Ruth Wisse is speaking tomorrow evening at Sinai Temple in
In her extraordinary interview at FrontPage Magazine published yesterday, she had this exchange with Jamie Glazov:
FP: Why were Jews so powerful in their ability to adapt [in the Diaspora]? The Jews prospered, as you say, wherever they were allowed to do so. What have been the Jews’ greatest strengths in this context?
Wisse: The Bible and the Talmud are the places to begin looking for an answer to this question. The Bible describes how hard it was for that rabble of Jews fleeing from
One thing follows from another: individual accountability before the law requires universal literacy, collective responsibility as a people requires communal self-help, keeping the Sabbath cultivates human dignity, putting a curb on aggression against others means that one has to acquire things through other means. . . . The strengths of the Jews derive from the Jewish way of life, and sometimes persist for a generation among those who quit that way of life.
Did others covet what Jews attained without wanting to assume their discipline? Yes, from ancient times to the present. Opposition to Jews takes many forms and has many causes of which covetousness — Tenth Commandment — is assuredly one.
The Book kept the people that kept the Book.