Chaya Sara Oppenheim writes on Norman Rockwell’s “Working on the Statue of Liberty” and on the work required to preserve our liberty. Rockwell depicts a different, rare, and meaningful vantage point: We see Lady Liberty from behind, with our feet already firmly planted on American soil. The Statue of Liberty—for all the freedom and “world-wide welcome” that she symbolizes at the entrance of New York Harbor—is not the central figure in this painting.

Steven Gotlib compares and contrasts “The Matrix” and Jewish mystical traditions, suggesting the relationship between man and machine in the movie is fundamentally antagonistic: for one to live freely, the other must be enslaved. Our reality, however, is quite different. The relationship between humanity and divinity, as portrayed in Nefesh HaHayyim and Tanya, is one of cooperation.

Yisroel Ben-Porat profiles John Winthrop’s 1630 sermon “A Modell of Christian Charity” and its relevance to the American Jewish story: “Like the Puritans in New England, we too see ourselves as a small and distant minority meant to live exemplary lives as a light unto the nations. It is easy to read ourselves into Winthrop’s words, to hear his call for unity as a reminder of the values of tzedaka, ahdut, hesed, and other traits toward others.”

There’s an interesting debate raging through the imperiled halls of the Ivy League’s humanities departments -- and it has special meaning for Modern Orthodoxy as a religious community that has classically valued the encounter with worldly, humanistic wisdom.  As the relationship of those two realms of wisdom, often framed around the concept of Torah u-Madda, is receiving renewed ideological and institutional reassessment, TRADITION's editor Jeffrey Saks takes note of trends in general higher education and society. This column is the first in a projected series exploring this topic and its importance in the coming months.