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Radical Ick

From the November 2024 Print Edition

I was recently sipping on chocolat chaud while visiting Paris, observing life leisurely unfurling in the charming Place des Vosges. I found myself contemplating a very difficult question. Like everything of consequence in French culture, that jewel of Western civilization, this question, . . . . Continue Reading »

The Screwtape Election

From the October 2024 Print Edition

How to make sense of the upcoming presidential election? Those of us reared on reason, logic, and basic human decency find ourselves a bit befuddled these days, trying to make sense of what is rapidly devolving into a Grand Guignol of political, moral, and cultural horrors. As if the elevation of an . . . . Continue Reading »

Renewing the Covenant

From the June/July 2024 Print Edition

Good news, fellow Americans: It’s civil war time! The violence, praise the Lord, unfurls exclusively on the silver screen, where the tortured protagonists of Alex Garland’s new blockbuster—unimprovably named Civil War—watch America being torn apart in a hail of bullets. Who’s . . . . Continue Reading »

Be Loud

From the May 2024 Print Edition

The central commandment found in American etiquette Torah is this old chestnut: Never discuss religion or politics. Do so, and you run the risk of offending those who hold different views. This is a grave sin, because polite society, after all, is an ideal predicated on the polite fiction that . . . . Continue Reading »

Against the Young

From the April 2024 Print Edition

The other month, I attended a conference thick with members of the clergy. It had everything you would expect: bad bagels for breakfast, a hurried nondenominational prayer to kick things off, and meeting rooms stacked with priests, rabbis, and imams grateful for a day off from the pulpit. I didn’t . . . . Continue Reading »

How to Revolt

From the March 2024 Print Edition

Earlier this year, a Seattle-based journalist named Tariq Ra’ouf took to social media to explain the logic behind the pro-Palestinian demonstrations that have been rocking American cities for months. “We are going to inconvenience every single person who doesn’t give a f**k until they give a . . . . Continue Reading »

Art Needs Faith

From the February 2024 Print Edition

Tis the season of “The Artist”: On screen, in print, and on stage, the man of the hour is the creative genius, the absolutist, the martyr, the suffering sinner redeemed only when he gives himself away, lovingly and without reservations, to his art. Just ask Hollywood, which is all aflutter at . . . . Continue Reading »

Pagan Hamas

From the January 2024 Print Edition

Addressing senior SS officers in Poznań on October 4, 1943, Heinrich Himmler was in a cheerful mood. The total extermination of the Jews, he told his minions, was going swimmingly; how unfortunate, though, that Nazism’s biggest triumph must be forever concealed. The mass murder, he said, was . . . . Continue Reading »