Category: Jewish Tradition

Episodes/1 (The Prophetic)

To us a single act of injustice (Cheating in business, exploitation of the poor) Is slight To the prophets A disaster To us injustice is injurious to the welfare of the people To the prophets…

Reasons of State Or Reasons of Memory

First published in The Ecumenist, 1997.   Edward T. Linenthal, Preserving Memory:  The Struggle to Create America’s Holocaust Museum. New York:  Penguin USA, 1995. $27.95, U.S.A; $36.99, Canada.   Throughout this spring, there have been several…

The Way of the World/2

In 1974 Rabbi Yitz Greenberg averred No statement theological or otherwise Is credible unless it’s credible In the presence of burning children The U.S. government cares passionately Rhetorically about the burning children Victimized by our…

Primacy

“[Shoshani] didn’t teach piety; he taught the texts. The texts are more fundamental—and vaster—than piety. “ –Emmanuel Levinas

Elie Wiesel and the Question of Palestine

This essay was first published in Tikkun, November-December 2002. In his 1986 Nobel lecture, Elie Wiesel spoke with characteristic gravity on any attempt to reckon with the Holocaust: “There are no theological answers, there are no…

To My Friends by Primo Levi

Dear friends, and here I say friends the broad sense of the word: Wife, sister, associates, relatives, Schoolmates of both sexes, People seen only once Or frequented all my life; Provided that between us, for…

Shema, Primo Levi

You who live secure In your warm houses Who return at evening to find Hot food and friendly faces: Consider whether this is a man, Who labours in the mud Who knows no peace Who…

Drugged by Books

Soon after my father’s death, I started reading Leon Wieseltier’s Kaddish, his journal of reflections on his year of going to shul and saying Kaddish. In the days and weeks ahead, Wieseltier offered me some…