Among Christians, anger is one of the seven deadly sins. For Jews, too, it is a major vice. Contemporary secular culture also takes a negative view. It commonly views anger as something to be controlled if not extirpated, if only because it disrupts social life and interferes with the smooth . . . . Continue Reading »
The E.U. is concerned with minimizing pain, but in the process allows the human character to become indifferent to the loss of animal life. Continue Reading »
I recently read an interview with a writer who is, like me, in her mid-eighties. I was surprised by how vehemently she insisted that she never allowed herself to think about death. For even before my brush with death five years ago, at the age of eighty-one, thinking about my ultimate end had been . . . . Continue Reading »
From the 1940s until his death in 1986, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein was the most prominent authority on Jewish law in America. One of his briefer responses addressed an inquiry about whether it was permissible to play ball for a living. What about the threat of serious injury? No, said R. Moshe, adducing . . . . Continue Reading »
The Maccabees kept nothing, whether sublime or obscene, from their creator’s redemptive touch. Continue Reading »
George Steiner, who died earlier this year, was one of the most influential Jewish intellectuals of the last half-century. He produced a foundational text in the philosophy of translation, the first thorough introduction to Martin Heidegger in English, major investigations into the nature of tragedy . . . . Continue Reading »
I thank God for Jonathan Sacks and commend him to the God of the spirits of all flesh. Continue Reading »
Rabbi Sacks was fond of saying that “Judaism is a protest against the world that is, in the name of the world that ought to be.” Continue Reading »
Sometimes it’s difficult to convey Jewish thinking to Christians precisely when it appears almost identical with the corresponding Christian teaching. Orthodox Jewish and Christian believers are committed to ideas of divine justice that include the destination of human beings after death. That . . . . Continue Reading »
Is a month without special observances a superior or inferior month? Continue Reading »
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