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L’Chaim and Its Limits: Why Not Immortality?

Leon R. Kass

You don’t have to be Jewish to drink L’Chaim, to lift a glass “To Life.” Everyone in his right mind believes that life is good and that death is...

Dehumanization Triumphant

Leon R. Kass

Recent efforts to legalize physician-assisted suicide and to establish a constitutional “right to die” are deeply troubling events, morally dubious in themselves, extremely dangerous in their likely consequences. The...

Farmers, Founders, and Fratricide: The Story of Cain and Abel

Leon R. Kass

Once one gets right down to it, the difference between liberals and conservatives traces home to a disagreement about the basic source of human troubles. Liberals are inclined to...

Educating Father Abraham: The Meaning of Fatherhood

Leon R. Kass

My theme is the education of the patriarch Abraham, Father of Judaism, father of Christianity, father of Islam. God Himself undertakes Abraham’s education in order to address and to...

Educating Father Abraham: The Meaning of Wife

Leon R. Kass

It is not exactly traditional to speak about the education of Abraham. Pious tales of the patriarch regard him as a precocious monotheist even before God calls him, a...

Man and Woman: An Old Story

Leon R. Kass

Man and woman. What are they, and why—each alone and both together? How are they alike and how different? How much is difference due to nature, how much to...