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In a phrase of Hermann Cohen, Maimonides is the “classic of rationalism” in Judaism. This phrase appears to us to be correct in a stricter sense than Cohen may have intended: Maimonides’…
[ . . . ] On a terribly cold winter night when a snowstorm was blowing, all prisoners were punished by being forced to stand at attention without overcoats—they never wore any—for hours. This was…
When macabre reality gnaws at a person’s soul, it is hard to devote oneself to psychological investigation, even of very pressing subjects. The event also seemed cut off from life, entirely academic…
When we consider the quotidian life of our society, it is impossible to ignore the phenomenon of “avoidance”; namely, it seems that the public at large is unwilling to think too much about the…
[ . . . ] That the status of the Jews in Europe has been not only that of an oppressed people but also of what Max Weber has called a “pariah people” is a fact most clearly appreciated by those who…
The Jews are probably the only people in the world to whom it has ever been proposed that their historic destiny is—to be nice. This singular concept has played such an important role in…
I have experienced in yishuvim [Jewish communities—Ed.] that old women are unable to keep the commandment of nido [menstrual purity—Ed.] properly. When they examine themselves and find a spot of blood…
[ . . . ] Immanuel Kant once wrote: “The true [moral] service of God is . . . invisible, i.e., it is the service of the heart, in spirit and in truth, and it may consist . . . only of intention.” Thi…
It is not the plan of this essay to discuss the millennium-old problem of faith and reason. I want instead to focus attention on a human-life situation in which the man of faith as an individual…
[The lessons a mother should give her son]: My son, you should know that before your body looked the way it does now, it was nothing. You were formed in my belly from the drops of fertility that came…