In The Federalist, Alexander Hamilton devotes many consecutive articles to addressing the faults of the Articles of Confederation. Occasionally writing together with Madison, he makes the case that the new Constitution would remedy those defects. That the government established by…

The plague has brought in some fresh air. For a number of years, I have led a small, devoted group of students in study of texts from the Chabad Chassidic tradition. The group is comfortable, friendly, and open. It has…

I remember in rabbinic school one of the teachers, an acerbic and witty philosophy professor, dead-panned to the class, “I celebrate my Shabbos (Sabbath) on Thursday night, and so should you, because Friday night you are working!” Don’t get me…

There are great events that test our civilization. In their stress, we see more clearly that in normal times the working limits of those systems we have put in place to fill and master the world. The mathematician and philosopher…

A deadly terror gripped more and more of the world, leaving death and dislocation in its wake. Even so, many in America clung to the hope that, as the days went by, somehow, we would be spared. But we were…

My first familiarity with the words of the Book of Exodus, “Let My people go!” came from the African-American spiritual that we sang in the liberal Jewish temple of my childhood. The music was powerful, and the immortal words proved…

A Rock and Roll Hall of Fame guitarist who lives at the edge of Appalachia ends his every email with a quote from William Pitt the Younger, the British prime minister who successfully defied Napoleon’s planned invasion: Necessity is the…

In the first year of Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency, in the depths of the Great Depression, the federal government asserted power in unprecedented ways. Enabled by a friendly Congress, spurred by a national emergency, and deeply aware of the need to…

In the early days of James Madison’s administration, an extended quarrel broke out in the Jewish congregation of New York City. The Jewish community had been organized on the Old World model of a single community structure that then dealt…

Writing in the Wall Street Journal on February 12, Max Raskin argued, The bar for investigating political opponents should be high, especially when offenses are selectively enforced or derivative of the investigation. Many crimes — marijuana possession, jaywalking — are…