The end of a semester is always bitter-sweet. Among the sweetness is that as students buckle down and work on their final papers, one’s own brain switches back to research and writing. I love how that happens from one moment to the next. The part of you that was preoccupied with making sure your students were […]
April 28, 2019 at 9:23 am
How do you express an insight that is complex, particular, personal and yet political, one that cannot be expressed in a sentence or two? For some of us, expressing a differentiated insight requires interminable conversation. For others, writing a book. For Palestinian playwright Hanna Eady and his American collaborator Edward Mast it requires writing a […]
March 22, 2019 at 9:37 am
Dear Mr. President, An executive order promoting free speech and the freedom of thought across all institutions of higher learning should be welcomed by all. As Boston University President Robert A. Brown put it at a recent gathering in anticipation of your executive order, what you are telling us to do is what we are already doing. […]
March 10, 2019 at 9:56 pm
Can a Muslim American politician be critical of Israel and her American supporters without being anti-Semitic? The answer to this question is obviously: yes. There is no question, or there shouldn’t be one. First of all, it doesn’t matter whether she is Muslima, Christian, Jew or something else. Religion should not be considered in such […]
December 28, 2018 at 10:39 am
In the following considerations I take my cue from Hermann Cohen’s aesthetic theory, as presented in Sebastian Wogenstein’s informative book on “tragedy and Judaism from Cohen and Levinas” (Horizonte der Moderne. Tragödie und Judentum von Cohen bis Lévinas. Heidelberg: Winter, 2011). Similar to Myriam Bienenstock’s more recent monograph on Cohen und Rosenzweig (Alber 2018), Wogenstein […]
December 20, 2018 at 8:50 am
When people ask me what I teach, and I answer “religious studies,” I am always compelled to add that this has nothing to do with theology, and everything with the Humanities. Aside from the fact that I don’t wish to appear religious when I am not, I also want my work to be taken seriously […]
December 11, 2018 at 1:14 pm
The Book of Acts tells the story of how the good news of the risen Christ spread from Jerusalem to Rome. The anonymous narrator, identified by tradition as Luke, one of Paul’s Gentile travel companions, shows why the gospel proclaimed by the Peter, John, Stephen, and Paul was perceived as compelling and persuasive. The proclamation […]
December 2, 2018 at 7:08 pm
Hanukkah: eight nights and eight lights, ma’oz tsur, chocolate money, dreydldreydldreydl. Latke parties and gaudy decoration. What’s not to love? When it comes to the great miracle of light, people regularly miss the point. The rabbis made sure we did. The last drops of pure oil that was needed to rekindle the seven-branched candelabra at […]
November 29, 2018 at 4:09 pm
It’s been a long time since Junker Jörg, aka Martin Luther, threw an inkwell at the great adversary who had no difficulty catching up with the feisty former Augustinian monk hidden away at the Elector’s fortress Wartburg, even though Luther had grown a beard. But that’s not what this post is about. It’s about the […]
