Not long before the pandemic, I met a senior foreign-policy scholar at a major conservative think tank. She was visiting the New York Post opinion pages, where I worked at the time, to promote a white paper she’d just written. The title was something modest, like After Terror: . . . . Continue Reading »
The history of American cinema in the twentieth century is understood today as a march from inhibition to expression. The films produced during the long reign of the Motion Picture Production Code, from 1934 to 1968, are assumed to be deficient for honoring limits on what could be seen and heard . . . . Continue Reading »
Meir Kahane: No other name elicits such visceral and varied reactions among Jews today. Born and raised in Brooklyn, Rabbi Meir Kahane rose to national prominence in the late 1960s with the founding of the Jewish Defense League (JDL), a movement that used radical and often violent means to . . . . Continue Reading »
A spirited debate has been going on for nearly a decade now, much of it in these pages, about the apparent dearth of religious ideas in recent American fiction. Because many of the interlocutors—among the most prominent are Paul Elie, Randy Boyagoda, Dana Gioia, and Gregory . . . . Continue Reading »
When a man proclaims nature malignant in all its parts and professes to hate life itself, one’s first suspicion is that something is profoundly wrong with him. The man’s grievance against creation must be the effect of some personal deficiency in body or soul or both, rather than a sound . . . . Continue Reading »
The Jewish calendar is the Jewish catechism: So said the -nineteenth-century German champion of Jewish Orthodoxy, Samson R. Hirsch, and with good reason. Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, Passover: Despite differences in theology and observance, most Jews, even those who are not well-versed in the entire . . . . Continue Reading »
On September 29 last year, the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels, I was received into the Ordinariate of the Catholic Church, which was established for Anglicans who desire full communion with the See of Peter, at Our Lady of the Assumption and St. Gregory Church in London. Since then, I have . . . . Continue Reading »
Finches at all my feeders flash and bickerin ritual consternation and all weather,jangle at me with never-ending want,need me compliant but omnipotent.Within the nearby pine, push comes to shoveas the shrill chorus nags me, makes me leavethe cool deck and my chair and drink and bookto fetch seed . . . . Continue Reading »
I. Nourishment O Vitality!true blush and bloomof those who’ve diedbut live nowin Heaven, to you, Aliment of the enfeebled,who sustain uswith that lasting Sweetness—honey of your own fleshthat soaks, cell by cell,our hunger— thanks. Because you who are Foodlet yourself be fed:you . . . . Continue Reading »
II. Appearance O Architect of the stars (brightness blazoned as if strewn), you, who ranged the constellations to disclose yourself enfleshed, appointing one most lucid witness to that Majesty—so clear that magi, seeing it, bent low over their offerings, murmuring admiration— Just so, I . . . . Continue Reading »
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