When Life Starts to Improve
Leo Tolstoy, Spiritual Writings, edited by Charles E. Moore Prophetic witness consists of human deeds of justice and kindness that attend to the unjust sources of human hurt and misery. It calls attention to the…
Category: Intellectuals
Problematizing My Faves: Matt Taibbi on Howard Zinn
The worst thing is to claim to be objective. Of course, you can’t be. Historians should say what their values are, what they care about, what their background is, and let you know what is…
Open to Receive Others’ Viewpoints
Do not think that the knowledge that you presently possess is changeless, absolute truth. Avoid being narrow-minded and bound to present views. Learn and practice nonattachment from views in order to be open to receive…
¡Presente!
Remembering Rosemary Radford Ruether, with whom I was in Palestine in spring 1990 and who supported my first book in 2001… She was one of the greats. She embodied sempre avanti. She had a deep…
So, Which Is It?
My friend Andrew Wimmer texted me the following two lines… [Paul] Street’s dementia: “the Kremlin [is] in the grip of a megalomaniacal neofascist…” Stephen F. Cohen on accusations of fascism leveled against Putin: “absurd.” Street…
Reflections on the Intellectual Life by Irina S.
In one of my classes, we are reading a variety of books on the love of learning. I asked Irina (a nom de plume) if she’d be willing to share a few reflections on Zena…
Some Works Are Greater Than Others
Edward W. Said, Power, Politics, and Culture: Interviews Edited and with an Introduction by Gauri ViswanathanPantheon Books, 2001 Two writers who are well known for their championing of the literary canon are Harold Bloom and George…
A Letter from 2005
April 6, 2005 Dear Andrew, I recently finished a small book by Edward Said, Humanism and Democratic Criticism, and it made me think of many conversations we’ve had over the past couple of years. So…
Righteous, Remorseful Jews
As my 61st birthday approaches, I’ve noticed that I have recently been going back to authors and works I read many years ago. For example, I’ve been reading Thomas Merton’s Asian Journal, William D. Miller’s…
From 7 P.M. to 7 A.M.
Gershom Scholem, From Berlin to Jerusalem: Memories of My Youth Schocken paperback, 1988 I first read this book eighteen years ago. So much time has passed since those Maryknoll days when I thought I wanted to…