The Pillars: Jerusalem, Athens, and the Western Mind Podcast Por Lobel Center for Jewish Classical Education arte de portada

The Pillars: Jerusalem, Athens, and the Western Mind

The Pillars: Jerusalem, Athens, and the Western Mind

De: Lobel Center for Jewish Classical Education
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Welcome to The Pillars: Jerusalem, Athens, and the Western Mind, a podcast that tells the story of the prophets, philosophers, and poets who created the West. In this podcast, Rabbi Dr. Mitchell Rocklin guides listeners through more than 3,000 years of Western history, offering a coherent, civilizational story of how the West came to be—along with a deepened understanding of the challenges it now faces. While many of the texts discussed will be familiar to students of the humanities, Rabbi Rocklin offers a new framework for understanding them—a framework in which the teachings of the Jewish religious tradition play a central role. For, as Rabbi Rocklin explains, Western civilization can only be understood as the product of a transformative and ongoing collision between the great traditions of Jerusalem and Athens—between the religious spirit of the Jews and the philosophical spirit of the Greeks.2024 Espiritualidad Judaísmo Mundial
Episodios
  • Of Kings, Nobles, and Commoners: The Emergence of the New Monarchs

    Of Kings, Nobles, and Commoners: The Emergence of the New Monarchs
    Aug 20 2025

    Consolidation of power will dramatically alter politics, wars, and loyalties in Europe. To help us expand this notion, we’ll explore the following questions:

    1. What caused political power in Europe to shift from being localized in the hands of the lords to being wielded by royal families ruling vast territories?
    2. How did a rise in national loyalties lead to increasing suspicion of divergent religious groups?
    3. Why were the common people important to kings such that kings allied themselves with the populace against the nobility?
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    35 m
  • The Northern Renaissance: Aesthetics, Mystics, and Humanists

    The Northern Renaissance: Aesthetics, Mystics, and Humanists
    Aug 13 2025

    The Northern Renaissance may be infused with the same spirit as the Italian Renaissance, but it manifested in uniquely northern European ways. On today’s episode, we’ll take a look at the following questions:

    1. How does Goethe’s Faustus grapple with the relationship between knowledge and goodness?
    2. What was the danger in Nicholas of Cusa’s philosophical innovation regarding man’s relationship with God?
    3. Why did the Northern Renaissance produce great thinkers and reformers?

    Recommended Viewing: Northern Renaissance paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York)
    Northern Renaissance paintings at the Museo del Prado (Madrid, Spain)
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    34 m
  • To be Loved or Feared: Machiavelli and the Politics of Power

    To be Loved or Feared: Machiavelli and the Politics of Power
    Aug 6 2025

    Modern politics cannot be fully understood without Machiavelli. To help us unpack this claim, Rabbi Rocklin will explore the following questions:

    1. How does Machiavelli shift the way that virtue is understood?
    2. Why do some scholars consider Machiavelli to be the first modern political philosopher?
    3. How does Machiavelli justify his claim that a ruler should use cruelty and fear as tools to control the people?

    Recommended Reading: Machiavelli, Niccolo. The Prince, 2nd edition. Translated by Harvey Mansfield, University of Chicago Press: 1998.
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    43 m
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