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How Jewish Professionals Read the Talmud

The Talmud begins appropriately enough with a question: “From what time do we say the [prayer] shema?” The answer: “From the time the priests enter to eat the terumah,” or offering. Okay … but when do the priests eat the terumah? That depends on whom you ask. Rabbi Eliezer says one thing, the wise men another. Rabban Gamliel holds a different opinion, too… . Continue Reading »

Can Organ-Harvesters Be Number One?

Despite some hiccups caused by the sorry state of the world economy, China is still The Future for many global analysts. Thomas Friedman of the New York Times has even suggested that Americans have a lot to learn politically from the economic successes of Chinese authoritarianism. That China is the rising world power seems taken for granted in many elite foreign policy circles… . Continue Reading »

Avoiding Adjectives

We have lost both the desire and the ability to engage in arguments in the public square out of fear of being called bigots. Whether it is the debate surrounding gay “marriage,” “women’s health,” or another issue, discrimination is viewed as the great social sin of the twenty-first century. While the accusation may spell the death of argument, one can revive the debate by challenging the contention that all forms of discrimination are morally wrong. In order to do this we must first understand the roots of this erroneous claim… . Continue Reading »

Jesus's Challenge: Stand and Deliver

Both of my sons are wordsmiths and the elder one has a particular facility for delivering groan-inducing puns with such lightning speed that even as you roll your eyes, you can’t help but be a little impressed—or terrified—by how dexterously his brain can associate many things with many other things… . Continue Reading »

Against Faith in Faith

It has become a strange and unfortunate commonplace that one must have faith in faith”faith, that is, in the ability to commit oneself to truths that transcend rational justification”not only out of respect for faith’s intrinsic (if futile) beauty, but also as a means to the truth. Confronted with inadequate evidence for the deeper truths of life, one must conjure up a commitment to ideas for which the subjective act of faith can be the only ground, and one must believe not only in the content of faith but in the faith-act itself… . Continue Reading »

The Neo-Bourgeois Project

In the August/September issue of First Things, I wrote briefly about New York’s Nanny-in-chief, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and his proposal to regulate the size of sugary drinks for sale in Gotham. Many commentators chortled. I’ve found myself thinking his efforts serious, and a sign of our times. Our neo-bourgeois elites feel the need to impose their order on the lower classes… . Continue Reading »

Obedient Wives, Helpless Husbands

Growing up, my dad used to tell me something that made me laugh. He would look me straight in the eyes, all seriousness, and clear his throat. Remember, he would say to me, remember: Men. Are. Pigs. Having ultimately failed to keep me away from the opposite gender altogether, my dad has stopped drilling this mantra into my head… . Continue Reading »

Salvation By Sport

Like a billion other viewers, I caught some of the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Games earlier this week. It was a marvel of planning and choreography. The visual highlight in a breathtaking spectacle was the moment when the two-hundred and four burning petals, lit from seven torches, rose to form a single, monumental cauldron at the center of the Olympic Stadium… . Continue Reading »

A Baltimore Catechism for the New Atheists

One of the more striking differences between the New Atheists and, say, Freud or Nietzsche is the willingness of the former to engage natural theology on its own terms. Not that they get very far in their clumsy forays”it’s all pretty halfhearted and amateurish stuff, indeed sometimes wincingly embarrassing… . Continue Reading »

The Magic of Locality

In the summer of 1993, family obligations dictated that I move closer to home. It also meant taking a sabbatical from parish ministry. That’s how I ended up in Marceline, Missouri, population 2,500, interviewing with the publisher of the Marceline Press to become editor. He’d already offered the spot to me by telephone based on clips I sent. Now he was taking me on a tour, selling the town… . Continue Reading »

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