George Soros is, like me, an admirer of Karl Popper’s The Open Society and its Enemies. I completely agree with Soros on almost every issue, except that he has no interest at all in anything spiritual. When I met him briefly at a conference in Vienna many years ago, his disconnect from anything Jewish reminded me of a man who…
Author: Jeremy Rosen
Der Judenstaat
In 1896 Herzl published Der Judenstaat, in which he set out a vision of a Jewish state. It would be a state in which all citizens, of whatever religion or race, would have equal rights and be encouraged to participate as fully as Jews could (in theory) in other modern states of Christian or Muslim character and origin. I have…
Statistics, Lies, and the New York Times
An op-ed appeared in the New York Times on October 9th pointing out how much murder actually costs a country. It quoted research at Iowa State University that calculated that each murder costs society $17.25 million in victim’s costs, loss of earnings, and the justice, punitive, and prevention systems. Sounds like a lot, but I’m prepared to believe it. The…
Oaths
I have never liked oaths. There is so much swearing nowadays. Oaths are taken in vain and used as common currency. Criminals swear their innocence on the Bible. Politicians swear their probity on their words of honor. Every drunk and lout speaks a language that uses more swear words than civilized language. I am ashamed to say that I allow…
Paranoia
The furor over the mosque in New York is very healthy. It has illustrated paranoia. Screams of the dreaded Islamophobia are heard daily on the “liberal” media. America lacerates itself over its intolerance. Its leadership is fearful that now Muslims around the world will no longer love the USA as much as they used to. I am all in favor…
God in History
I have just finished writing a history of Carmel College, the school I headed for nearly 14 years, and which my father founded at a time when almost everyone in the UK thought Jewish education was bad and regressive. Great Jewish pioneers working when secular state education was excellent had a far tougher time than when it had collapsed in…