by Dr. Mira Morgenstern
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are that of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of the Union for Traditional Judaism, unless otherwise indicated.
Hukat – Balak: Leadership, Power, and (Self) Control
With Dr. Mira Morgenstern
This video was published ahead of Shabbat Hukat in Israel, June 20, 2026. The video for Parashat Koarah can be found here.
This video is part of a series of videos with brief divrei Torah inspired by “Divrei Halev: Thoughts of Rabbi Professor David Weiss Halivni on the Torah Portion” by Rabbi Ronald Price. This video features Dr. Mira Morganstern, a professor at the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership at the City College of New York specializing in 18th century political theory. We look forward to featuring members of the UTJ community and others in presenting future divrei Torah.
Divrei HaLev and many other books may be purchased through the UTJ website at https://www.utj.org/viewpoints/books.
All videos in this series will be available at https://utj.org/viewpoints/modern-judaism/remembering-rabbi-halivni-zl/inspired-by-divrei-halev/ and in our Youtube playlist “Divrei Halev.”
For more material by and produced in memory of Rabbi Halivni, visit https://utj.org/viewpoints/modern-judaism/remembering-rabbi-halivni-zl/
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A recognized scholar in 18th century political theory, Dr. Mira Morgenstern is a professor at the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership at the City College of New York.
Dr. Morgenstern, who is also a longtime member of the UTJ’s Board of Directors, specializes in 18th century political theory and has explored the integrative lessons between that period’s political discourse and the Torah.
“For a while, my research into 18th-century political thought seemed to run on a parallel track from my other passion – Torah study -- with deep attention to the linguistic structure and textual strategies (in other words, the relationship of parshanut to peshat).
“That changed with my work on Rousseau’s imaginative rewriting of a rather austere narrative in the Hebrew Bible, known to Jewish scholars as Pilegesh baGiv’ah. Shortly thereafter, I did some reimagining of my own, as I mined Biblical studies that I had already presented or published for their contribution to the political discourse that helped sustain the Israelite nation in Biblical times.
“These studies form the core of my book, Conceiving a Nation: The Creation of Political Discourse in the Hebrew Bible. Published by Penn State University Press in 2009, the book earned special recognition from the American Political Science Association in 2011.
Dr. Morgenstern recently published Reframing Politics in the Hebrew Bible (Hackett 2018)(Amazon link). The book demonstrates how the texts of the Hebrew Bible (TaNaKh) form an inextricable part of the political theory canon, central to our own thinking of how politics should be structured, and what its goals should be. This book explores TanaKh’s approach to democracy, the tension between alienation and leadership, and the way that the TaNaKh portrays the often-fraught relationship between religion and state.
Dr. Morgenstern is a co-author, along with Barbara Abrams and Karen Sullivan of the forthcoming Reframing Rousseau's Lévite d'Ephrạim: The Hebrew Bible, Hospitality, and Modern Identity.Dr. Morgenstern is also an expert on the influential French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau and authored Rousseau and the Politics of Ambiguity: Self, Culture and Society (Penn State University Press)(Amazon link).