Lobel Center for Jewish Classical Education

The Pillars: Jerusalem, Athens, and the Western Mind

No. of episodes

133

Latest episode

2026-07-15

Where can you listen?

Welcome to The Pillars: Jerusalem, Athens, and the Western Mind, a podcast that tells the story of the prophets, philosophers, and poets who created the West.

In this podcast, Rabbi Dr. Mitchell Rocklin guides listeners through more than 3,000 years of Western history, offering a coherent, civilizational story of how the West came to be—along with a deepened understanding of the challenges it now faces. While many of the texts discussed will be familiar to students of the humanities, Rabbi Rocklin offers a new framework for understanding them—a framework in which the teachings of the Jewish religious tradition play a central role. For, as Rabbi Rocklin explains, Western civilization can only be understood as the product of a transformative and ongoing collision between the great traditions of Jerusalem and Athens—between the religious spirit of the Jews and the philosophical spirit of the Greeks.