David Novak

The eight-hundredth anniversary of the death in 1204 of Rabbi Moses the son of Rabbi Maimon the Spaniard”better known to the world as Maimonides”was celebrated throughout the world. It gave Jews, especially, the opportunity to call the world’s attention to Maimonides’ great . . . . Continue Reading »

Following the no confidence vote in the House of Commons that led to the fall of the minority government of Liberal Paul Martin, the Governor-General of Canada (who is the official representative of the Head of State, Her Majesty the Queen) has called for a parliamentary election on January 23rd, . . . . Continue Reading »

Essential Essays on Judaism by Eliezer Berkovits editied by David Hazony Shalem. 393 pp. $22.95 paper. During the second half of the twentieth century, three significant traditionalist Jewish thinkers were at work in America, if by “traditionalist” one means thinkers who affirm the divine . . . . Continue Reading »

The Jewish“Christian dialogue of recent decades is a new thing that stands in sharp contrast to the terribly complicated relationship between Jews and Christians over the past two thousand years. It is not at all surprising that there are both Christians and Jews who are afraid of the . . . . Continue Reading »

No one, save a prophet, could have predicted the radical change in the relationship between Jews and Christians since Western civilization narrowly escaped physical and moral annihilation in the Second World War. Having narrowly escaped physical annihilation, Jews have had to look at the world . . . . Continue Reading »

“Why should the Jewish state exist at all?” Until quite recently, there was a ready answer to the basic question Yoram Hazony raises at the beginning of this provocative book: the Jewish state needs to exist in order to provide a homeland for homeless Jews in the world. Indeed, from its . . . . Continue Reading »

It seems unavoidable that history will always link the reestablishment of the State of Israel with the tragedy of the Holocaust. There were only fifteen years between January 1933, when Hitler and the Nazi regime came to power in Germany, and May 1948, when the independence of the State of Israel . . . . Continue Reading »

The twentieth century has witnessed the worst and the best in Jewish-Christian relations. On the negative side of the ledger is the Holocaust. Even if responsibility for the systematic murder of six million Jews lies with the anti-Christian ideology of the Nazis, the fact is that traditional . . . . Continue Reading »

The fact that the now regular advances in biomedical technology affect the lives of everybody in our society in new, unprecedented ways has made biomedical ethics a conversation in which many different voices are striving to be heard. Philosophers want to be heard in order to show others that . . . . Continue Reading »

The recent canonization of Edith Stein as Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross by the Roman Catholic Church poses a number of very serious challenges to living Jews, we who are still members of the people to whom Edith Stein believed she also belonged, even at her death in Auschwitz. Theologically . . . . Continue Reading »