Beginning today, the conference “Religion and Liberty — A Match Made in Heaven?” gets underway in Jerusalem. Sponsored by the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies (JIMS), the Acton Institute and others, the event asks questions such as, “Is capitalism not only efficient but also moral?” In conjunction with this May 20-24 conference, Acton is offering its two Jewish monographs through Amazon Kindle at no charge.

Read more on Free Acton Institute eBooks on Judaism, Law and the Market Economy (May 20-24)…

Václav Havel, playwright, anti-Communist dissident and former president of the Czech Republic, died yesterday at the age of 75. There has been an outpouring of tributes to the great man today. In light of that, I’d like to point PowerBlog readers to the September-October 1998 issue of Religion & Liberty and the article “Living Responsibly: Václav Havel’s View” by Edward E. Ericson.

Read more on Vaclav Havel and the ‘Notion of Responsibility’…

A couple weeks ago I engaged CPJ senior fellow Gideon Strauss in a debate at the Christian Legal Society, “Justice, Poverty, Politics & the State: Is There a Christian Perspective?”

One of the questioners afterward proposed that the large scale of the poverty problem required an institution equally as large, i.e. the government. There are lots of problems with that kind of analysis, not least of which is that the “poor” are not some homogeneous blob of humanity, but individual persons created in the image of God facing unique situations with their own unique gifts and talents. So the scale of the problem, perhaps counter-intuitively, calls not for some behemoth- or leviathan-size institution, but a variety of smaller individuals and institutions that can work with people individually and in communal settings. Think here of a variation on Burke’s concept of “little platoons” in the war on poverty.

Read more on Of Trampolines and Foam Pits…

In “Betrayed by Madoff, Yeshiva U. Adds a Lesson,” the New York Times interviews students and teachers at the New York University which was closely linked to Bernard Madoff, the financier who has been charged by federal prosecutors with orchestrating a $50 billion Ponzi scheme fraud.

Read more on Soul Searching at Yeshiva U….

In the inaugural lecture of the Center for the Study of Judaism and Economics at the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies, Nobel Laureate economist Professor Robert (Yisrael) Aumann talked about the link between economics, Judaism and the current economic downturn. Aumann argues that Judaism subscribes to a market philosophy and contains a blueprint for solving today’s economic woes.

Read more on The Rabbis and the Credit Crunch…

The second in Acton Media’s series of shorts accompanying its latest documentary The Birth of Freedom, this new video asks the question, “How has Judaism contributed to human rights?” In the video, John Witte Jr. demonstrates how the teachings of Judaism significantly impacted the western understanding of human rights, contributing the foundations for concepts such as human dignity, due process, and covenantal agreements.

Read more on Birth of Freedom Shorts Series: Judaism and Human Rights…

How does one account for the widespread distaste among Jews for a free market political agenda? Why is it that Jews, who earn per capita almost twice as much as non-Jews in America, “fervently support relatively collectivist social policies”? Corinne and Robert Sauer, co-founders of the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies, contend that “it is not at all true that Judaism is a set of principles that endorses income redistribution and other progressive social programs.” Instead, they say, Judaism is a system of thought that more naturally aligns itself with the basic principles of economic liberalism.

Read more on Jewish Theology and Economic Theory…