Ancient Hebrew Poetry

Reflections on ASOR/SBL/AAR – San Francisco 2011

    I had a great time at the annual meetings this year.

Whose Crime? Whose Punishment? Suicide as Social Drama

    One of the characteristics of both Judaism and Christianity is the high regard accorded to the individual with the expectation that the individual is to exercise his or her moral agency in the face of general indifference and/or active opposition. Biblical passages addressed to a “you plural” in which the collective addressee is constituted as a moral agent are commonplace, but so are passages, such as Psalms 1, 15, 112 and Ezekiel 18, in which the individual is the moral agent constituted in discourse.

Reflections on Suicide

My community and the high school where my oldest attends were recently convulsed by a suicide. Of course, not everyone knew Ethan. For those who didn’t, his suicide reminded them of someone else’s. It has been a time of soul-searching for many.

How often did I hear the question raised in the last few days, shouted or whispered: is someone who commits suicide destined to go to hell? Whatever one thinks of that question, it must at least be admitted that it is a common one. At the very least, the question is a symptom of the grave dis-ease we feel, or most of us feel, in the presence of suicide.

War and Peace in the face of the life and death of Jochen Klepper, Johanna Stein, and Renate Stein

It is my contention that pacifism lite, a vastly popular position in a number of European countries and in the halls of North American universities and church headquarters, is a symptom of political naiveté. It tends, furthermore, to be founded on an unexamined premise, to wit: that a politically responsible person acquits himself honorably if he, a would-be pundit, plays the part of pacifist-in-chief. As if an opinion defines a person, as opposed to a deed or style of life.

What a responsible life might consist of may be illustrated by that of Jochen Klepper, Johanna Stein, and Renate Stein. A gripping story, full of twists and turns, I briefly retell it in this post. It is not my intention to approve or disapprove of specific choices. I simply wish to claim that, in a context in which, as Goldhagen demonstrated, most Germans were Hitler’s “willing executioners,” this family lived a honorable life.