A Conversation with Leon Wieseltier
In December 2014, at the annual Association for Jewish Studies conference, Abraham Socher sat down for a public conversation with Leon Wieseltier. It was, as it happens, just after the much-discussed New Republic debacle, and Wieseltier, who had served as TNR’s literary editor for the last 31 years, was characteristically witty and reflective. They talked about his teacher the great historian Yosef Yerushalmi, David Ben-Gurion’s grammatical precision, the cultural responsibilities of intellectuals, and much else. Please enjoy the video, below.
Suggested Reading
Quarried in Air
Sefer Yeṣirah is the most influential Jewish book you never heard of. Indeed, it has been argued that early commentaries written on the book tilled the gnostic soil out of which sprouted the tree of Kabbalah.
The Gaon of Modernity
Was the Vilna Gaon a great defender of tradition or a radical modernizer?
Camp Mountain Lake, 1977
The picture-taking began when he was still a little kid, at Camp Mountain Lake in North Carolina. The owners of the camp remember a chubby kid, not very athletic, and the camera was a way of making friends.
National Socialism, World Jewry, and the History of Being: Heidegger’s Black Notebooks
The thinking reflected in Heidegger's recently published notebooks from the 1930s is alarmingly crude. It is also much more difficult to separate from his philosophy than many would like to think.
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