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Daniel Ross Goodman

Daniel Ross Goodman is a writer, rabbi, and scholar from western Massachusetts. He holds a Ph.D. from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and studied English & Comparative Literature at Columbia University. A former contributor to the Books & Arts section of The Weekly Standard and current contributor to the Washington Examiner, he is the author of Somewhere Over the Rainbow: Wonder and Religion in American Cinema and the novel A Single Life. In 2021-22 he will be a research scholar at the University of Salzburg in Austria.

Roth

When Good Books Are Written by Bad People

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To believe that we cannot both enjoy the work of a disreputable artist and condemn the artist is to underestimate our own capacity for ethical discernment and to deprive ourselves needlessly of sources of wisdom.

What Easter and Passover Can Teach Us About Confronting Cancel Culture

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Christianity and Judaism have survived, and now thrive, not by erasing the problematic aspects of their past, but by openly acknowledging them—by building them into their rituals and incorporating them into the very fabric of their faith.

The Ascent of Jewish Orthodoxy and Conservative Religion in Twenty-First Century America

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The remarkable growth of Jewish Orthodoxy, evangelical Christianity, orthodox Catholicism, and devout Islam in this post-secular age demonstrates that many people are seeking to recover a sense of meaning that transcends the material.

The War Against Abstinence: Blockers, American Pie, and the Last Great Sexual Taboo

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The last great sexual sin of our time is not related to any specific sex act or forbidden partner. The greatest sexual sin of our time is not a sin of commission but of omission: the sin of not doing it at all.

The iPhone and Us

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On this tenth anniversary of the birth of the first smartphone, the day of reckoning is at hand: how will we Millennials produce the next generation of great books when the smartphone has killed our capacity to concentrate?

Hard Texts and Interfaith Peace: Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’s Not in God’s Name

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In his new book, Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks argues that the solution for religious violence must come from religion itself.

How To Overcome the War Within: Lessons from Adaptation, Oscar Wilde, and the Sages of the Talmud

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Modern films, Victorian literature, and Jewish sages illustrate a religiously grounded, morally mature approach to the classic internal conflict identified by great thinkers from Plato to Freud.
Public Discourse

Ex Machina, Artificial Intelligence, and the Ethical Dangers–or Benefits?–of New Technology

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Very soon, the classic scenarios of artificial intelligence from science fiction will become reality. Recognizing the moral and ethical concerns such achievements will raise can help us begin to address them. Whether the development of new technology will be good or bad will depend on how we use it.
Public Discourse

Infinite Wallace: Tragedy, Comedy, and Faith in the Life of David Foster Wallace

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Perhaps the greatest tragedy of Wallace’s life is that—for all his brilliance—he could never fill the dry void in his life with the waters of meaning.
Public Discourse

Lessons from Vincent Van Gogh: Celebrity Culture and the Rights of Domestic Workers

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Our treasured religious beliefs tell us time and time again to care for the poor and the destitute and to love the strangers among us. We know that domestic workers and underprivileged laborers deserve our care and attention, but in our celebrity-suffused culture, we often forget this truth.
Public Discourse
  • Art

Boyhood: A Profoundly Human Story

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Richard Linklater’s new film is powerful because it reminds us that the dull, plotless events of our fleeting lives matter in the way in which all quotidian things matter: as Joycean “epiphanies of the ordinary.”
Public Discourse
  • Art

Exodus: Gods & Kings: What Does God’s Voice Really Sound Like?

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With its controversial decision concerning the voice of God, the movie “Exodus: Gods & Kings” demonstrates the limits of what we can really know about God.
Public Discourse

Stephen Colbert Meets His Maker

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The most prominent Catholic character on television consistently employed religious themes and theological motifs on his award-winning TV show—never more glaringly so than in the series’ grand finale
Public Discourse

Updike’s Wager: Brilliance, Doubt, and the Miracle of Existence

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Novelist John Updike excelled at his craft, seemingly without effort. But it is his extreme existential doubt and ultimate decision to believe in transcendence that makes Updike’s life and literature approachable.
Public Discourse

Jewish Praise of Truett Cathy: Chick-fil-A Founder and Sabbath Observer

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In a society in which the profit motive tends to make all other interests subordinate to the almighty dollar, Chick-fil-A’s founder declared that the store would not be open on the Sabbath.
Public Discourse

Driving to Nebraska: Cinema, Human Dignity, and the Elderly

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At times, cinema succeeds where philosophy fails. Films like Nebraska show us the importance of honoring our elderly parents and remind us of the unique dignity of every human person.
Public Discourse

Of Astrophysics and Atheism: Wherefore Religion in the Space Age?

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A future without religion will be a future diminished, for faith—but only a certain kind of faith—is absolutely necessary in the space age.
Public Discourse

“Be Fruitful and Multiply”: The Imperative of Creativity in Art and Religion

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Painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s vision of creativity reflects the theological concept that man is made in the image of God.
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