Jewish Political Thought

A Jewish thinker is normally someone devoted to the study and interpretation of Jewish texts, Jewish history, Jewish issues, Jewish ideas. The late Irving Kristol (1920–2009) was, for the most part, something else: a consummate American intellectual. Founding…

You don’t have to be Jewish to drink L’Chaim, to lift a glass “To Life.” Everyone in his right mind believes that life is good and that death is bad. But Jews have always had an unusually keen…

Every now and then, people who in the grand scheme of things look and sound more or less like me voice opinions that make me wonder whether I’ve been sucked through the rabbit hole. Often these opinions have…

Throughout the ages, despite differences in culture and cuisine, Jewish kitchens around the world shared a commitment to kashrut—the classical rules regulating the Jewish diet. This religious lifestyle, known as “keeping kosher,” which is still observed in a…

Michael Walzer is a pivotal figure in the recovery of the Jewish political tradition.  From his early book, Exodus and Revolution, which traced the impact of the Exodus story on Western politics, through his editorship, with…

The biblical book of Genesis presents the story of how God’s new way for humankind finds its first adherent in a single individual—Abraham, a man out of Mesopotamia—and how that way survives through three generations in the troubled…

By Asa Kasher | Originally published in Azure, Summer 2009   Editor’s Note: On Saturday, December 27, 2008, after eight years of continuing rocket attacks on its territory by Islamic terrorist organizations, Israel launched a full-scale military operation…