Kingdom of Priests

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…

I’ve belatedly discovered a soul brother in the person of “Spengler,” the incredibly widely read and formerly masked columnist for the Asia Times Online. He reveals his true identity now as David P. Goldman, in the act of taking up a new and exciting post at the always fascinating ecumenical journal First Things. What a…

The wild beasts of the desert shall also meet with the wild beasts of the island, and the satyr shall cry to his fellow; Lilith also shall rest there, and find for herself a place of rest (Isaiah 34:14). Somehow it happened that my earlier comment about a secular age like ours being a Dark…

Just in time for Passover (which is just past), Princeton University Press brings out a book that seeks to debunk the parting of the Red Sea — whose anniversary we Jews just observed two days ago on the seventh day of Passover — along with the other miracles associated with Exodus. I haven’t seen the…

Tonight (i.e., Thursday) Jews counted the 8th day of the Omer, a commandment touched upon in Leviticus 23:15-16: And ye shall count unto you from the morrow after the day of rest, from the day that ye brought the omer of the waving; seven weeks shall there be complete; even unto the morrow after the…

As the Torah commands, Jews power down for the first and last two days of Passover. So Wednesday and Thursday I will have to miss blogging. I’ll miss you but will be back on Friday. This post is being published automatically.

Tomorrow, according to Biblical tradition, is the anniversary of the splitting of the Red Sea in 1313 BCE, when Pharaoh’s army pursuing the escaped Israelite slaves was hurled into the sea by God and drowned. Jews read the relevant passages from the Hebrew Bible, Exodus 13:17-15:26, in synagogues for this seventh day of Passover. It’s all…

My Beliefnet colleague and friend Rod Dreher notes the return to Christianity of A.N. Wilson, a writer I’ve long admired greatly. He’s a novelist, biographer, and literary editor. Rod is glad and I am too but I’m more interested in the seeming side note, given in Wilson’s interview with the New Stateman, that he’s also…

David Klinghoffer
about

David Klinghoffer

David Klinghoffer is an author and senior fellow in the Religious, Liberty & Public Life program at the Discovery Institute. His writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the National Review, the Weekly Standard, and the Jewish Forward. A California native, he currently lives on Mercer Island, Washington, with his wife and five children.

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