israeli Conservatism - Jewish Conservatism
Among the Almost Chosen People - BDS and the Jewish Institutions
of America - The Strategy
of Jewish Conservatism
- Israel and World Politics
- Jews, Muslims,
and the Crisis of Europe - Israel’s Founding Fathers
- Israel’s Haredi Challenge
- The Meaning
of Israeli Exceptionalism