Thomas Piketty is a French economist. His book Capital in the Twenty-First Century has taken the left-wing intellectual world by storm. Reviews are everywhere, and if you want to be up-to-date in the salon or the pub, you’ll need to read up on his major points. The truth is that it’s not the essence of his message that has made…
Are “peace” conferences a waste of time?
I recently had occasion to attend a conference of politicians and theologians in Vienna. It was sponsored by the InterAction Council, an organization of former presidents, prime ministers, and assorted theologians from all round the world. The council is dedicated to achieving world peace, which it believes it will achieve if it agrees to and promulgates a basic program of…
Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, 1865 to 1935
There is one rabbi who stands out in my mind above all others in the previous century. Rav Abraham Isaac Kook was the first Chief Rabbi of the Land of Israel under the mandate. There were other great products of the Lithuanian world who equaled or surpassed him in scholarship. But there was no one who had his vision, his…
Versions of Passover
In 419 BCE, the Persian king Darius issued a decree concerning the Jewish garrison at Elephantine on the Nile Delta (near the cataracts of what is now called Aswan). It was directed towards the governor, Arsames, and instructed him to make sure that the Egyptian priests of Khnum did not attack the Jews or try to stop the Passover celebrations…
The Faith of Fallen Jews
Thanks to Brandeis University Press, I have been thoroughly enjoying a volume of essays by the historian Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi who died far too early, in 2009. The title of this compilation, The Faith of Fallen Jews: Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi and the Writing of Jewish History, comes from the major interest of his academic life. Yerushalmi was fascinated by what…
Racism
The film that won Best Picture at the Oscars this year, 12 Years a Slave, is a moving picture about a free black man living in New York State in the 1840s, before the Civil War. It is based on a true account of how a free black citizen in New York State was tricked into visiting Washington, where he…