David P. Goldman is a senior editor of First Things.

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Make the Democrats Pay for Appeasement

Among the hot-button issues in the November elections, support for Israel will figure prominently. But the issue is not Israel, and surely not the eventual construction of apartments in East Jerusalem. It is the Administration’s neglect or sabotage of vital security interests of the United States… . Continue Reading »

17 Mar 2010

The Long-Term Employment Bust

High levels of unemployment may last indefinitely. A number of economists (including this writer) have been warning about permanent joblessness, and the idea is now seeping into popular magazines. More than 8 million American jobs were lost since 2007, based on the most recent revision of the overall job count of U.S. establishments… . Continue Reading »

18 Feb 2010

Clinton as Cargo Cult

Call it the Clinton Clutch”the stylized maneuver in the political playbook for incumbent Democrats who have run into a spot of bother. President Obama’s first State of the Union address last night will be interpreted as a replay of Clinton’s 1995 classic… . Continue Reading »

28 Jan 2010

Hanukkah: The Temple, the Jewish Home, and Eternal Life

Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights commemorating the miraculous restoration of the Temple following the Hasmonean expulsion of the Greek occupiers from Jerusalem in 165 B.C., began this year on Friday evening, the beginning of the Sabbath… . Continue Reading »

18 Dec 2009

The “European Street” on Minarets

Europe’s religious leaders”including the Vatican, the Swiss Catholic bishops, and the Conference of European Rabbis”have condemned the ban on minaret construction imposed by a nearly three-to-two majority in a referendum of Swiss voters… . . Continue Reading »

8 Dec 2009

Israel in the Year 5770

How does it stand with the people Israel in the new year 5770? As James Kugel (a Harvard scholar of the Hebrew Bible) explained in a lecture at my synagogue earlier this year on Israel’s Independence Day, for most of Jewish historyindependence was an alien idea. Except for a few decades of the Davidic kingdom, the Jewish commonwealth always paid tribute to the surrounding powers”Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, or Rome. Israel still faces an existential threat, but this should not obscure the fact that the position of the Jewish people today is at least strong as ever before. Jews who have kept the faith in Israel as well as in the Diaspora have reason to look happily toward the new year… . Continue Reading »

21 Sep 2009

Loving Herodias

“Why do men chase women? Because they want to live forever,” said Rose Castorini in Moonstruck. Falling in love”really falling in love as opposed to going through the motions”means finding immortality through the mediation of the beloved. No clearer example of this can be found than Dante’s love of Beatrice, the Florentine girl he claimed to have met twice… . Continue Reading »

11 Aug 2009

The Uncharacteristic Catholic Moments of Friedrich Schiller

Peter Oswald’s version of Friedrich Schiller’s “Mary Stuart,” whose run at New York’s Broadhurst Theater ends in mid-August, succeeds in making this 1801 warhorse of the German Classic crackle on a modern stage. Schiller (1759“1805) was guilty of historical distortions no worse than those in Cate Blanchett’s “Elizabeth” films, and his treatment of character is infinitely superior. At his best, no tragedian after Shakespeare surpasses him. “Mary Stuart” depicts the conflict between the Protestant Elizabeth and the Catholic Mary, quite differently from the two Blanchett films, which crawl with ominous Spaniards and lurking Jesuit assassins. It is noteworthy that the Catholic cause gets a more sympathetic look from a nineteenth century enemy of the Church than from twenty-first century Hollywood… . Continue Reading »

9 Jul 2009

It Takes a Congregation

Contrary to what we hear incessantly, marriage is not a right; it is an estate, a condition. There are conditions of life that have nothing to do with rights. One doesn’t have a right to go through puberty. One either does or doesn’t. What is the condition of being married, and what makes it possible to attain it? Franz Rosenzweig’s anthropology”in which religion is a response to man’s sentience of death, and the sentience of death is not only an individual but also an communal characteristic”may help answer that question. Humankind fights mortality in two ways. The first is to raise children who will remember us, and the second is to seek eternal life through divine grace. The estate of marriage involves both.

“Why do men chase women?” asks Rose Castorini in Moonstruck. “Because they want to live forever.” Continue Reading »

26 Jun 2009

Obama and Cairo

Under the cover of continuity, President Obama has effected a revolution in American foreign policy. As a result, America’s position as a world superpower well may have peaked in 2008, and its long-term decline to a status better resembling Britain. But unlike Britain’s misery, America’s decline will be a willful withdrawal from a leading position in world affairs, an act without obvious precedent in world history. Were this to occur”and that is the present trajectory”Obama will have had a decisive role in bringing it to pass. What motivates the president? The answer, I believe, should be sought in the tragic circumstances of the Muslim nations.

What a master of the hot button, though, this president is. Jews invest a great deal of their emotional energy in the Holocaust, and he pressed their button at Buchenwald. Jewish voters, almost eighty percent of whom supported Obama last November, are more susceptible to the sucker punch than other denizens of a cynical world, and Obama is its master practitioner… . Continue Reading »

9 Jun 2009