Leon R. Kass

You don’t have to be Jewish to drink L’Chaim, to lift a glass “To Life.” Everyone in his right mind believes that life is good and that death is bad. But Jews have always had an unusually keen appreciation of life, and not only because it has been stolen from them so often and so cruelly. . . . . Continue Reading »

Anyone interested in improving relations between men and women today and tomorrow must proceed by taking a page from yesterday. For today’s tale regarding manhood and womanhood is, alas, both too brief and hardly edifying. True, as they multiply taboos on speech and gesture, our sexual harassment . . . . Continue Reading »

Recent efforts to legalize physician-assisted suicide and to establish a constitutional “right to die” are deeply troubling events, morally dubious in themselves, extremely dangerous in their likely consequences. The legalization of physician-assisted suicide, ostensibly a measure enhancing the . . . . Continue Reading »

Once one gets right down to it, the difference between liberals and conservatives traces home to a disagreement about the basic source of human troubles. Liberals are inclined to blame external causes—for example, poverty, prejudice, poor rearing, or just plain misfortune—against which . . . . Continue Reading »

The authors of this essay on names have just identified themselves. Well, not quite. For the sake of full disclosure, they are willing to have it known that they have the same last name not by coincidence or consanguinity but because they are married to each other (and have been for over . . . . Continue Reading »

Abraham’s education as father and . . . . Continue Reading »

It is not exactly traditional to speak about the education of Abraham. Pious tales of the patriarch regard him as a precocious monotheist even before God calls him, a man who smashed his father’s idols, a man who sprang forth fully pious and knowledgeable about the ways of God. But, in my view, a . . . . Continue Reading »

Leon R. Kass examines the nature and purpose of human . . . . Continue Reading »