What is Jewish Priorities?
Jewish Priorities began as a collection of essays published in 2023, became a series of events, and now is a Substack for publishing the essays online, making announcements for the broader community, introducing new thoughts and writers, and moving the conversation forward.
What’s in the book?
Imagine having the entire Jewish people over for dinner—and hosting a raucous, creative, riveting debate about their collective future. Jewish Priorities offers, for the first time, a wide-ranging, ambitious, and genuinely “pan-Jewish” conversation. Encompassing more than sixty top authors from around the Jewish world—Israelis and Diaspora writers; younger influencers and veteran opinion leaders; rabbinic and communal leaders, journalists and scholars, and literary and cultural figures, ranging from secular to ultra-Orthodox—each contributor offers a different priority for the Jewish people. In the process, Jewish Priorities captures the tremendous breadth, depth, and passionate commitment that has long defined this unique community in history.
These essays are all original and come from some of our greatest luminaries—thought leaders like Natan Sharansky, Dara Horn, Yossi Klein Halevi, Ruth Wisse, Shaul Magid, David Wolpe, Fania Oz-Salzberger, and many more. Their topics vary widely, from Zionism and antisemitism to education and philanthropy; from the Holocaust to Jewish intimacy; from the quest for God to the failure of Jewish institutions, to the best way to study the Torah in an age of viral videos.
Jewish Priorities offers an unprecedented snapshot of the cultural, political, and religious currents driving an entire generation of Jews—but also the deepest aspirations and dreams of this beautiful, unique people at a pivotal moment in our history.
Who is David Hazony?
DAVID HAZONY is an award-winning editor, translator, and author, and Steinhardt Senior Fellow at the Z3 Project. His newest work, Jewish Priorities: Sixty-Five Proposals for the Future of Our People (Wicked Son, 2023), brings together a remarkable array of new essays from across the Jewish world. He is the former editor-in-chief of the journal Azure and was the founding editor of TheTower.org. His book The Ten Commandments: How Our Most Ancient Moral Text Can Renew Modern Life (Scribner, 2010) was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award. His translation of Uri Bar-Joseph’s The Angel: The Egyptian Spy Who Saved Israel (HarperCollins, 2016) was a winner of the National Jewish Book Award. He has edited two previous anthologies: Essential Essays on Judaism by Eliezer Berkovits (Shalem, 2002), and, with Yoram Hazony and Michael B. Oren, New Essays on Zionism (Shalem, 2007). He has a Ph.D. in Jewish Philosophy from the Hebrew University and lives in Jerusalem.
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