I received an email from a Jewish historian and journalist I respect very much, including this thought: I envy your finding [spiritual life] “at home” so to speak in Judaism, but alas the worship of a Jewish God who found the Holocaust necessary for his “plan” is just impossible for me. Obviously he’s not the…

I’ve learned to temper both my thoughts and how I express them — a little bit! — since I wrote a 1998 piece for First Things about the Holocaust in light of the Hebrew Bible that was subsequently denounced in the letters-to-the-editor section as “horrible,” “ghastly,” “blasphemy,” “appalling,” “racist,” “heartless,” “impious,” “hateful,” “primitive,” “cruel,” and “evil.” Oh…

  I’ve long been fascinated by the image of the Tree of Death, parallel to the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden and cryptically referred to in mystical texts explaining the Hebrew Bible: And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and…

I promised you that over Shabbat I would read Spengler’s essay from First Things, “Christian, Muslim, Jew,” and I did on Friday night after dinner. It is a very interesting and characteristically learned discourse on the religious philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig, who is described in the essay as one of the greatest Jewish theologians of…

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