The U.S.-Israel Relationship: Mounting Misperceptions in Washington
Certain new strains in the U.S.-Israel relationship are now coming to the fore, stemming in part from different views of the outcome of the Gulf War. After the war, the U.S. came to the conclusion that Israel’s strategic environment had changed radically. Since the U.S. had apparently flattened a major military threat to Israel, Israel now lived with a much lower degree of risk.
Medieval Rationalism or Mystic Philosophy? Reflections on the Correspondence between Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin
The correspondence between Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin covered three decades down to the mid-1960s and touched on many of the most urgent problems in modern political philosophy. At bottom the key question they debated is whether the true paradigm of philosophy is a purely naturalistic rationalism of the kind fashioned by
the thirteenth century Arab and Jewish thinkers in their revival of Aristotelianism and exemplified, later on, by Spinoza; or whether the true paradigm is grounded in the
Reason (nous) of Plato and Aristotle as it symbolizes a range of experiential meaning from intellection to faith, thus comprehending analysis, intuition, and revelation. Strauss contends for the former, Voegelin for the latter view; one in the name of demonstrative knowledge, the other in the name of mystic philosophy. Despite their substantial disagreements, both writers stand severely at odds with contemporary ideologies and, generally, join in preferring the ancients to the moderns.
Authority and Legitimacy in Jewish Leadership: The Case of Lucien Wolf (1857-1930)
The traditional leadership of Anglo-Jewry came increasingly into question in the early 1900s. A burgeoning agenda associated with an influx of East European immigrants and a rising tide of anti-Semitism provided ammunition for Zionists and workers’ organizations to mount a challenge to its hegemony. The challenge was sharpest in the area
of foreign affairs where the part-time amateur conduct of a self-selecting, self-perpetuating oligarchy in the Conjoint Foreign Committee appeared most keenly out of touch, out of date, and lacking in democratic accountability.
Louis Marshall, the Jewish Vote, and the Republican Party
In the Shadow of the Mountain: Consent and Coercion at Sinai
The graphic description of God holding Mt. Sinai over the Israelites’ heads, threatening to bury them under it unless they accepted His Torah, is familiar to many. Whatever the existential import of this tale, its literal sense is that the Jewish people were coerced into receiving the Torah. This essay analyzes other traditions about the Sinai covenant and indicates that these, in contrast, assert the consensual nature of the receiving of the Torah.
Deuteronomy as Israel’s Ancient Constitution: Some Preliminary Reflections
This article has the dual purpose of indicating how contemporary political science can approach the study of an ancient constitutional text and the examination of Deuteronomy as such a constitution. Ancient constitutions are distinguished from modern ones by devoting as much or more attention to the moral and socio-economic bases of the polity as to the frame of government. Deuteronomy is a classical example of that kind of ancient constitution, designed to adapt the Torah-as-constitution presented in the first four books of the Pentateuch to the Jewish polity once the people are established in Eretz Israel. As such it is both a repetition of what has been presented before
and a modification of earlier constitutional teachings.
What is Complicating the Peace Talks
The Fight Over “Special Allocations” for Haredi Religious Education in Israel
A National Solution to the Palestinian Problem
A National Solution to the Palestinian Problem
The Madrid and Washington peace talks have elevated the question of the Palestinians to new heights of international interest. The reason for this is directly tied to the results of the Second Gulf War (the First Gulf War was the Iran-Iraq War). The Americans had promised Israel that as a result of the war many things would change in the Middle East, but many things did not change.
Teenage Soviet Jewish Immigrants: Strongly Jewish, Moderately Religious
Hamas: The Islamic Resistance Movement in the Territories
Hamas–The Islamic Resistance Movement in the Territories
The Hamas movement is an offshoot of the Moslem Brotherhood in the Israeli-administered territories, or as defined in the second and fifth articles of the Hamas Charter: "Hamas–the Islamic Resistance Movement–is a division of the Moslem Brotherhood in Palestine.
