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Meyer Soloveitch was the Erasmus Lecturer for First Things in 2020.

His lecture was entitled Lincoln's Almost Chosen People, later than published in the magazine.

His new book, after many other writings, is Providence and Power, 10 portraits in Jewish statesmanship.

That's our topic today, and boy, do we need to hear a lot about statesmanship in year

2023. Welcome, Rabbi Soloveitchik. Thank you so much, Mark. It's a pleasure to speak with you.

Now, you say, we jump right in. To the book, you say that Jewish statesmanship joins, quote, political genius with

ardent faith. Is this unusual for the Jewish religion a little more so than we find in other

religions? Well, so in answer to that, it's a very important question. Let's discuss very briefly what

I mean by the joining of statesmanship of faith, or, if you will,

Providence and Power. The archetype of this dialectic, that is Providence and Power, is King David,

about whom I actually have a piece in First Things, where some of these themes were first fleshed out.

When you read the Psalms of King David, what strikes you is, it's not clear when he's describing

actions that he freely took and when he's describing the providential unfolding of God's chosen people.

David is the biblical ideal of statesmanship,

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