In talking about the Mob, we airily use words like “mythological,” but there’s a sense in which the allegorical, rather than the strictly mythological, level of meaning is what makes the Mob irresistible. The Jewish-Italian[…]
“the Mob was really defeated not by charges but by changes”
The former Mafia prosecutor John Kroger, in his 2008 book, “Convictions,” details his team’s victories against the Mob but admits, with some chagrin, that the Mob was really defeated not by charges but by changes.[…]
“The fact that Georgia’s Senate races will be decided by runoffs is a quirk of the state’s electoral system…”
The fact that Georgia’s Senate races will be decided by runoffs is a quirk of the state’s electoral system that, like many electoral quirks, originates in efforts to limit the influence of the Black vote.[…]
“The Trump era has often come wrapped in a cloak of self-protective irony”
The Trump era has often come wrapped in a cloak of self-protective irony. We have been asked to separate the man from his tweets, to believe that Trump doesn’t mean what he says, that he[…]
“Global cabal theories are able to attract large followings in part because they offer a single, straightforward explanation to countless complicated processes”
Global cabal theories are able to attract large followings in part because they offer a single, straightforward explanation to countless complicated processes. Our lives are repeatedly rocked by wars, revolutions, crises and pandemics. But if[…]
Whereas barley beer and beer goddesses reigned supreme in the lowlands of Egypt and Mesopotamia, wine was the preferred fermented beverage in the upland regions of the southern Levant. The Holy Land is where two of the world’s major religions – Judaism and Christianity – originated, and their holy writings (“scriptures”) are a testament to the centrality of wine in faith and practice.
Whereas barley beer and beer goddesses reigned supreme in the lowlands of Egypt and Mesopotamia, wine was the preferred fermented beverage in the upland regions of the southern Levant. The Holy Land is where two[…]
The Mourner’s Kaddish “originated in a startlingly different theological landscape—one in which concern with post-mortem suffering and the responsibility of the living for the dead loomed large in belief and practice alike”
Whether the Mourner’s Kaddish was an overt response to the “Birth of Purgatory,” or whether both developments reflected broader, underlying tectonic shifts, it seems undeniable that the prayer that today functions as a means of[…]
“The public intellectual face of Modern Orthodoxy comes to look too much like the Haredi world, with whom we disagree profoundly on issues of gender and women’s place”
The public intellectual face of Modern Orthodoxy comes to look too much like the Haredi world, with whom we disagree profoundly on issues of gender and women’s place. More importantly, it widens the every growing[…]
“Modern fantasy began with the release of George Lucas’s ‘Star Wars’, in 1977, which paid homage to the ‘Flash Gordon’ and ‘Buck Rogers’ serials of the thirties”
Modern fantasy began with the release of George Lucas’s “Star Wars,” in 1977, which paid homage to the “Flash Gordon” and “Buck Rogers” serials of the thirties. The project drew Wagner comparisons almost from the[…]
“It is probably no coincidence that the superhero emerged in the nineteen-thirties, at a time when totalitarian regimes were overrunning Europe and Russia”
Wagner’s master array of borrowed, modified, and reinvented archetypes—the wanderer on a ghost ship, the savior with no name, the cursed ring, the sword in the tree, the sword reforged, the novice with unsuspected powers—lurks[…]