Wikipedia

Yoram Hazony

Yoram Reuben Hazony (born 1964)[1] is an Israeli-American philosopher, Bible scholar, and political theorist. He is president of the Herzl Institute[2] in Jerusalem and serves as the chairman of the Edmund Burke Foundation.[3] He has argued for national conservatism in his 2018 book The Virtue of Nationalism[4] and 2022's Conservatism: A Rediscovery.[5]

Yoram Hazony
close-up of Yoram Hazony wearing striped shirt and gray suit jacket, with a kippah on his head, smiling at camera
Hazony in 2018
Born
Yoram Reuben Hazony

Rehovot, Israel
Citizenship
  • American
  • Israeli
Education
Notable workThe Virtue of Nationalism (2018)
Conservatism: A Rediscovery (2022)
MovementNational conservatism, Jewish conservatism
SpouseYael Hazony
Children9
RelativesDavid Hazony (brother)

Biography

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Yoram Hazony was born in Rehovot, Israel, and moved with his family to Princeton, New Jersey, US. He was raised and educated in the United States and returned to live in Israel after finishing university.[6] Hazony received his BA from Princeton University in East Asian studies in 1986 and his PhD from Rutgers University in political philosophy in 1993. While a junior at Princeton, he founded the Princeton Tory, a magazine for moderate and conservative thought.[7] He is the brother of David Hazony and Daniel Hazony. He married Yael Fulton, an American[8] whom he met at Princeton, and she moved to Israel with him. The couple live in Jerusalem and have nine children.[9]

Academic and journalistic career

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Hazony founded the Shalem Center in Jerusalem in 1994 and was president and then provost until 2012.[10][11] He designed the curriculum for Shalem College, Israel's first liberal arts college, established in 2013.[citation needed] Hazony has served as director of the John Templeton Foundation's project in Jewish Philosophical Theology and as a member of the Israel Council for Higher Education committee examining general studies programs in Israel's universities and colleges.[12]

He authors a blog on philosophy, politics, Judaism, Israel, and higher education, called Jerusalem Letters.[13] Hazony has published in outlets including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and American Affairs.[14][15][16]

Religious and political views

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Hazony is a Modern Orthodox Jew and relates his views on Open Orthodoxy in an article published in 2014. In it, he states that he fears that Open Orthodoxy is acting as an ideological echo chamber in which any unapproved views are ridiculed and quashed without debate. Hazony describes his concern that elements of Open Orthodoxy have seemingly decided to accept all conclusions of academic Bible critics as indisputable fact, without even going through the motions of investigating whether these conclusions are true.[17]

Hazony is an outspoken Judeo-nationalist and has written that nationalism uniquely provides "the collective right of a free people to rule themselves".[18] However, several critics of Hazony's 2018 book, The Virtue of Nationalism, maintain it is both theoretically inconsistent or incoherent and that it bears little relation to the historical body of nationalist thought.[19][20][21][22] In a review for the Tel Aviv Review of Books, Yair Wallach argues that Hazony's 2020 book, A Jewish State: Herzl and the Promise of Nationalism, is characterised by "intellectual dishonesty", in part for presenting a selective account of Theodor Herzl's understanding of Zionism and nationalism.[23]

Hazony organized and spoke at the National Conservatism Conference in England in May 2023. He told the event that the United Kingdom was plagued with woke "neo-Marxist" agitators who want to detach Britons from their entire past, and called for the return of military service.[24]

Published works

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Books

  • The Political Philosophy of Jeremiah: Theory, Elaboration, and Applications, (doctoral dissertation, 1993)
  • The Jewish State: The Struggle for Israel's Soul (New York: Basic Books and The New Republic, 2000)
  • The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012)
  • God and Politics in Esther (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016)
  • The Virtue of Nationalism (New York: Basic Books, 2018)
  • A Jewish State: Herzl and the Promise of Nationalism [Hebrew] (Sella Meir and Tikvah Fund, 2020)
  • Conservatism: A Rediscovery (Washington: Regnery, 2022)[25]

Edited books

  • David Hazony, Yoram Hazony, and Michael Oren, eds., New Essays on Zionism (Jerusalem: Shalem Press, 2006).
  • Introduction to Aaron Wildavsky, Moses as Political Leader (Jerusalem: Shalem Press, 2005).
  • Yoram Hazony and Dru Johnson, eds., The Question of God's Perfection (Leiden: Brill, 2018).
  • Yoram Hazony, Gil Student, and Alex Sztuden, eds., The Revelation at Sinai: What Does 'Torah from Heaven' Mean? (New York: Ktav, 2021).

Translated books

  • Iddo Netanyahu, Yoni's Last Battle: the Rescue at Entebbe, 1976 Yoram Hazony, trans. (Jerusalem: Gefen, 2001).

References

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  1. ^ "Yoram Hazony | About Me". Archived from the original on August 16, 2022. Retrieved August 16, 2022.
  2. ^ "The Herzl Institute – Machon Herzl". herzlinstitute.org. Archived from the original on August 15, 2022. Retrieved August 16, 2022.
  3. ^ "What is National Conservatism? At an Inaugural Conference, a New Brand of Conservatives Are Beginning to Define Themselves". Townhall. July 16, 2019. Archived from the original on June 18, 2022. Retrieved September 2, 2019.
  4. ^ "In Defense of Nations". National Review. September 13, 2018. Archived from the original on June 22, 2022. Retrieved October 29, 2018.
  5. ^ "Yoram Hazony Rediscovers Conservatism". hoover.org. June 22, 2022. Retrieved November 3, 2023.
  6. ^ "A Jewish Telegraph Newspaper". www.jewishtelegraph.com. Archived from the original on March 5, 2021. Retrieved November 7, 2020.
  7. ^ Dietze, Jane (October 5, 1984). "New campus conservative journal strives for intellectual approach". The Daily Princetonian. Vol. 108, no. 90. Archived from the original on January 9, 2022. Retrieved July 9, 2016.
  8. ^ "Light Among the Nations". Jewish Currents. September 28, 2023. Retrieved November 15, 2024.
  9. ^ "The case for nationalism, by the Israeli credited with shaping Trump's foreign policy". Haaretz. Archived from the original on November 7, 2020. Retrieved November 7, 2020.
  10. ^ "In a Nation's Service". paw.princeton.edu. October 13, 2013. Retrieved November 3, 2023.
  11. ^ "Yoram Hazony: Fifteen Eighty Four". cambridgeblog.org. Retrieved November 3, 2023.
  12. ^ "Yoram Hazony". hertogfoundation.org. Retrieved November 3, 2023.
  13. ^ "Yoram Hazony - Gericke on Bible and Philosophy". November 7, 2013.
  14. ^ Hazony, Yoram (2017). "Is Classical Liberalism Conservative?". Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on May 16, 2022. Retrieved February 21, 2018.
  15. ^ Hazony, Yoram (May 20, 2017). "What Is Conservatism?". Archived from the original on April 7, 2021. Retrieved February 21, 2018.
  16. ^ "Yoram Hazony | About Me". www.yoramhazony.org. Archived from the original on August 16, 2022. Retrieved August 16, 2022.
  17. ^ Hazony, Yoram (2014). "Open Orthodoxy". Archived from the original on April 14, 2022. Retrieved February 21, 2018. I've been in that room many times in my life. Too many times. And by now I know it quite well. It's a room in which there is a single, politically correct point of view that everyone is expected to express. A room in which those who toe the party line are praised over and over for being enlightened, fearless, and committed to the search for truth, while anyone who raises a doubt is greeted with anger and ridicule. A room in which those who might have disagreed or asked a tough question make a quick calculation that it's just not worth being publicly embarrassed over it and retreat into silence, or else adjust their views to fit in. A room that is said to be set upon by enemies from the outside, enemies who are invariably lacking in any capacity for intelligent thought, who have no good points of their own to make, who in fact possess no recognizable virtues at all. In other words, it is a room in which the persuaded are lavishly rewarded for being persuaded, the undecided are relentlessly pressed to choose the right side or face the consequences, and skeptics—unless they are in the mood for a serious bruising—are made to shut up.
  18. ^ "In Defense of Nations". National Review. September 13, 2018. Archived from the original on June 22, 2022. Retrieved October 29, 2018.
  19. ^ Koyama, Mark (September 25, 2018). "A Nationalism Untethered to History". Liberal Currents. Archived from the original on May 16, 2022. Retrieved August 5, 2019.
  20. ^ Shindler, Michael (July 9, 2019). "Nationalism Qua Nationalism". Jacobite (July). Archived from the original on May 23, 2022. Retrieved August 5, 2019.
  21. ^ Koss, Andrew (November 26, 2018). "How to Defend Nationalism, and How Not to". Mosaic. Archived from the original on May 14, 2021. Retrieved August 5, 2019.
  22. ^ Nowrasteh, Alex (November 1, 2018). "Ridiculous Claims in Yoram Hazony's The Virtue of Nationalism". Cato Blog. Archived from the original on June 24, 2022. Retrieved June 15, 2020.
  23. ^ Yair Wallach, No True Nationalist Archived May 14, 2022, at the Wayback Machine, Tel Aviv Review of Books, Summer 2021
  24. ^ Walker, Peter; Crerar, Pippa (May 15, 2023). "Low birthrate is UK's top priority, Tory MP tells rightwing conference". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved May 15, 2023.
  25. ^ "A Biblical Conservatism". thepublicdiscourse.com. August 16, 2022. Retrieved August 16, 2023.
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