Cole S. Aronson

If I drink coffee at every meeting, I’ll kill someone,” His Beatitude Pierbattista Pizzaballa says when I ask him to join me for an espresso while we talk. Who first? I want to ask. But I suspect the patriarch of the 150,000 Latin-rite Catholics in Israel, Jordan, the West Bank, Gaza, . . . . Continue Reading »

The Israeli state should not extend the “historic” restriction of Jewish rights on the pretext of Muslim rage. Continue Reading »

Depriving Palestinians of their instruments of terror is the only way to persuade them that the century-old goal of driving Jews out of Israel is impossible.  Continue Reading »

Like a starving zombie, identity politics bites into longstanding left-wing ideas and movements, reforming them in its own image. Anti-Zionists are not immune, as shown by Berkeley’s ­Daniel Boyarin, one of America’s leading Talmudists and Jewish philologists, the author of acclaimed books . . . . Continue Reading »

I consult the Talmud and not Anselm when thinking about how to live, and my Christian friends do the reverse. First Things has always hosted and will continue to host these parallel inquiries. Continue Reading »

If muscles and speed is how your community says you ought to flourish, the frail among us will be absorbed into a spectating mass useful only as an audience for a mighty few. Continue Reading »

The New York Times reports an alarmingly high fail rate for children in Hasidic schools, and though the Times is biased, the truth of the claim desperately demands discussion.  Continue Reading »

“I doubt if we ever come back home,” says Helen, who until recently taught English to second- and third-graders in Mykolaiv, a southern Ukrainian city of several hundred thousand. “Putin wants Mykolaiv,” Helen says. A large majority of Mykolaiv residents speak Russian at home. The . . . . Continue Reading »

Diners teach us that our kind of people isn’t the center of the universe. Continue Reading »

In light of faith, what’s ancient isn’t banal, but tracks God’s constant devotion to his creatures. What’s fleeting or random isn’t futile, but an imitation of God’s free grace. Continue Reading »