First Things RSS Feed - Leon R. Kass https://www.firstthings.com/author/leon-r-kass en-us Copyright 2025 First Things. All Rights Reserved. ft@firstthings.com (The Editors) ft@firstthings.com (The Editors) Mon, 20 Jan 2025 16:55:35 -0500 https://d2201k5v4hmrsv.cloudfront.net/img/favicon-196.png First Things RSS Feed Image https://www.firstthings.com/rss/author/leon-r-kass 60 L’Chaim and Its Limits: Why Not Immortality? https://www.firstthings.com/article/2001/05/lchaim-and-its-limits-why-not-immortality https://www.firstthings.com/article/2001/05/lchaim-and-its-limits-why-not-immortality Tue, 01 May 2001 00:00:00 -0400 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. The celebration of life—of this life, not the next one—has from the beginning been central to Jewish ethical and religious sensibilities. In the Torah, “Be fruitful and multiply” is God’s first blessing and first command. Judaism from its inception rejected child-sacrifice and regarded long life as a fitting divine reward for righteous living. At the same time, Judaism embraces medicine and the human activity of healing the sick; from the Torah the rabbis deduced not only permission for doctors to heal, but also the positive obligation to do so. Indeed, so strong is this reverence for life that the duty of pikuah nefesh requires that Jews violate the holy Shabbat in order to save a life. Not by accident do we Jews raise our glasses “ L’Chaim .”

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]]> Dehumanization Triumphant https://www.firstthings.com/article/1996/08/dehumanization-triumphant https://www.firstthings.com/article/1996/08/dehumanization-triumphant Thu, 01 Aug 1996 00:00:00 -0400 R ecent 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 freedom of dying patients, is in fact a deadly license for physicians to prescribe death, free from outside scrutiny and immune from possible prosecution. The manufacture of a “right to die,” ostensibly a gift to those not dying fast enough, is, in fact, the state’s abdication of its duty to protect innocent life and its abandonment especially of the old, the weak, and the poor.

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]]> Farmers, Founders, and Fratricide: The Story of Cain and Abel https://www.firstthings.com/article/1996/04/farmers-founders-and-fratricide-the-story-of-cain-and-abel https://www.firstthings.com/article/1996/04/farmers-founders-and-fratricide-the-story-of-cain-and-abel Mon, 01 Apr 1996 00:00:00 -0500 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.

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]]> Educating Father Abraham: The Meaning of Fatherhood https://www.firstthings.com/article/1994/12/educating-father-abraham-the-meaning-of-fatherhood https://www.firstthings.com/article/1994/12/educating-father-abraham-the-meaning-of-fatherhood Thu, 01 Dec 1994 00:00:00 -0500 My theme is the education of the patriarch Abraham, Father of Judaism, father of Christianity, father of Islam. God Himself undertakes Abraham’s education in order to address and to overcome the natural, psychic, and social human obstacles to righteous and reverent living, obstacles amply displayed in the pre-Abrahamic stories of Genesis. Abraham, the new man, is to be the founder of a new nation steeped in God’s new way, which this nation is to carry as a light unto all the nations of the world. The new way entails rightful conduct toward and rightful relations with members of one's household, members of the tribe, strangers and members of other nations, and the divine. I have taken as my focus Abraham’s education in matters domestic: in the first part of this essay, the meaning of wife ; here, the closely connected meaning of fatherhood. Educating the father of his people means, in the first instance, educating him to be a proper husband and father; for the perpetuation of God’s new way will depend not on a fortuitous succession of naturally virtuous men and women, but on the proper rearing of the young in every generation to the task of transmitting their moral and spiritual heritage.

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]]> Educating Father Abraham: The Meaning of Wife https://www.firstthings.com/article/1994/11/educating-father-abraham-the-meaning-of-wife https://www.firstthings.com/article/1994/11/educating-father-abraham-the-meaning-of-wife Tue, 01 Nov 1994 00:00:00 -0500 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 careful reading of the biblical text shows otherwise: Abraham indeed goes to school, God Himself is his major teacher, and Abraham’s adventures constitute his education, right up to his final exam, the binding of Isaac.

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]]> Man and Woman: An Old Story https://www.firstthings.com/article/1991/11/man-and-woman-an-old-story https://www.firstthings.com/article/1991/11/man-and-woman-an-old-story Fri, 01 Nov 1991 00:00:00 -0500 Man and woman. What are they, and why—each alone and both together? How are they alike and how different? How much is difference due to nature, how much to culture? What difference does—and should—the difference make? What do men want of women or women of men? What should they want? Do they really need each other? If so, why? Which beliefs, customs, and institutions governing sexuality best promote their human flourishing?

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