If God created the world, then his existence must be compatible with the world. If he created human intelligence, his existence must not be an insult to the intelligence. If the greatest gift he gave...
I find it exceptionally moving that the Bible should cast in these heroic roles two figures at the extreme margins of Israelite society: women, childless widows, outsiders. Tamar and Ruth, powerless e...
Her behaviour became a model. Not surprisingly, the rabbis inferred from her conduct a strong moral rule: It is better that a person throw himself into a fiery furnace rather than shame his neighbour...
First, in the seventeenth century, came the secularisation of knowledge in the form of science and philosophy. Then in the eighteenth century came the secularisation of power by way of the American an...
Dualism, as we have noted, comes in many forms: between mind and body, in-group and out-group, and between the higher and lower instincts between which we must constantly choose. It may be that binary...
Compare the Torah’s treatment of free will with that of the great philosophical or scientific theories. For these other systems, freedom is almost invariably an either/or: either we are always free or...
A fundamental principle of Jewish leadership is intimated here for the first time: a leader does not need faith in himself, but he must have faith in the people he is to lead.
Speech was seen in Judaism not simply as a means of conveying information, though it is that as well, but also and essentially as a means of holding the group together without coercive force.
Sacrifice is at the heart of both politics and family. Both parent and citizen understand themselves as subject to a demand for sacrifice. They recognise the demand as legitimate because they live in...
Douglas Mock has assembled the animal behavioural evidence in More than Kin and Less than Kind.6 In the Galapagos Islands young fur seals attack their newborn siblings, seizing them by the throat and...
As Katharine Hepburn majestically said to Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen, Nature, Mr Allnut, is what we were put on earth to rise above.
Why is it that we say we see something distinctive in these lives and not, say, in a politician hoping for our vote, or a lawyer doing her job, or even a soldier risking his life for the sake of his c...