Category: passages

I The conclusion is clear: before the time of the Maccabees there was no canon of sacred books; the books we now have were selected from many others by the Pharisees of the second temple, who also instituted the formulas for prayers, and these books were accepted only because they decided to accept them. The so-called Great Synagogue…

I TODAY IT IS HARD TO FORM AN EVEN PARTLY adequate idea of the extent of the devastation suffered by the cities of Germany in the last years of the Second World War, still harder to think about the horrors involved in that devastation. It is true that the strategic bombing surveys published by the…

I However paradoxical it may seem, I’d venture to suggest that our age threatens one day to appear in the history of human culture, as marked by the most dramatic and difficult trial of all. The discovery of and training in the meaning of the simplest acts of existence, seeing, listening, speaking, reading, the acts…