The societies of America, and the West more broadly, face a crisis of perpetuation, where younger generations no longer believe in the founding promise of our common life, know very much about our common history, or feel responsible for stewarding a precious civilizational inheritance. The family is the social institution that inaugurates children into a shared tradition. In this preview of Yoram Hazony’s forthcoming book about conservatism, the distinguished Israeli author joins Jonathan Silver of Mosaic to analyze what a family is, how it works, and how strong families are necessary to sustain healthy societies and great nations.
Yoram Hazony
Yoram Hazony is an Israeli philosopher, Bible scholar and political theorist. He is president of the Herzl Institute in Jerusalem, chairman of the Edmund Burke Foundation. and the founder and former head of the Shalem Center in Jerusalem, a research institute that conducted nearly two decades of pioneering work in the fields of philosophy, political theory, Bible, Talmud, Jewish and Zionist history, Middle East Studies and archaeology. He is also the director of the John Templeton Foundation’s project in Jewish Philosophical Theology.
Dr. Hazony researches and writes in the fields of philosophy and theology, political theory and intellectual history. His latest is Conservatism: A Rediscovery, and his previous book The Virtue of Nationalism, won the Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s Conservative Book of the Year Award in 2019. His other books include The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture, God and Politics in Esther, and The Jewish State: The Struggle for Israel’s Soul. His articles and essays have appeared in publications such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Commentary, and the New Republic, among others.
He obtained his doctorate in Political Theory at Rutgers University, and was the first editor of Princeton’s conservative undergraduate student journal. He lives in Jerusalem with his wife Yael Hazony. They have nine children.