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The Bottom Line

From the May 2022 Print Edition

There are two facts of my life that my grandchildren used to tell their friends with pride. One is that in the year 2000, as part of my application to become a Canadian citizen, I secured a letter from the sheriff of Henrico County, Virginia, attesting that I did not have a criminal record. My . . . . Continue Reading »

Law of Nations

From the April 2021 Print Edition

Whatever international order there is today, it certainly is not beholden to political theology for its justification. Nevertheless, William Bain, a professor of international relations at the National University of Singapore, shows in this book that the idea of international order was justified in . . . . Continue Reading »

Saving Contradiction

From the June/July 2014 Print Edition

Yehudah Mirsky’s bio­graphy of Rabbi (or “Rav”) Abraham Isaac Kook, the first Chief Rabbi of Jewish Palestine, is much more than merely an account of a long-gone historic personality. During the tumultuous years between his birth in 1865 and death in 1935, Rav Kook developed . . . . Continue Reading »

A Rabbi Remembers Pope Benedict

From First Thoughts

The one and only time I met Pope Benedict XVI was when he was Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. The time was 1988, and the place was St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in New York. The occasion was a lecture by the cardinal arranged by Fr. (then Lutheran Pastor) Richard John Neuhaus. The occasion was . . . . Continue Reading »

The Jewish Mission

From the November 2012 Print Edition

Although most Christian churches advocate some sort of mission to non-Christians, no Jewish group advocates a mission to non-Jews. Proselytization seems to be foreign to Judaism. Are covenant and mission essentially correlative tasks for Christianity but antithetical tasks for Judaism? Not at . . . . Continue Reading »

The Man-Made Messiah

From the January 2011 Print Edition

The most recognized face of any Jewish leader of the past fifty years belongs to the late Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, even more so today than at his death in 1994. There are few Jews who have not seen the picture of the Lubavitcher rebbe on billboards or in other media or who have not . . . . Continue Reading »