Rabbi Jonathan Sacks derives two messages from Jeremiah 29. One is that Jewish life may continue, even flourish, in the adverse soil of exile: “Build homes and dwell in them, take wives and have children.” For Jews, spiritual purpose survives the loss of power, when the prosperity and fullness . . . . Continue Reading »
From Enemy to Brother: The Revolution in Catholic Teaching on the Jews, 1933–1965 by John Connelly Harvard, 384 pages, $35 The Jewish religion,” said John Paul II on the occasion of his historic visit to the Chief Synagogue of Rome, “is not ‘extrinsic’ to us, but in a certain way is . . . . Continue Reading »
The writings of Plato and Aristotle are often described as works of reason, as opposed to the Bible, which is said to be revelation—a text that bypasses our natural faculties to give us knowledge directly from God through a series of miracles. This assumption about the revealed character of . . . . Continue Reading »
For the last four years, I have been conducting, at New York University’s School of Law, a seminar on the trial of Jesus. The Wall Street Journal inveighed against it as educational inanity: if not exactly corrupting the youth, then at least leading them astray and squandering their tuition . . . . Continue Reading »
Israel is a Jewish state but has not succeeded in defining just what that means in a national constitution. Although the 1948 Declaration of Independence called for the enactment of a constitution within months of the state’s inception, nothing has been achieved beyond a fragmentary “Basic . . . . Continue Reading »
One way anti-Jewish sentiment has been interpreted is simply as a quid pro quo. Gentile animosity, in this view, does to the Jews what the Jews have done, or at least would like to do, to Gentiles—because we Jews present ourselves as the chosen people. In the seventeenth century, Baruch . . . . Continue Reading »
Rabbinical Judaism begins with three simple directives: ”Be moderate in judgement, and raise up many students, and make a fence around the Torah.” The most difficult thing for a Christian to understand about Judaism is its concern with legal process, guided by a profound . . . . Continue Reading »
There are only two possible strategies for Jewish survival in a gentile world. One is to be tolerated. The other is to be indispensable. The first strategy hopes that if every minority is tolerated, then perhaps even the Jews, the minority with the longest history of persecution, might also be . . . . Continue Reading »
Jeffrey Goldberg, the Atlantic’s national correspondent, tries hard to summon up enough liberal outrage to challenge the conclusion of Israeli historian Benny Morris that a two-state solution is as unrealistic as the overtly utopian one-state solution to the Palestinian problem. Reviewing . . . . Continue Reading »
Bearing public witness isn’t Jewish custom. We confess our collective sins corporately on the Day of Atonement. But an editorship at First Things is not a seat on a Wall Street trading floor, or a teaching gig at a conservatory of music; it is a position of public trust, and I owed the . . . . Continue Reading »
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