The Future of Religious Liberty

The Tikvah Podcast

Tikvah

Judaism, Politics, Religion & Spirituality, News

4.6 • 620 Ratings

🗓️ 5 July 2017

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Religious liberty is on trial in America, both in legislative debates at the state and federal level and in court cases now working their way through the judicial system. As the environment for religious traditionalists becomes more hostile, observant Jews will increasingly confront some difficult questions: Will American society continue to respect the religious freedom of traditional communities? Will the moral teachings and ritual practices of Orthodox schools and synagogues get restricted, and will leaders of these institutions be kept out of the public square? What can Jewish leaders and activists do to help protect and preserve religious freedom in America—not only for Jews, but for all Americans?

In order to help us think through these issues, Tikvah invited two of the nation’s foremost experts on religious liberty to the Tikvah Center in New York City as part of our lecture series on “Torah Jews and America.” The Heritage Foundation’s Ryan Anderson helped provide a general overview of the religious freedom issue in America today, and Professor Daniel Mark of Villanova University, and the Chairman of the U.S. Commission on Religious Freedom explored the unique challenges that increasingly face by the Orthodox Jewish community.

This event took place on June 12, 2017.

Transcript

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0:00.0	So my name is Jonathan Silver.
0:06.0	It's a pleasure to be with all of you and to have you here.
0:10.0	This series on Torah Jews in America is designed to help us think a little bit as a religious community
0:17.0	about the issues facing America, how we might reason together about them.
0:21.2	And I thought, just to begin, that that's a profoundly democratic thing to do.
0:26.1	So I hope you'll take tonight as an exercise, as a civic exercise, that helps us see the
0:32.2	trade-offs in American public life a little bit more clearly.
0:36.3	If you've not yet met Dr. Ryan Anderson or Professor Danielle Mark, our panelists,
0:41.3	you'll get to see two great leaders with two great minds,
0:44.3	but each one uniquely disciplined by the arts of civility.
0:48.3	More about each of them in due course.
0:50.3	But tonight we're going to discuss religious freedom in America,
0:53.3	so I thought I'd just begin with some context.
0:56.0	The Jewish immigrants who made a new home in America throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries
1:02.0	came predominantly from Central and Eastern Europe,
1:05.0	and they carried on their backs deep historical memories of religious persecution,
1:09.0	and especially religious persecution carried out or authorized by government.
1:14.6	So when the new Jewish Americans arrived on these shores, they thought, I think reasonably, they thought that a secular government,
1:22.6	lacking distinct religious purposes, would leave them alone.
1:26.6	Secular politics would be less likely to metastasize into anti-Semitism.
1:32.3	Anti-Semitism is the reason they came here in the first place.
1:35.3	It made sense.
	...

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