Moshe Katzav is the eighth President of the Modern State of Israel. Born in 1945, he came with his family to Israel in 1951 and grew up in a tent city for the immigrants then streaming in from Arab and Islamic states. He was active in the Liberal – Herut (“Freedom”) party and in that alliance became mayor of Kiryat Malachi at the age of 24. He served in the Knesset for twenty-two years, including as Deputy Prime Minister during the tenure of Benjamin Netanyahu (1996-99) before becoming President in 2000, winning what many thought was a surprising victory over long-time government insider and Labor Party chief, Shimon Peres.

In July 2006 stories began appearing in the Israeli media that sexual harassment charges were being filed against Katzav. Former employees have made claims reminiscent of the Anita Hill – Clarence Thomas matter. On Thursday, January 25 Katzav addressed the Knesset on his experience (which is not yet a case; he received copies of testimony only four days later) during the previous seven months. (more…)

A short answer regarding the State of the Union of nominally sovereign states within the American Federal Republic [rip] is that it is very grave. Structurally, it has become an oligarchy, a debased form of aristocracy (“rule of the best”). Those who follow judicial events and the intervention of courts, drug cartels and government in every sphere of life – family, medicine, education, finance – know that America’s Constitution and culture have been vitiated. 

Most of the people applauding or sulking on the evening of January 23 are deeply engaged in this ruin; some of them have the wit to know it. But they’re safely inside: we are in the crosshairs. When the State is god, dissent is heresy.

Let’s focus on a few things said and unsaid in the State of the Union address of 2007. The speech, the entire gesamkunstwerk of the evening represents a few steps further down that line of proud and grim monarchs quoted from The Magician’s Nephew in my previous essay. (more…)

An adventure that occurs early in The Magician’s Nephew, the first of the seven novels in C. S. Lewis’s wonderful series, The Chronicles of Narnia shows us a picture of our future, reflected in the faces of several generations of rulers as the spirit that forms the features gradually rots from the pleasure of power.

The principle is like that Percy Shelley described in his great sonnet on imperial pride, “Ozymandias” where the passions of the long dead tyrant “yet survive” in stone. The “sneer of cold command,” the ever-tighter smile of the consciously corrupt and cruel will mark our days. So the tale of Lewis bears an admonitory lesson.

Back to the novel. While exploring the attics that adjoin their families’ town houses, young Polly Plummer and Digory Kirke find themselves in the room of Digory’s eccentric Uncle Andrew. Like many of our own rulers, it is said, Uncle Andrew’s mother and aunt dabbled in the occult and in a feckless way he does too.

One thing leads to another. Digory and Polly, who are about eleven years old, pick up a couple of Uncle Andrew’s colorful rings and before long they are traveling through the pools that connect the worlds in time and space. It’s exciting at first, then a bit spooky, then terrifying, rather like the trajectory of Romantic and Modernist culture… (more…)

Our commonly used Gregorian calendar, a relatively new system differs in fundamental ways from that of the Hebrew understanding of the structure of history. The Jewish calendar begins with the creation of humankind and its view of history runs from Adam and Eve forward. Its etymology tells us that the head of the year, Rosh Hashana also is the fount of study that transforms and perfects a Hebrew lexicon will tell us. History will be transformative and good. The first redemption, from Egypt, liberated the nation of Israel to serve G-d in their land, held by inalienable birthright from Him and enabled the repair of the natural creation damaged by Adam and Eve. Nisan, the month of Passover and Tishrei, that of Rosh Hashana balance each other, holiness and nature, the first and seventh months of the year. Spell out the letters associated with each month and one gets hei lamed: “here is teaching.” Seven became a ‘lucky number’ in a holy structure.

Like Hebrew thought, faith and practice, its sense of time is uniquely historical. Human events are a drama unfolding via the intersection of free will choices, words and deeds and divine grace and purpose. As a famous Mishna (“record”) states, “everything is foreseen, yet freedom of choice is given, and the world is judged by grace, but all is according to the amount of the work” (Pirke Avot 3:19).

That is, human freedom to choose is the basis of our dignity and responsibility and combines with the grace and purpose of the Eternal One to unfold the precise pace and specifics of human history and individual lives. The amount and quality of human works have enormous impact on the journey we travel. ”Everything is foreseen, but freedom of choice is given.” Along the way, we are the partners of the Almighty. Our actions matter to G-d and His creation; everything is ‘remembered’ and accounted for. That is the Jewish idea.

These fundamental principles affect the calendar, too; or rather, they affect not only the quality and specifics of human events and history but the timing of redemption which in Jewish thought has as its prerequisite the re-establishment of full Jewish sovereignty over the Promised Land, the ingathering of the Jews to the Land, the rebuilding of the Temple and establishment of what we would call a Constitutional Monarchy, with the Torah as the Constitution. In Judaism, freedom and service are inseparable as the drama at Sinai showed and world peace is contingent upon the integrity and wholeness (shlaimut) of Israel which reflects the perfect Unity of G-d. (more…)