Summer Humanities Intensive

What does a good life ask of us? What do we owe to our families, our communities, and our nations? How should a young Jew decide what to study, what to believe, and what work to take up?

A generation that has come of age amid a pandemic, the massacre of October 7th and the hostility that followed, and the sudden arrival of artificial intelligence may feel that these questions are new. They are among the oldest questions there are, and the great works of philosophy and literature have been asking them, and answering them, for centuries. Over seven days at Vanderbilt University, students will study the virtues of citizenship with Aristotle, the meaning of providence and possibilities of the religious mind with Maimonides, look at the nature suspicion and conspiracy in Shakespeare, and consider the claims of the individual and the community in the great novels of the twentieth century.

In her 2026 Jefferson Lecture, Ruth Wisse observed that the work of “instilling intellectual and moral confidence in our civilization rests with the humanities.” This institute is for students ready to take up that work: those who suspect that the questions of their own lives are the questions the great books were written to answer, and who want to read them with the seriousness they deserve.

Rabbi Mark Gottlieb is the Head of School of The Dr. Miriam and Sheldon G. Adelson School in Las Vegas, and a Senior Advisor at Tikvah. Prior to joining Tikvah, Rabbi Gottlieb served as head of school at Yeshiva University High School for Boys and principal of the Maimonides School in Brookline, MA, and has taught at The Frisch School, Ida Crown Jewish Academy, Hebrew Theological College, Loyola University in Chicago, and the University of Chicago. He received his BA from Yeshiva College, rabbinical ordination from the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, and an MA in Philosophy from the University of Chicago, where his doctoral studies focused on the moral and political thought of Alasdair MacIntyre. Rabbi Gottlieb’s work has been featured twice in the Wall Street Journal and his writing has appeared in First Things, Public Discourse, SEVEN: An Anglo-American Literary Review, The University Bookman, Tradition Online, the Algemeiner, From Within the Tent: Essays on the Weekly Parsha from Rabbis and Professors of Yeshiva University, and, most recently, Strauss, Spinoza & Sinai: Orthodox Judaism and Modern Questions of Faith. He is a trustee of the Hildebrand Project and serves on the Editorial Committee of Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought.

Humanities Intensive

Hosted at Vanderbilt University

June 20-27, 2027Nashville, TN

Highlighted Faculty

Rabbi Mark Gottlieb

Key Information

Eligibility

Location & Dates

Cost

Sample Daily Schedule