When I spot an essay entitled “The Secret Auden,” I get nervous. When it’s in the New York Review of Books, I get nervouser.Edward Mendelson’s recent piece on Auden does refer to Auden’s homosexuality, but the focus of the piece is elsewhere: Auden’s dirty . . . . Continue Reading »
Is the olah, the “whole burnt offering,” a “pure gift, as Moshe Halbertal has it in On Sacrifice (14)?It seems so: The entire animal is burned, no meat remains for the worshiper, there is no evident benefit given in return for the total devotion of an animal to Yahweh,Sed . . . . Continue Reading »
Blood atones. That’s rooted in the created fact that life is in the blood, but in the Bible this doesn’t mean that blood is a kind of magical moral detergent. How then can it atone?It atones because God has “given” it for atonement: “I have given [blood] to you on the . . . . Continue Reading »
Stephen A. Geller offers an intriguing reading of the day of atonement rituals. He points out that, for all the attention given to the scapegoat, one of the unique features of this day’s rites, it is not said that the scapegoat atones for sin. What puts the kafar into Yom Kiuppur is . . . . Continue Reading »
Why, Stephen A. Geller asks, does “P” consider blood a necessary agent for achieving forgiveness and the re-creation that is atonement? He answers by noting the sequence of Leviticus 16-17, which moves from the bloody cleansing and reestablishment of the sanctuary to the command . . . . Continue Reading »
Rabbinic Judaism, Stephen Geller suggests, is the “triumph of Deuteronomy and the Word.”After the fall of the temple especially, the place of the cult was taken by prayer and the liturgy. The literary temple became far more important than any possible future building. And with the end of . . . . Continue Reading »
Michel Anteby’s Manufacturing Morals is an “ethnography” of the Harvard Business School. It’s an odd book, very insight-the-HBS, but along the way he develops the intriguing notions of “vocal silence.”Routine seems to rob individuals of responsibility. But . . . . Continue Reading »
In his contribution to The Neighbor, Zizek offers this typically contrarian, typically extreme, description of the impact of God’s command to love the neighbor:“What gets lost in this ‘critique of ethical violence’ is precisely the most precious and revolutionary aspect . . . . Continue Reading »
Rivers have a unique place in biblical cosmology. Though watery, rivers are unlike the sea, which always threatens to overwhelm the land. Channeled, water becomes life-giving. They keep land fruitful, set boundaries between peoples or join them as liquid roads. A river is water brought into . . . . Continue Reading »
Someone asked me recently if my Gratitude includes a section on Barth. It doesn’t, and I’m sure this is not the last time I will turn sheepish as I confess to a large, unconscionable gap in the book.It doesn’t make up for the oversight, but here are some summary comments . . . . Continue Reading »
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