Good evening, everyone. It's been 38 years since I was in Jerusalem, and I can tell you,

it's improved. Everything about this city is just wonderful, and I haven't been anywhere I've enjoyed

so much for a very long time, so I won't be leaving it that long again before returning.

Now, we're talking this evening about modernity, religion, and morality.

Those are very general ideas, so we're going to try and make it a bit more specific.

And you will have heard, many of you will have participated in the marvelous seminar

we've been running this week.

So now I'm going to introduce our two main speakers, probably both of them known to most

of you, but anyway, George Weigel is both a Catholic with a capital C and a Catholic with a small

C scholar, a truly transatlantic intellectual, as at home in history and theology, as he is in

biography, and what they used to call the higher journalism.

I have reviewed several of his books, and I cannot recommend them too highly.

This week we've been discussing themes from the Cube and the Cathedral, which I described,

I looked up my old review, when it appeared in 2005 as a sumptuous banquet stuffed with enough ideas for several books and we look forward to developing his ideas further this evening.

Yoram Hazoni is one of Israel's most distinguished political and theological thinkers.

His books, especially the Jewish state and most recently the philosophy of Hebrew scripture, have made a big impact right around the world.

Three years ago, I had the honor to chair a fascinating discussion about the Hebrew Bible between

Yoram and Rabbi Jonathan Sachacks, which I believe you can

find on YouTube. It's well worth looking up that discussion too. Here in Jerusalem, Yoram founded

the Shalom Center, which is now morphed into Israel's first liberal arts college, and he is also

president of the Herzl Institute.

So the way we're going to do this, I think, is that I shall ask some questions,

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