Alan L. Mittleman

I recently attended two conversations under the aegis of the Templeton Foundation’s Big Questions initiative. Both dealt with whether God exists”one directly, the other obliquely, by asking whether science makes belief in God obsolete. Both were so deeply unsatisfying that I have to . . . . Continue Reading »

The idea of a social contract first makes its appearance in Plato’s Republic . Men are naturally prone to commit injustice, and thus injustice is naturally good, Glaucon, one of Socrates’ interlocutors, suggests. They would like to commit injustice constantly toward one another and not . . . . Continue Reading »

For the Sake of Heaven and Earth: The New Encounter Between Judaism and Christianity by Irving Greenberg Jewish Publications Society of America, 274 pp. $20 paper The title of Irving Greenberg’s collection of essays” For the Sake of Heaven and Earth: The New Encounter between Judaism and . . . . Continue Reading »

This year marks the 350th anniversary of Jewish settlement in North America. In 1654, twenty-three Jews arrived in Dutch New Amsterdam from Recife, Brazil, fleeing the Inquisition. Although not the first Jews to set foot in North America, they were the first who intended to settle here. Try as he . . . . Continue Reading »

There is a pamphlet making its way, via the Internet, through the Modern Orthodox stream of the American Jewish community. Written by Gil Perl and Yaakov Weinstein, graduate students at Harvard and MIT respectively, the pamphlet presents itself as “A Parent’s Guide to Orthodox . . . . Continue Reading »

Since September 11, President Bush has placed much of his domestic policy agenda on hold. Yet we would be wrong to conclude from his recent emphasis on foreign affairs and homeland security that such crucial components of “compassionate conservatism” as public funding for tuition vouchers and . . . . Continue Reading »

Spinoza, Liberalism, and the Question of Jewish Identity By Steven B. Smith Yale University Press. 270 pp. $30 Spinoza has had an umistakable appeal for free thinkers-Jewish and gentile-over the past two centuries, and his appeal seems greatest when a rigorous institutionalized faith collides with . . . . Continue Reading »

For some decades, American Jews have made sense of the relation between their Americanness and their Jewishness through the concept of cultural pluralism. This concept allowed a flexible but expansive Jewish ethnic and religious identity to coexist with an equally normative American identity. The . . . . Continue Reading »

Autonomy means to live under one’s own law: to discover the norms of a lawful life, a nomos, by or within oneself. Thus it is not, in principle, anarchic or anomic. Autonomy and authority are, as etymology suggests, paired concepts. Autonomy means that the self becomes its own authority, that . . . . Continue Reading »

The Idea of Civil Society by adam seligman free press, 220 pages, $24.95 Adam Seligman’s book, while primarily a theoretical, historical, and social inquiry into the notion of civil society, is motivated by a contemporary concern: namely, the felt need for a new representation of society in . . . . Continue Reading »