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Keith Kahn-Harris, Strange Hate: Antisemitism, Racism, and the Limits of Diversity, Repeater Books, 2019, [pounds sterling]10.99 On my home bookshelf I have ten books with titles beginning with the word [...]

In this article, the author offers insights about areas where he believes that the sermon is alive within the Jewish community. It notes that Morris Raphall of the Congregation Bnai Jeshurun has delivered a sermon maintaining that slavery was sanctioned by the Bible. It discusses the sermons delivered at Trinity United Church of Christ which approached the themes of humiliation, torture and death of Jesus against the background of attacks on retired preacher Jeremiah Wright.

Beginning in the eighteenth century, occasions related to war became a significant new venue for Jewish preaching. The declaration of war or its conclusion, a government‐proclaimed Day of National Fasting and Prayer or of Thanksgiving, a major victory or defeat of the nation’s armed forces – all generated sermons by Jewish preachers, who not infrequently publicized what they said beyond the synagogue walls. These sermons reflect the patriotic identification of Jews with the nation where they resided, the desire to demonstrate this loyalty to the larger society, the homiletical application of classical texts and historical precedents to new situations, the challenge presented by war to assumptions about human progress, the theological conundrum of enemy nations praying for victory to the same God, the poignant agony of Jews fighting against other Jews. This article reviews Jewish sermons delivered by British preachers mobilizing the rhetorical resources of Jewish and general literatures to express absolute identification with the Crown, the Government and the Empire, as well as sermons that express deep discouragement about the devastating cost of war in material, cultural, psychological and religious terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I hope it will be clear that in the point I am about to raise, I am not quarrelling with Michael's paper, and – while I do not in principle repudiate Joachim Prinz's effort to 'deflate what we might call the myth of Leo Baeck's sainthood' – that is certainly not my purpose at present. I would rather explore briefly the aspect that Michael identified in the first part of his presentation as central to Leo Baeck's legacy for us as progressive Jews: 'the unconditional divine commandment to do that which is right' – the divine command that 'leaves no room for ethical opportunism', the command that may require 'an utter subjugation of the self ', making one ultimately responsible to God and only secondarily to human beings, and that 'precludes obedience to any secular authority that contravenes God's will'. This sounds extremely noble and admirable. But how is it supposed to work for us? How are we to know what it is that God is commanding that requires such absolute obedience and sacrifice of self at a difficult moment? Clearly, as a progressive Jew, Baeck did not believe that God's will is to be discovered through the study and analysis of the ancient authoritative texts of the Jewish religious tradition. That is the Orthodox position that he did not accept. If God commands us today, it must be not in a message to be discovered in ancient texts but in a direct address. But what does this actually mean? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]