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.
Franz Kafka and the Jewish Writer
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!”
Abarbanel Alums Bring Spinoza to School
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.
Dr. Jucovy Interviewed in the Jewish Link
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.
Rebecca Goldstein Delivers Inaugural Abarbanel Lecture
The Abarbanel Institute got it’s 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