"Khirbet Khizeh" (1949) and the Guilt of Origins

I am in the midst this weekend of reading Yizhar Smilansky's 1949 novella Khirbet Khizeh-- by all accounts a classic of Israeli literature. This short and vivid work-- 109 pages in the version I own; an afternoon's read, to people not cruelly interrupting themselves with blog posts -- has a reputation for controversy: it was the first book really to lay bare, they say, the ugly realities of the 1948 war that created the State of Israel.

France and Free Expression

In case you missed it, the tally by the end of last week in France was 69-- that is, 69 people who have so far been arrested on the spurious allegation of "defending terrorism." Apparently the government of France, the same one that turned out so massively at the big Je Suis Charlie protests last week, decided that the best way to declare themselves for free speech was to arrest everyone who disagreed with them. According to Amnesty International, one French citizen has been jailed simply for saying: “I am proud to be a Muslim, I do not like Charlie, they were right to do that." Another man, while drunk, likewise defended the attacks in the presence of a police officer. For these hasty utterances, delivered in moments of intoxication or high emotion or both, these men may lose up to five years of their lives to a prison sentence, and be saddled with a criminal record to boot. Others may get seven years, if they express the same sentiments on Twitter or Facebook (according to Human Rights Watch)-- online speech being more heavily criminalized in France.

Metaphysics and Melancholy: A Review of William James' "Varieties of Religious Experience," Part I

I set myself the goal this holiday break of toiling all the way through William James' Varieties of Religious Experience -- heading as it does my mental list of "things I probably should have read in div school by now but haven't." The book is sprawling, companionable, and at last, time-consuming -- but in a good way. It is also interesting to me for more extrinsic reasons. The book helps me to understand the place and the people among whom I currently find myself. To read Varieties after spending time at a liberal seminary is to think "Ah -- so that's how we got here." Good ideas and bad, they all seem to have their place, if not their origin, in James.