Long before Spider-Man, Wonder Woman, Batman and the Guardians of the Galaxy, the Hebrew Bible’s Ancient Avengers were inspiring Americans. Ripped from the story from ancient Israel, the figures of Samson, Esther, Elijah, and David served as spiritual sustenance to freedom fighters, politicians, and pundits striving to see the United States live up to its founding ideals. In this lecture we will examine how these Hebraic heroes shaped the American story from its founding era to today.
Speaker Bio
Rabbi Dr. Stuart Halpern serves as the senior advisor to the provost as well as the deputy director and chief strategy officer of the Zahava and Moshael J. Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University. In addition to his doctorate in education, Rabbi Halpern has master’s degrees in both Bible and Psychology in Education, and an MBA in Nonprofit Management.
Rabbi Halpern has lectured to diverse audiences across the globe, from the White House to Europe to Western Australia, and has taught in YU’s undergraduate colleges as well as its graduate school of education. He is the editor or author of twenty books, including Jewish Roots of American Liberty: The Impact of Hebraic Ideas on the American Story and the upcoming Two Nations Under God: How (Biblical) Israel Inspires America, both of which received a National Endowment for the Humanities grants. Among his other books are The Promise of Liberty: A Passover Haggada, Esther in America and Proclaim Liberty Throughout the Land: The Hebrew Bible in the United States.
He has authored over two hundred articles in The Wall Street Journal, Commentary, Newsweek, the American Bible Society, Law and Liberty, Tablet, Jewish Review of Books, Tradition, First Things, The Washington Free Beacon, Sapir, City Journal, ARC, the Jewish Journal, JTA, and the Jerusalem Post and was a finalist for a Rockower Award in 2025 for “Excellence in Writing about Jewish Thought and Life.”