An Interview with Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, Scholar, Rabbi, and Senior Fellow, Tikvah
At a time when faith is increasingly viewed as something to be kept out of public life, one of America’s most compelling Jewish scholars and public intellectuals is making the opposite case — that religious liberty is not merely tolerated in America but is essential to its founding character and constitutional order.
Our guest on this episode of Voices of Freedom is Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, rabbi of Congregation Shearith Israel in New York — the oldest Jewish congregation in the United States — and Director of the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University. A Senior Fellow at Tikvah and a scholar who has lectured at the Vatican and at Christian institutions across America and Europe, Rabbi Soloveichik brings both rigorous scholarship and the natural authority of a congregational rabbi to the most urgent questions about faith, freedom, and the American experiment. His most recent book, Providence and Power: Ten Portraits in Jewish Statesmanship, explores the qualities of moral courage and virtue that great leaders have drawn from faith across centuries.
Rabbi Soloveichik is also a 2026 Bradley Prize winner.
Topics Discussed on this Episode:
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Rabbi Soloveichik’s path from a distinguished rabbinic family to Princeton, the synagogue, and the public square
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What America’s oldest Jewish congregation reveals about the relationship between faith and the American Founding
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The resurgence of antisemitism in the West and what it tells us about the fragility of freedom
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The case for religious liberty as essential — not incidental — to America’s constitutional order
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What it means to receive a Bradley Prize