Providence and Power: Ten Portraits in Jewish Statesmanship

by Meir Y. Soloveichik

Overview

Ever since Plato’s Republic, the study of statecraft has been a staple of Western discourse, and so has the study of particular leaders. Although Jewish scholars, thinkers, and popularizers have contributed notably to this genre, strikingly few have turned their attention to the history of Jewish leaders—that is, leaders specifically of the Jewish people—in particular. 

And yet there has been no lack of such outstanding figures, from the biblical period of Jewish sovereignty in the Holy Land and once again in present-day Israel or during the millennia of exile and formal Jewish statelessness in the Diaspora. This book, devoted to ten of the most colorful, fascinating, and consequential Jewish political leaders over the past three millennia, fills the gap. 

Among the ten, men and women alike, some were firmly bound to Judaic religious teachings and others less so, but guiding all of them was the fixed lodestar of their own Jewish identity. By the mid-20th century, the legacy of past generations would inspire modern successors bent on the re-founding of the sovereign Jewish state, one of the greatest political feats in human history. 

In delving into the unique circumstances and predicaments faced by these ten, and into the characteristics that mark them and their statesmanship as specifically Jewish, readers will also become familiar with what Jewish tradition has to say about the demands of statesmanship and, by inference, with the qualities needed by successful Jewish political leaders encountering the challenges of today and tomorrow.    

 

 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781641773287
Publisher:	Encounter Books
Publication date:	06/06/2023
Pages:	224
Sales rank:	138,294
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Born and raised in Chicago, Meir Soloveichik attended Yeshiva College in New York, studied religious philosophy at the Yale Divinity School, and earned his PhD in religion from Princeton University. He serves as Director of Yeshiva University’s Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought and as Rabbi at Congregation Shearith Israel in New York, the oldest Jewish congregation in the United States. 

Soloveichik has published widely on both Jewish and American history and has lectured around the world on the intersection of religious and political thought. Most recently, Bible 365, a six-days-a-week podcast that guides listeners through the entire Hebrew Bible, has struck a deep chord among audiences religious and non-religious alike. Soloveichik has testified before the U.S. Congress on the subjects of law and religion and served as a member of the State Department’s Commission on Inalienable Human Rights. 

Editorial Reviews

05/29/2023

Rabbi Soloveichik (co-editor, Proclaim Liberty Throughout the Land) underwhelms in these superficial profiles of Jewish leaders who harnessed their “power on the behalf of people.” Among other selective accounts that tend to omit all but his subjects’ most laudable traits, Soloveichik praises King David’s “monarchical magnificence” but glosses over less flattering biblical accounts, including how he sent Uriah the Hittite to his death to hide that he’d slept with Uriah’s wife. The discussion of Menachem Begin (1913–1992) proves similarly uneven, as it frames the Israeli prime minister as “the ultimate embodiment of Jewish statesmanship” but fails to discuss Begin’s role in the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, which led to the massacre of Palestinians by Lebanese Christians in Israeli-controlled areas. Even Begin’s landmark peace treaty with Egypt is given short shrift in a recap that focuses on distracting anecdotes, including Begin’s insistence that Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s arrival in Israel not conflict with the Sabbath. Soloveichik casts an admirably wide net, spotlighting the biblical Esther as well as British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli, but his tendency to skate over less flattering facts and rely on sometimes-problematic sources, such as the works of historian Josephus, undercuts the profiles’ rigor. Readers seeking more nuanced analyses of Jewish leadership will be better served by Michael Walzer’s In God’s Shadow. (June)

Publishers Weekly

Drawing upon a mastery of Jewish diplomatic history from King David to David Ben Gurion, an equally astounding familiarity with American culture, and a literary gift that would be the envy of many novelists, Rabbi Meir Soloveichik has produced a book that is a pleasure to read and a delight to the mind.”

—Norman Podhoretz, Former editor-in-chief of Commentary magazine and author of Why Are Jews Liberals?

 

“Meir Soloveichik has given us a fascinating read. Providence and Power is more than engaging, however. It's also an important contribution to the ongoing reflection by multiple parties on the relationship of religious conviction to statecraft-and it will thus reward close reading by political thinkers, lawmakers, people of biblical faith, and interested citizens everywhere.”

—George Weigel, Distinguished Senior Fellow and William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies, Ethics and Public Policy Center

 

“Winston Churchill once told a young American to study history ‘as therein lies all the secrets of statecraft.’ Rabbi Soloveichik has taken this advice to heart, revealing the secrets of Jewish statesmanship over the millennia with a historian’s scholarship but also with a novelist’s eye for anecdote and a pleasing wit. By drawing out common themes, this is also an important handbook for leadership in our own times.”=

—Andrew Roberts, author: ‘Churchill: Walking with Destiny’

 

How did the Jewish people continue to govern itself through the hard millennia of separation from its land? This exciting book locates a key to the mystery in the overlooked area of Jewish statecraft, and in men and women—monarchs, scholar-rabbis, self-appointed leaders—who negotiated successfully between divine providence and earthly power. Rabbi Soloveichik’s uniquely personal engagement with the whole sweep of Jewish experience makes his telling of their stories every bit as inspiring as its subjects. 

—Ruth Wisse, Professor Emerita, Harvard University, author: Free As A Jew

From the Publisher