The Dangerous Mr. Nelson

Eric Nelson is a danger to academia. You would not think so from his background. He is the Frederick S. Danziger Associate Professor of Government at Harvard University. He has had a proper education, at Harvard and Trinity College, Cambridge.

Jerusalem and Athens  Leo Strauss,  Jewish Ideas Daily.  Strauss's seminal essay on the Greeks, the Hebrew Bible, and the profound differences between the two.  SAVE

Created Equal  Joshua Berman,  Oxford University Press.  While ancient Greece is often considered the cradle of political thought, "the patrimony of modern political thought rests no less squarely in the texts of the Bible."  SAVE

The Bible and the Good Life  Aryeh Tepper,  Jewish Ideas Daily.  Arguing with God is one thing. Where is the evidence that the Bible is a philosophical text?  SAVE

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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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The Evil Inclination

The yetzer hara, usually translated "evil impulse," is an elusive rabbinic concept. The words derive from God's observation in Genesis 8:21 (paralleled earlier in 6:5) that "the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth."

Evil Urge  Amit Gevaryahu,  Talmud Blog.  A new work tackles one of the most entrenched myths in the academic study of Jewish sources: namely, that Judaism has historically been a sex-positive religion.  SAVE

Bar Mitzvah and Yetzer Hatov  Jeffrey Spitzer,  My Jewish Learning.  In rabbinic texts, the distinction between childhood and young adulthood is the birth of the good inclination.  SAVE

Good and Evil  Virtual Jewish Library.  Maimonides integrated the "good inclination" and "evil inclination" in his Aristotelian theory of the soul; Kabbalah reads the concepts in cosmic terms.  SAVE

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Reconstructionist rabbinical students.

Reconstructing Judaism

At a time when all three major Jewish denominations in America—Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform—find themselves in a state of deep internal fracture, a fourth and much smaller movement, Reconstructionism, has just voted to create a unified body to coordinate the activities of its lay and rabbinical arms.

Reconstructing Halakhah  Daniel Goldman Cedarbaum,  Reconstructionism Today.  Religious law is an essential component of Jewish life, but the traditional system must be brought into line with contemporary democratic sensibilities.  SAVE

Dim-Sum Jews  Ben Weiner,  Zeek.  As a respite from the Chinese-buffet model of optional Jewishness, a young rabbi turns wistfully to the "thickness" and "dense particularity" of cultural Yiddishkeit. (PDF, 2010)  SAVE

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