In Part­ner­ship

Join us for a con­ver­sa­tion cel­e­brat­ing Jew­ish Book Month with Rab­bi Joan­na Samuels, CEO of the Mar­lene Mey­er­son JCC Man­hat­tan, and author and Hart­man research fel­low Tomer Per­si­co, about his new book In God’s Image: How West­ern Civ­i­liza­tion Was Shaped by a Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Idea. 

In God’s Image exam­ines the cen­tral role that the idea that all peo­ple were cre­at­ed in the image of God played in the devel­op­ment of West­ern civ­i­liza­tion. Focus­ing on five themes — self­hood, free­dom, con­science, equal­i­ty, and mean­ing — the book guides us through a cul­tur­al his­to­ry of the West, from ancient times through moder­ni­ty. Offer­ing an inno­v­a­tive per­spec­tive on the shap­ing of glob­al moder­ni­ty, In God’s Image exam­ines the rela­tion­ship between faith and soci­ety and posits the fun­da­men­tal role of the idea of the image of God in the mak­ing of the moral ideals and social insti­tu­tions we val­ue today.