Welcome to the Tikva podcast and great Jewish essays and ideas.

I'm your host, Jonathan Silver.

This week's episode is a live recording of a conversation that took place in front of one of the Tikva Fund's educational programs in New York City.

Tickf's executive director interviews one of his mentors, someone who, for many of us at Tikva,

is a revered teacher, an example of intellectual taste and moral seriousness, Dr. Leon Kass.

The occasion for their conversation is the publication of Dr. Cass' new book of

essays leading a worthy life, which draws together essays on the things that matter most to a life

well-lived, love, family, and friendship, human excellence, and human dignity, learning, teaching,

and truth, and finally, the aspirations of humankind,

which brings together Dr. Cass's writing on Aristotle, the Hebrew Bible, and Abraham Lincoln's

Gettysburg Address. If you enjoy this podcast, you can subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher,

or I hope you'll leave us a rating and a review. If you'd like to learn more about our work at Tikva, you can visit our website,

tikfafund.org, and follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

Enjoy this special conversation between Eric Cohen and Dr. Leon Kass.

So how to introduce Dr. Kass?

I had the great privilege of getting to know Dr. Cass during his leadership

of the president's counsel in bioethics, where he had been named by the president to chair

this important commission. And me, along with a couple of other interesting young people,

including Alan, including Yuval Levin, had the real privilege of working with him. And for me,

that was kind of my graduate school.

But it wasn't only a graduate school in ideas. It was a graduate school in character. And there are many moments I could share. But one of the ones that sticks out was when you and I were at

this office pretty late at night going through revisions to one of our reports. And if you step back, you'll realize the insanity of this.

...