America the Biblical

 

The Greeks did not invent equality. Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, and the gang famously believed that the rich are different from you and me—not merely because they are shaped by their privileges but because they are actually, literally made of superior stuff.

Origins of Democracy in Ancient Greece  Kurt A. Raaflaub, Josiah Ober, Robert W. Wallace,  University of California Press.  Athens may have recognized political equality among citizens, but not just anybody could be a citizen.  SAVE

Americanism: the Fourth Great Western Religion  David Gelernter,  Random House.  "America is no secular republic," Gelernter says; "it's a biblical republic."  SAVE

The Scepter Shall Not Depart from Judah  Alan L. Mittleman,  Lexington Books.  There is a "theological-political predicament" in modern Jews' spiritual dependence on their surrounding political systems.  SAVE

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Human Rights and Religious Wrongs

 

Although the discourse on human rights has a long pedigree, traceable at least to early modern natural rights theory and politics, the philosophical case for human rights against one alternative, religion, has yet to be made.

No Human Rights for Jews?  Elena Bonner,  Sakharov Center.  Speaking in May 2009 to the Freedom Forum in Oslo, the late Elena Bonner denounced the blatant anti-Semitism of her fellow human-rights activists.  SAVE

Human Rights Watch vs. Israel: An Inside Story  Ben Birnbaum,  New Republic.  A tale of bias and bigotry in the human-rights organization that is a major force in international politics.  SAVE

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Judaism on Steroids

 

Ryan Braun, the reigning MVP of baseball's National League, is having a rough offseason. On December 12, ESPN reported that Braun had tested positive for a performance-enhancing drug (PED) after a league-mandated drug test revealed elevated levels of testosterone in his system.

Braun’s Temple  Richard Sandomir,  New York Times.  Why such interest in whether a ballplayer plays a game or worships on a High Holy Day? Call it the Greenberg-Koufax Yom Kippur Precedent.  SAVE

The Golden Age of Jewish Ballplayers?  David Elfin,  Moment.  Profiles of Braun, Craig Breslow, Ike Davis, Danny Valencia, and Kevin Youkilis.  SAVE

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2011: A Year in Books

 

The holidays are over, the coffee-table books have all been unwrapped and set aside, and winter isn't going anywhere for a while. In short, it's time to settle in for some good reading. The literary critic D. G. Myers here presents the 38 best Jewish books of 2011, all of which merit your attention.

2010: A Year in Books  D.G. Myers,  Jewish Ideas Daily.  From the popular to the scholarly, a reader's and buyer's guide to 34 of the best books of 2010.  SAVE

Retrieving American Jewish Fiction  D.G. Myers,  Jewish Ideas Daily.  A historical symposium of some neglected classics, and an introduction to the avot and imahot of American Jewish writing.  SAVE

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View More in Ethics

Insight & Analysis

Arendt in Jerusalem  Sol Stern.  City Journal.  With their monumental errors of political and moral judgment, Hannah Arendt's writings on Zionism, Israel, and the Holocaust have metastasized into a destructive legacy.  SAVE

Shnorrers  Simon Yisrael Feuerman.  Tablet.  One dollar buys you a torrent of blessings from the elderly Russians who sit in the synagogue literally with their hands out: A gut yahr, na zdrovie, they say. Spraznikom.  And those are just the regulars.  SAVE

Three Talmudists Confront the Evil Urge  Shai Secunda, Amit Gevaryahu, Eva Kiesele, Raphael Magarik.  Talmud Blog.  A symposium on the psychological, historical, and rabbinic development of the yetzer hara picks up where Jewish Ideas Daily left off.  SAVE

Radical Orthodoxy  Daniel Boyarin.  Book of Doctrines and Opinions.  The Talmud scholar imagines a religious practice, "free of the ethnocentrism and even racism that characterizes so much of contemporary orthodox language . . . that would authentically enable my own radical political commitments." (Interview with Alan Brill).  SAVE

The Limits of Secularism  Jonathan Sacks.  Standpoint.  Isaiah Berlin didn't understand how the Chief Rabbi could have studied philosophy at Cambridge and Oxford and still have faith. "Isaiah," said Sacks, "if it helps, think of me as a lapsed heretic.".  SAVE

Saintly Scientist  Benjamin Ivry.  Forward.  Co-winner of the 1925 Nobel Prize in physics, James Franck's achievements and extended hand to postwar Germany are long overdue for a returned hand from his native country.  SAVE

False Equivalence  Nathan Jeffay.  Jewish Chronicle.  It is supremely irresponsible to equate Shalit's captivity to Pollard's imprisonment, or the former's inhumane abduction by Hamas to the latter's due process in the U.S.  SAVE

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