Something great happened a few weeks ago on the Upper East Side of the Borough of Manhattan

in New York City. A new school opened its doors and welcomed the members of its inaugural

classes of students. Emmett Classical Academy is America's first Jewish classical school.

It's designed for fifth to twelfth grade students, and it is animated by a vision of the

majesty of Western civilization, the responsibilities of American citizenship, high standards

of excellence in classical languages, mathematics

and science, and the soul-shaping power of music, poetry, and the visual arts.

That is the classical aspect of Emmett Classical Academy.

Emmett, many of our listeners may know, means truth in Hebrew, and joining together with a pedagogical

vision in Western civilization is a full curriculum in the Hebrew language, the Hebrew Bible,

and rabbinic literature, and the history, politics, and meaning of modern Israel.

Emmett students are formed and acculturated to assume responsibility for these two strands of their

inheritance, Western and Jewish, and in small seminars, come to see the intricate ways that

Hebraic and Western traditions influence one another. Welcome to the Tikva podcast. I'm your host,

Jonathan Silver. The establishment of Emet is significant in and of itself,

but it is even more significant given this cultural, political, and ideological moment. The very

pillars of this new school are deemed irrelevant, if not shameful, by any number of ideologically

charged elite private schools, many of which were abandoned by students

in Emmett's first classes. This past Sunday, Emmett held a convocation ceremony to celebrate its

inaugural year. This week, my guest is Emmett's founding head of school, Dr. Abe Unger. We talk about

Emmett's founding, the big cultural and educational questions to which

Emmett holds itself forth as an answer, what it's like to learn at Emmett and its vision of

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