Nakba Day Mourns Wounded Arab Pride, Not Humanitarian Catastrophe
The real disaster.
December 13, 2022
How Kabbalah Shaped America
Colonial and Revolutionary thinkers were influenced by a Renaissance tradition of Christian kabbalism.
While the influence of the Hebrew Bible, Christian Hebraism, and even talmudic and post-talmudic thought on the American founding has been much remarked upon, much less notice has been paid to early American thinkers’ fascination with kabbalah. Arcane mysticism might even seem anathema to intellectuals formed by Enlightenment rationalism or radical Protestantism. Yet, Brian Ogren argues, prominent Christian Hebraists like Ezra Stiles—a Congregationalist minister and the seventh president of Yale University—were very much taken with kabbalah. Ogren discusses his recent book on the subject, and the longer history of Christian interest in Jewish mysticism, in conversation with Ari Lamm. (Audio, 51 minutes.)
December 13, 2022
Why Al Jazeera’s Lawsuit against Israel at the ICC May Backfire
A lesson from an American anti-Semite of the 1940s.
The First Amendment Case for Religious Charter Schools
The Supreme Court has already laid the groundwork.
How Kabbalah Shaped America
Colonial and Revolutionary thinkers were influenced by a Renaissance tradition of Christian kabbalism.
The First Hanukkah in British Jerusalem, 1917
An official report likened the ouster of the Turks to the defeat of the Seleucid Greeks by the Maccabees.