October 24, 2019 at 12:05 pm
Human acts of evil are subject to punishment. In Genesis 6 the biblical deity concludes that the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth. As result, human lifespan is reduced, and the initial crop of human beings is wiped out by the flood. Post-diluvial humanity is assured that such destruction will not occur […]
October 21, 2019 at 8:06 am
In recent politics, the word “transactional” has been used a lot. Transactional politics are rootless politics where everything is governed by the self-interest of the moment. The opposite of transactionism are politics governed by policies and relationships by contracts. Transactional politics atomize relationships into moments of transaction. Non-transactional politics seek continuity and predictability. If we […]
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 […]
