February 2026 saw several Zahava and Moshael J. Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought faculty and staff publish in leading publications, contributing to the discourse and debates that continue to shape American society and the Jewish people. 

Straus Center Director Rabbi Dr. Meir Soloveichik published his monthly column in Commentary. Titled “Pulling Britain Back from the Abyss,” it argued that the debate in Britain over assisted suicide reveals that the biblical heritage of the West has not yet entirely disappeared. Also for Commentary, Rabbi Soloveichik memorialized Norman Podhoretz, the former editor-in-chief of the magazine and a pillar of the conservative intellectual movement. Finally, on The Tikvah Podcast, Rabbi Soloveichik joined Tikvah CEO Eric Cohen and Museum of the Bible CEO Carlos Campo for a discussion on religious freedom in America. 

Rabbi Dr. Stuart Halpern, deputy director of the Straus Center, published several reflections for President’s Day. For the American Bible Society, he looked at how, following the presidency of George Washington, American presidents continued to be compared to Moses for centuries. In ARC, he observed how Americans cast Washington as a modern Moses, turning the nation’s founding into a biblical story of deliverance. And for the Jewish Journal, he recounted a meeting between President Calvin Coolidge and Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook. Also for the Jewish Journal, he reviewed Rabbi Mark Wildes’ The Jewish Experience: Discovering the Soul of Jewish Thought and Practice and profiled a pair of heroic American Mordecais. 

For the Wall Street Journal, Straus Center Senior Scholar Dr. Tevi Troy reviewed Five Bullets: The Story of Bernie Goetz, New York's Explosive '80s, and the Subway Vigilante Trial That Divided the Nation and looked back at some of the more noteworthy presidential cabinet meetings in modern American history.

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