J’Accuse! was the title of Emile Zola’s condemnation of French anti-Semitism in the Dreyfus affair. I accuse human beings who ought to know better of abrogating their responsibility to other human beings. From Cain’s story we learn that humans are capable of gratuitous violence. And here we are thousands of years later and still almost every day brings another story…
General Topics
Mediation
The reviving clash between religion and the civil state is gaining in heat, but now in reverse. The flash point, of course, is the issue of Sharia law and whether it should have any place in Western democratic legal systems. In parts of the USA, laws have been passed banning Sharia from having any role whatsoever, and in the UK,…
Rabbi Lior and Torat HaMelech
We like to pride ourselves, we Jews, that our Orthodox firebrands aren’t as violent as the Muslims. The more Orthodox you get in Islam, the more Jihad turns from peaceful to violent. But the more Orthodox in Judaism, the more the tendency toward the spiritual and the passive (Chasidic pyromaniacs excluded). The exceptions to this rule are the rabbis of…
UK Chief Rabbi
It’s amusing to an outsider, as I now am, to observe the interest in the UK over a new Chief Rabbi. Ben Elton, author of Britain’s Chief Rabbis and the Religious Character of Anglo-Jewry 1880-1970, wrote an article in the Jewish Chronicle recently in which he contrasted different styles of Chief Rabbis and argued that the next one, instead of…
Casey Anthony & Law
There are many types of legal systems. Ancient systems included Babylonian, Egyptian, Hindu, Jewish, and Roman. Legal thought inspired by Grotius (early 17th century) developed new legal concepts based on “natural law”. Countries began to free themselves from the vice of the Church and developed their own systems. For example Scotland diverged from English law in various ways, most notably…
The San Francisco Cut
Do you really believe those San Franciscans who want to make circumcision illegal are genuinely concerned with the welfare of children? If they were they’d immediately introduce a law restricting parenthood to those who have passed a psychological examination. But then I doubt many of them would survive sane. I ask you, what is likely to do more harm to…