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The real start of the myth of the Jew with the Knife in English literature goes back to the tale, already hundreds of years old, which Chaucer puts into the mouth of his Prioress, a character faintly…
In the new religious revival, the theologians and philosophers have it easy; they can battle about the nature of revelation endlessly in the pages of Commentary. Parents and householders, on the other…
I was present at the last birth. My wife and I had done the natural childbirth exercises. We were ready. The doctor was kind and easy.
The child was born, my fourth child, a boy. After three girls…
There is only one question which really matters: why do bad things happen to good people? All other theological conversation is intellectually diverting; somewhat like…
One widespread misconception concerning Judaism is the notion that Judaism is a religion which is not rooted in dogma. […] To be sure, membership in the community of Israel is not contingent upon a…
“Prayer is to religion what thinking is to philosophy. The religious sense prays as the intellectual organ thinks.” Prayer, to carry this saying of Novalis a step further, is a significant…
At this moment in world history anti-Semitism is not manifesting itself with the full and violent destructiveness of which we know it to be capable. Even a social disease has its periods of quiescence…
I am not I
when called to account—
plaster over, dumbly benched
the corrosive ardency
of blinkered identification.
To affirm nothing, a veil
of asymptotic bent,
prattling over-
tunes in the striated…
February 9, 2000Dear Ammi,It was a pleasure meeting you in person last week. […]I wonder what the staff and the other patrons thought about the two of us sitting there, me with my beard, peyot, and…
“Green fields, fair forests, singing streams, pine-clad mountains, verdant vista—from the monotony of the city to the monotony of nature. I wanted a complete change, and so I went to the East Side of…