Yoram Hazony, president of The Herzl Institute in Jerusalem, is the author of four books, including The Jewish State: The Struggle for Israel’s Soul (“a remarkable combination of intellectual history, political analysis, and moral polemic” – William Kristol) and The Philosophy of the Hebrew Scriptures (a “paradigm-shifting work of immense significance” – Lord Jonathan Sacks). He lives in Israel with his wife and nine children.
What books are currently on your nightstand?
I always have the Tanach on my nightstand. Beyond that, I’m working on a book on God right now for Cambridge University Press, so all the other books are related to that project:
- A.J. Heschel, Torah From Heaven
- Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin, Nefesh Hachaim
- Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God
- Mary Hesse, Models and Analogies in Science
What’s the best book about Judaism you’ve ever read?
If you want to set aside the Bible, Talmud, and Midrash as being too obvious, I would say Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed. Although there is much in it I disagree with, it had a huge impact on me when I was young. It’s still the most successful effort at laying out the philosophical heart of the Torah worldview in a single volume.
What kind of reader were you as a child? Your favorite books and authors?
As a child, I read just about everything in the library. But the things that most captured my imagination were books like J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers. I agree with those who say that works of fantasy are especially well suited to getting young people to think about issues such as personal and national loyalty, the rights and duties of citizenship, and similar things.
Among Jewish books, I was most moved by Menachem Begin’s The Revolt and Chaim Potok’s The Chosen.
If you had to name one book that made you who you are today, what would it be?
The Book of Jeremiah. I was in graduate school and decided to read the Bible straight through. But it was not until I got to Jeremiah that I suddenly felt as if the scales fell from my eyes. For the first time, I felt as though the biblical text had become completely translucent, and I was seeing the world directly through the eyes of the prophet. Suddenly, I could recognize that his thoughts were not about something far removed, but about my own world, here and now.
You recently helped establish Shalem College, Israel’s first liberal arts college. What books in your estimation are crucial to a Jewish liberal arts education?
When I was working on the Shalem College core curriculum, what motivated me and my committee was the idea that every student has to experience what it’s like to have a deep encounter with at least a small number of the most profound Jewish and Western texts that have shaped our world.
In Judaism, we focused the most attention on Bible, Talmud and Midrash, Maimonides, and Zohar. For Western texts, we placed the greatest emphasis on Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Kant, and Nietzsche.
As the author of the highly-acclaimed The Jewish State: The Struggle for Israel’s Soul, what books do you find essential to properly understand Zionism and the state of Israel as it exists today?
I would start with the best classic works of Zionist thought, which are Moses Hess’ Rome and Jerusalem and Theodor Herzl’s Diaries. Please read the diary in its entirety. The abridged versions I have seen do a lot more harm than good. For a highly readable basic history of Zionism and Israel, I would start with Conor Cruise O’Brien’s The Siege.