Author Archives: Josh

Over the past 14 years a great deal has been written about Irena Sendler, a  Polish woman who smuggled over 2500 children out of the Warsaw Ghetto and secured them in hiding places throughout Poland until the war’s end.  Jack … Continue reading →

Last week, Shlomo Amar intimated that the Plesner committee could cause earthquakes. Similarly, Ovadia Yosef has often been criticized for his reasons for disasters like Hurricane Katrina. People don’t realize that these guys are lightweights. For all the bluster, Yosef … Continue reading →

In a previous post, I discussed Meir Soloveichik’s shifting position with regard to interfaith dialogue. At that time, I was merely excoriating a Rabbi for feteing Mitt Romney against his better judgment. However, Soloveichik’s positions have taken on new importance. Rumor has … Continue reading →

Chakira solicits and reviews books. We don’t receive all the books we ask for and we don’t always review all the ones receive. This seems pretty consistent with norms for other blogs in philosophy (Leiter Reports) and the Jewish blogosphere … Continue reading →

How can you be “Right on Israel, left on everything else?” How can someone who heard Dylan and appreciated the Dead perpetuate the Occupation? In addressing this question, Shaul Magid sets up a story about the universal and the particular … Continue reading →

Augustine bequeathed us a model of conversion as a deep, personal, introspective development. Obviously, this hardly describes many experiences of conversion. As Jews know, conversions can take place under duress. Conversions can be instances of dissimulation. People can convert for … Continue reading →

In praising Mitt Romney’s Liberty University speech, Meir Soloveichik has done the impossible. He has bridged the incommensurable gap between religions, rendering knowledgeable verdicts on the status of Mormonism vis a vis Christianity. Of course, it’s slightly easier to do … Continue reading →

I’m posting on Lucan’s Civil War in conjuction with my friends at waggish. Goethe’s apophthegm “nemo contra deum nisi deus ipse” was a major preoccupation of Hans Blumenberg. One way to explicate this enigmatic remark is historically. For one god … Continue reading →