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July 3, 2008

Rabbi Dr. Abraham J. Twerski: A spiritual budget (TOUCHING!)

Jeff Jacoby: Israel still paying for its defeat

JWisdom:: Re-Jew-venating prayer, Part IV by Rabbi David Aaron

July 2, 2008

Jonathan Tobin: Appeasers Make Poor Patriots

The Kosher Gourmet By Kathleen Purvis: Slaw, y'all: For BBQs or Sabbath dinner, these southern recipes are something else!

JWisdom:: Rabbi Mordechai Becher: Jewish Rx for A Simpler Life

July 1, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q. I think it's important to leave a legacy to my children. How much should I save towards this end?

Paul Greenberg:A President who is history deficient?

JWisdom:: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith by Rabbi Nosson Scherman: Poland's Unique Antisemitism

June 30, 2008

Jonathan Rosenblum: Remembering the architect of Torah Judaism for the modern world

Abe Novick: Hulk: Still a Jew?

JWisdom: : Putting the Spirit Back into Spirituality, Part 2: The Abandoned Child

June 26, 2008

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: Quantum leap to evil

Caroline B. Glick: Victimized families must not be allowed to dictate policy

June 25, 2008

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Today in Biblical History: King Jeroboam of Israel prevents pilgrimage to Jerusalem

Jonathan Tobin: Real Friends and Real Enemies

JWisdom: Raping of reason By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky

June 25, 2008

Steven Emerson: Kristof: Never Mind the Terrorists

Stratfor Intelligence Briefing: Mediterranean Flyover: Telegraphing an Israeli Punch?

JWisdom: Rabbi David Aaron: Re-Jew-venating prayer, Part III

June 24, 2008

Caroline B. Glick: What were they thinking!?

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Guilty knowledge

JWisdom: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith by Rabbi Nosson Scherman: Warping Innocence

June 23, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Diploma dilemma

Jeff Jacoby: A world without children

JWisdom: Rabbi Dovid Gross: Putting the Spirit Back into Spirituality --- Introduction

June 20, 2008

Rabbi A. Henach Leibowitz: Man: The Crowning Glory of Creation

Caroline B. Glick: Israel's darkest week

JWisdom: We aren't worthy? by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky

June 19, 2008

Rabbi Elazar Meisels: The saints who don't come marchin' in

Chris Christoff: Muslim woman demands an apology from Obama after camera snub

June 18, 2008

Jonathan Tobin: Still Dancing Around Jerusalem

The Kosher Gourmet by Steve Petusevsky: Chilled fruit and vegetable soups

JWisdom: Souls Need A Check Up? by Rabbi Mordechai Becher

June 17, 2008

Rabbi Avi Shafran: Baby Einstein

Caroline B. Glick: Bush's rhetoric, Bush's policies

JWisdom: Re-Jew-venating prayer, Part II by Rabbi David Aaron

June 16, 2008

Varda Branfman: Bob Dylan, won't you please come home?

Diana West: Academic dares to question the 'religion of peace'

JWisdom: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith by Rabbi Nosson Scherman: Positive Backfire

June 13, 2008

Rabbi Berel Wein: Trading manna for whine

Caroline B. Glick: Peace with friends

JWisdom: From the mouths of … by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky

June 12, 2008

Michael Feldberg: Meet Paul Revere's pal, the Orthodox Jew who played a key role in laying Boston's cultural and business infrastructure

The Kosher Gourmet by Kathy Manweiler: No need to be tempted by Wendy's mandarin chicken salad

JWisdom: Re-Jew-venating prayer, Part I by Rabbi David Aaron

June 11, 2008

Rabbi Avi Shafran: What would Hillel say?

Jonathan Tobin: UNRWA and NGOs: The Real U.N. 'Insult'

JWisdom: Sara Yoheved Rigler: Greatness Made Simple: How a momentary decision shifted life's course and destination

June 6, 2008

Rabbi Pinchas Stolper: Revelation: The basis of faith

Binyamin L. Jolkovsky: Mere hours after becoming Israel's new 'best friend' Obama backtracks on status of Jerusalem

Caroline B. Glick: UN choosing to protect rogue nuclear programs

JWisdom: Sameness in difference by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky

June 5, 2008

David Lightman: Now Obama wants to be Israel's newest 'best friend'

Obama's remarks to AIPAC policy conference

The Kosher Gourmet By Ethel G. Hofman: Shavous cuisine: Ruby Fruit Soup, Lokshen Kugel with Cheese, Key Lime Curd, Calsone Casserole Frittata with Wild Mushrooms, Sun-dried tomatoes and Olives, Baked Tilapia with Pepper Cheese Cream and Brown Sugar Shortbread

JWisdom: Why a Jewish Jerusalem makes so many nervous by Rabbi Mordechai Becher

June 4, 2008

Jonathan Rosenblum: A different sort of 'religious broadcaster'

Jonathan Tobin: Misgivings on the Road to Damascus

JWisdom: 44 Years Without An Argument? by Sara Yoheved Rigler

June 3, 2008

Daniel Pipes: Obama vs. McCain on the Middle East

Everything's Relative: There is a crisis growing in Orthodox synagogues worldwide, reveals Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkel

JWisdom: White Facades; Black Secrets by Rabbi Mordechai Becher

June 2, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q: Lie to outsmart discriminator?

He writes the songs that make our souls sing:Gavriel Aryeh Sanders interviews Jewish music legend Ben Zion Shenker; includes stirring, uplifting song

JWisdom: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith by Rabbi Nosson Scherman: Of laws and lives

March 22, 2007

J-Rhythms with Avraham Rosenblum: JWR's cutting-edge music program showcasing performers -- singers, song writers, musicians, and bands -- who learn and live the Torah lifestyle (OUR NEWEST IGODCAST !)

Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review March 24, 2008 / 17 Adar II 5768

David Mamet, revised

By Jeff Jacoby

Jeff Jacoby
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | David Mamet came out of the closet this month.


No, not that closet. In a piece for the March 11 Village Voice, the renowned playwright (American Buffalo, Glengarry Glen Ross, Speed-the-Plow) admits to something far likelier to tarnish his reputation among arts-world elites than any mere revelation about sexual orientation.


He admits to waking up from liberalism.


Mamet's 2,500-word "election-season essay" opens with John Maynard Keynes's reply to a critic who accused him of inconsistency: "When the facts change, I change my opinion. What do you do, sir?" He goes on to describe his latest play, November, an Oval Office comedy featuring a "self-interested, corrupt, suborned, and realistic" president and his "leftish, lesbian, utopian-socialist speechwriter."


Behind its hilarity, Mamet writes, November is a polemic between two views of human society: "the conservative (or tragic) view and the liberal (or perfectionist) view." Conservatives like the play's president assume that most people are "out to make a living, and the best way for government to facilitate that is to stay out of the way," since messes caused by state intervention are generally worse than those that ensue when free markets are left alone. In the liberal view, society is replete with ills that only government is equipped to heal.


"I took the liberal view for many decades," Mamet confesses, "but I believe I have changed my mind."


It wasn't exactly a Damascus Road conversion — more a gradual realization that conservative ideas were a better fit with real life than the liberal assumptions he used to take on faith. I remember attending the premiere of Mamet's electrifying Oleanna at the Hasty Pudding Theatre in Cambridge in 1992. The play revolves around an accusation of sexual harassment leveled by a student at her professor, and it was clear even then that Mamet was awake to the McCarthyist dangers of political correctness and leftist zealotry.


But the decision to write a play about politics and politicians led Mamet to delve more systematically into political thought. "I began reading not only the economics of Thomas Sowell (our greatest contemporary philosopher) but Milton Friedman, Paul Johnson, and Shelby Steele, and a host of conservative writers, and found that I agreed with them," he writes. As he read and reflected, he found himself shedding the liberal prejudices that had always been part of his intellectual furniture: Hostility to capitalism. Distrust of the military. Resentment over economic inequality. Above all, the "everything-is-always-wrong" gloominess of the leftist worldview.


Misery abounds in The World According To Liberals. It's a world in which climate change devastates the environment and families struggle to make ends meet, while hate crimes terrorize minorities and tobacco companies poison children. Everywhere the progressive looks, the news is bad: teachers are underpaid, innocent defendants go to prison, families lack health insurance, good jobs are outsourced, a glass ceiling keeps women down, tax cuts favor the rich, gays yearn for equality, and the Patriot Act shreds our civil liberties.


But in fact, Mamet noticed, the real world isn't so wretched. "People in general seem to get from day to day," he says, and "we in the United States get from day to day under rather wonderful and privileged circumstances." As for the beneficence of the state, does more government truly make things better? On the whole, he decides, the answer is no, and he draws on his theatrical experience to illustrate the point:


"Take away the director from the staged play and what do you get? Usually a diminution of strife, a shorter rehearsal period, and a better production.


"The director generally does not cause strife, but his or her presence impels the actors to direct (and manufacture) claims designed to appeal to Authority — that is, to . . . indulge in politics, the purpose of which may be to gain status and influence outside the ostensible goal of the endeavor." He could be talking about the congressional appropriations process.


Mamet is only the latest in a long line of notable leftists who moved rightward, among them Whittaker Chambers, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Norman Podhoretz, Michael Novak, David Horowitz — and Ronald Reagan. Like them, Mamet was mugged by reality. Like them, he adjusted his opinions to fit the facts, and will doubtless pay a social price for his apostasy. Agree or disagree with the views he now holds, his intellectual integrity deserves a round of applause.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

Jeff Jacoby is a Boston Globe columnist. Comment by clicking here.

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