News and highlights from the life of the Abarbanel Institute.
Abarbanel Alumni Head to College!
The first Abarbanel alumni have begun their post-high school educations. Two are off to 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 alum is taking a gap year to study at Midreshet Lindenbaum in Jerusalem. We are proud to see Abarbanel students carrying their questions and intellectual curiosity into such different communities — and we look forward to seeing where their paths lead.
Graeme Wood Discusses Reporting from the Middle East
Atlantic staff-writer Graeme Wood met with students on May 24, 2026, 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.
Franz Kafka and the Jewish Writer
Benjamin Balint met with Abarbanel students on April 19, 2026, 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
On December 2, 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
In 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
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
On June 30, 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.
The Abarbanel Institute in the News!
The Abarbanel Institute got its first press 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.