News and highlights from the life of the Abarbanel Institute
Abarbanel Alumni Head to College
September 2026 - Abarbanel's first alumni are embarking on their next chapters after high school. Two have enrolled at Brown University, while others are beginning their studies at Princeton, Sarah Lawrence, Brandeis, Columbia University's joint program with Tel Aviv University, and the new Rosenthal-Levy Scholars program at the University of Texas at Austin. An eighth alumnus is spending a gap year studying at Midreshet Lindenbaum in Jerusalem.
We are proud to see Abarbanel students carrying their questions and intellectual curiosity into such different communities, and look forward to seeing where their paths lead.
Irene Zwiep Shares Her Thoughts about Abarbanel Students
July 2026 – Following her visit to the Abarbanel Summer Seminar, Professor Irene Zwiep of the University of Amsterdam wrote to share her impressions:
“Thank you for hosting me yesterday. I was impressed by it all: the people, the programme, the intellectual climate, the warmth. I cannot think of any group of Dutch young people who would be eager to engage in theological-political discussions after a long day that included reading Spinoza's Ethics. The calibre of the questions and responses was stunning (and mind you, I'm a Dutch person using that word). It gave me hope for the world, that sounds big, but yes.”
Student Responds to Spinoza in Verse
July 2026 — During the Abarbanel Summer Seminar, students encountered Spinoza not only through a close reading of his Ethics, but also through rare books and manuscripts in Amsterdam's Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana.
Inspired by his study of Spinoza, Abarbanel student Zachary F. composed a series of poems exploring questions of freedom, necessity, and human experience. We share one of his poems here:
Hidden Everywhere
Perhaps God hides in a miracle, Because it’s rare, And in the ordinary, Because it's everywhere
Jewish Life and Politics in the Netherlands
July 2026 - At an intimate gathering hosted by Chabad in The Hague, Abarbanel students joined Dutch parliamentarian Ulysse Ellian and Professor Jessica Roitman of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam for a wide-ranging conversation about contemporary Jewish life in the Netherlands. The discussion explored the challenges facing Dutch Jews today, including antisemitism, Dutch policy toward Israel, university protest movements, and the relationship between Jewish communities and Dutch society. Students had the opportunity to question their guests directly and consider perspectives that brought the complexities of contemporary Jewish life into sharper focus.
Abarbanel 2026 Launches with a Lecture on Rembrandt’s Amsterdam
June 2026 - The 2026 Abarbanel Summer Seminar began with an online lecture by historian and philosopher Steven Nadler, a leading scholar of Spinoza and the Dutch Golden Age. Drawing on his research into Rembrandt’s Amsterdam, Nadler introduced students to the city’s rich artistic, intellectual, and religious life in the seventeenth century, providing a historical foundation for the people, places, and ideas they would soon encounter firsthand in the Netherlands.
Check out Professor Nadler’s book Rembrandt’s Jews.
Graeme Wood Discusses Reporting from the Middle East
May 2026 - Atlantic staff-writer Graeme Wood met with students to discuss his experiences as a journalist working in the Middle East. He addressed the question of journalistic bias in Middle East reporting and shared techniques for getting an interviewee to reveal something unexpected, whether an adherent of the Islamic State or the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. Students also got to ask him practical questions about how to launch a career in journalism.
Check out some of Graeme Wood’s Middle East reporting here.
Abarbanel Establishes Board and Gains Nonprofit Status
May 2026 — The Abarbanel Institute has established a Board of Directors and received recognition as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, marking an important step in its development as an independent educational institution.
The new organizational structure will support the Institute's long-term development, including its commitment to substantial need-based financial aid and the expansion of educational opportunities in the years ahead.
Meet our Board of Directors and learn more about the Institute's educational mission on our About page.
Franz Kafka and the Jewish Writer
April 2026 - Benjamin Balint met with Abarbanel students to discuss Franz Kafka’s elusive parable “Before the Law” and the persistent role of the Jewish writer “to keep certain questions open.” Balint, the quintessential man of Jewish letters, inspired students to think about what makes writing Jewish and consider the forms a life can take when “standing before the text.”
Check out Balint’s Kafka’s Last Trial, which won the Sami Rohr Prize in Jewish Literature, and Bruno Schulz: An Artist, a Murder, and the Hijacking of History, winner of a National Jewish Book Award.
Abarbanel Alums Bring Spinoza to School
December 2025 - Abarbanel alumni and Ramaz Upper School students Hannah Katz and Abby Maksin organized and facilitated a discussion of Spinoza’s Ethics for the Ramaz Philosophy Club. Around fifteen juniors met up during lunch to discuss and debate some of Spinoza’s most thought-provoking propositions. “Everyone was really engaged and we had a great discussion!”
Dr. Jucovy Interviewed in The Jewish Link
November 2025 - Professor Jonathan Krasner sat down with Dr. Jon Jucovy to discuss teaching history in Jewish day schools and the role education can play in facing the challenges that confront the Jewish people today. “I’m almost embarrassed to admit how magical those three weeks were last summer,” Jucovy says about his time teaching on the Abarbanel Summer Seminar. “Who could have predicted that my most fulfilling experience as a teacher would come so late in my career?”
Visit The Jewish Link for the full interview.
Holland Baroque Performs Private Concert for Abarbanel Students
July 2025 - Holland Baroque, an award-winning early music ensemble, performed an intimate program of music for harpsichord, flute, and soprano, traveling through three musical worlds: seventeenth-century Amsterdam; the music of the Sephardic diaspora, for which the soprano learned to sing in Ladino; and works by some of the period’s great composers, including Handel. At the end of the concert, one Abarbanel student took a seat at the harpsichord and treated us all to an impromptu encore of his own compositions.
Rebecca Goldstein Delivers Inaugural Abarbanel Lecture
June 2025 - Shortly before the first cohort of Abarbanel Summer Seminar participants were to embark on their three-week adventure in Leiden, philosopher and novelist Rebecca Goldstein spoke to them about her experience discovering Spinoza as someone who had grown up an Orthodox Jew. Goldstein’s book Betraying Spinoza, which all the students had read beforehand, provided the perfect jumping-off point for an engaging conversation with the author and for the explorations ahead.
Abarbanel Featured in The Jewish Link
December 2024 - The Abarbanel Institute was featured in the December 12, 2024 issue of The Jewish Link. Read the full article to learn about what inspired Aaron Tugendhaft to launch this innovative program in Jewish education.