Van Leer Institute Series on Ideas

New Books Network
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Interviews with thought-leaders about their new books. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/van-leer-institute

  1. 2h ago

    Anthony Julius, "Abraham: The First Jew" (Yale UP, 2025)

    Abraham: The First Jew (Yale UP, 2025) is the story of Abraham, the first Jew, portrayed as two lives lived by one person, paralleling the contradictions in Judaism throughout its history  In this new biography of Abraham, Judaism’s foundational figure, Anthony Julius offers an account of the origins of a fundamental struggle within Judaism between skepticism and faith, critique and affirmation, thinking for oneself and thinking under the direction of another. Julius describes Abraham’s life as two separate lives, and as a version of the collective life of the Jewish people. Abraham’s first life is an early adulthood of questioning the polytheism of his home city of Ur Kasdim until its ruler, Nimrod, condemns him to death and he is rescued, he believes, by a miracle. In his second life, Abraham’s focus is no longer on critique but rather on conversion and on his leadership over his growing household, until God’s command that he sacrifice his son Isaac. This test, the Akedah (or “Binding”), ends with another miracle, as he believes, but as Julius argues, it is also a catastrophe for Abraham. The Akedah represents for him an unsurpassed horizon—and in Jewish life thereafter. This book focuses on Abraham as leader of the first Jewish project, Judaism, and the unresolvable, insurmountable crisis that the Akedah represents—both in his leadership and in Judaism itself.   Host: Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D.  Guest: Anthony Julius, Deputy Chairman, international law firm of Mishkon de Reya, and professor, University of London.    Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  2. Aug 28

    Encore - Shai Lavi, "Bioethics and Biopolitics in Israel: Socio-legal, Political and Empirical Analysis" (Cambridge UP, 2019)

    Once upon a time, or so we’ve been told, medical ethics were confined to the patient-doctor relationship. As long as doctors were true to their Hippocratic oaths, as long as they acted with compassion and wisdom, then all expectations were met. Life is more complicated today, and so is healthcare: an undertaking, like all others, that is influenced by social, political, legal and cultural factors. Nothing is value-free. In Bioethics and Biopolitics in Israel: Socio-legal, Political and Empirical Analysis (Cambridge University Press, 2019), Professor Shai Lavi and his colleagues have produced a groundbreaking work that offers a novel understanding of Israeli bioethics. It is a milestone in the comparative literature of bioethics. Bringing together a range of experts, the book's interdisciplinary structure employs a contemporary, sociopolitical-oriented approach to bioethics issues, with an emphasis on empirical analysis, that will appeal not only to scholars of bioethics, but also to students of law, medicine, humanities, and social sciences around the world. Its focus on the development of bioethics in Israel serves as a template for cross-cultural and transcultural research into the moral, ethical, political and social aspects of bioethics. This episode originally aired on 8/12/2019 and was republished on 8/28/2026. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/van-leer-institute Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  3. Aug 14

    Encore - Eric Hoffer's "The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements" (1951): A Discussion with Jay Garfinkel

    A stevedore on the San Francisco docks in the 1940s, who eventually taught at the University of California at Berkeley, Eric Hoffer wrote philosophical treatises in his spare time while living in the railroad yards. The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements—the first and most famous of his books—was made into a bestseller when President Eisenhower cited it during one of the earliest television press conferences. Called a “brilliant and original inquiry” and “a genuine contribution to our social thought” by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., this landmark in the field of social psychology is completely relevant and essential for understanding the world today. It delivers a visionary, highly provocative look into the mind of the fanatic and a penetrating study of how an individual becomes one. When it was first published in 1951. the New Yorker wrote, “Its theme is political fanaticism, with which it deals severely and brilliantly.” The Wall Street Journal agreed, calling The True Believer the famous bestseller with “concise insight into what drives the mind of the fanatic and the dynamics of a mass movement” by the legendary San Francisco longshoreman. This episode was originally published on April 10, 2024. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/van-leer-institute Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  4. Jul 13

    Jay Belsky, "Nature of Nurture: Rethinking Why and How Childhood Adversity Shapes Development" (Harvard UP, 2026)

    Children who grow up in troubled circumstances―experiencing deprivation or instability, living in a dangerous neighborhood or an abusive family―are more prone to aggression, recklessness, and sexual promiscuity later in life. To most of us, the lesson is clear: adverse childhood conditions make human development go awry. In The Nature of Nurture: Rethinking Why and How Childhood Adversity Shapes Development (Harvard University Press, 2026), renowned developmental psychologist Jay Belsky challenges this interpretation and offers an exciting alternative based on Darwinian theory. There is no reason to assume, he points out, that the psychology of “well-behaved” people is normal while that of “antisocial” adults is aberrant. Instead, the supposedly dysfunctional behaviors correlated with childhood adversity could well be ingenious adaptations to harsh environments. If you are surrounded by danger and uncertainty, then being quick to lash out at potential threats and having lots of offspring at an early age are good ways to maximize your reproductive chances. From an evolutionary perspective, having just a few children and lavishing care on each works well in a stable world, but not in a perilous one. Belsky exposes the romanticism underlying our idealized notions that “natural” equals “good” and that nature intends to maximize human happiness and well-being. When instead we take seriously the fact that humans, too, have been shaped by evolutionary pressures, we can better understand why, how, and for whom childhood experience shapes later life. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/van-leer-institute Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  5. Jun 24

    Antizionism as a Distinct Anti-Jewish Bigotry with Adam Louis-Klein

    In contemporary discourse, antizionism is treated either as legitimate political critique or as bigotry only when it resembles recognizable forms of classical antisemitism. This article challenges that assumption. I argue that antizionism is a coherent ideological formation with a distinct genealogy, stable core tropes, and a specific political logic. Tracing its development across the Nazi–Islamist axis, Soviet propaganda, and Western settler-colonial theory, I identify a recurring triad of libels—colonizer, apartheid, genocide—that compose its discourse. Combining genealogical reconstruction with anthropological description, I show that antizionism constitutes a political inversion of classical antisemitism. Whereas classical antisemitism was anti-assimilationist, casting Jews as alien outsiders, antizionism is assimilationist, denying the legitimacy of Jewish peoplehood and indigeneity. This inversion reclassifies the Jew by reversing the cultural categories through which Jews are imagined, recoding the Jew from non-European infiltrator to white colonizer. Recognizing this structure clarifies antizionism as a distinct contemporary formation of anti-Jewish bigotry. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/van-leer-institute Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  6. Jun 9

    Matti Friedman, "Out of the Sky: Heroism and Rebirth in Nazi Europe" (Spiegel & Grau, 2026)

    Was it one of the war’s most memorable feats of valor or an act of desperation, even madness? In Out of the Sky: Heroism and Rebirth in Nazi Europe (Spiegel & Grau, 2026), Matti Friedman unravels one of the strangest episodes of World War II: In 1944, a team of young women and men who had escaped the Holocaust made the inconceivable choice to parachute back into Nazi-occupied Europe under the cover of a British military operation. Yet by the end of the mission, not a single Nazi was harmed and not a single Jew was saved, and many of the parachutists died in the process. Even so, some of their names would become legendary, especially that of twenty-three-year-old Hannah Senesh, the author of the beloved Hebrew song “Eli, Eli.” Their story would become one of the young state of Israel’s founding myths—but what exactly was the mission, and what had the parachutists actually accomplished? What made them heroes? Using thousands of original documents from once-secret files, manuscripts, memoirs, and unpublished letters, Matti Friedman follows four of the parachutists from the spring of 1944 to the operation’s dramatic end that winter. In Out of the Sky, he tells the gripping and surprising tale of a forgotten moment, demonstrating how storytelling itself can have a power even greater than warfare. And in exploring the line between myth and reality, heroism and futility, he creates an argument that has resonance in our own time. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/van-leer-institute Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  7. May 16

    Stuart Katz, "Still Here: A Story of Living with Suicidal Ideation" (Independent, 2026)

    Still Here is a powerful and unflinching novel about chronic suicidal ideation—not as a moment of crisis, but as a daily presence. Daniel is a husband, a father, and a respected professional. He shows up. He functions. He is, by every external measure, fine. But every morning begins the same way. A thought. A negotiation. A choice. Told with striking emotional precision, Still Here takes readers inside an experience that is often hidden, misunderstood, or reduced to moments of emergency. This is not that story. This is the story of what it means to live with it over years, across a lifetime, while continuing to build a life, a family, and a sense of purpose. Interwoven throughout the novel are clinical sidebars that offer insight into the psychology of suicidal thinking, making this book not only deeply human but also deeply informative for: those who struggle silently those who love someone who does clinicians, educators, and helpers This is not a rescue manual. It is something rarer. A book that stays. If you are in immediate distress, please seek support. Crisis resources are included at the end of the book. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/van-leer-institute Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  8. May 12

    Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, "The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us" (Liveright Publishing, 2026)

    MacArthur Fellow and National Humanities Medalist Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, author of Plato at the Googleplex and The Mind-Body Problem, returns with a revelatory book about the primal drive that in our species alone has been transformed into one of our most persistent and universal motivations: the longing to matter. Drawing on biology, psychology, and philosophy, in The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us (Liveright Publishing, 2026) Goldstein argues that this need to matter―and the various “mattering projects” it inspires―is the source of our greatest progress and our deepest conflicts: the very crux of the human experience. Goldstein brings this profound idea to life through unforgettable stories of famous and not-so-famous people pursuing their unique mattering projects: the ragtime genius Scott Joplin, whose dedication to his ignored masterpiece, Treemonisha, ended in tragedy; the pioneering psychologist William James, who rose above the depression of his young adulthood to become perhaps the first great theorist of mattering; an impoverished Chinese woman who rescued abandoned newborns from the trash; and a neo-Nazi skinhead who as a young man dealt racial violence to feel he mattered but ultimately renounced that hateful past after realizing that mattering isn’t a zero-sum game. These portraits illuminate how our instinct for significance shapes identity, relationships, culture, and conflict―and they point the way to a future where we all might see that there is, fundamentally, enough mattering to go around. Deeply revealing and insightful, and decades in the making, The Mattering Instinct is a must read for those curious about why we seek to matter to ourselves and others―and how this insatiable longing that drives us apart may be the key to finally understanding each other. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/van-leer-institute Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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Interviews with thought-leaders about their new books. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/van-leer-institute

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