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These metarational leaps of intellect and imagination generally fit into the categories of the exoteric and the esoteric, referring to teachings traditionally considered suitable for public instruction and those deemed inappropriate for such purpose. The exoteric includes those attempts at...

The central concern of Moses, as reflected in these discourses, is with the challenge of nation building, creating an Israelite nation out of a melange of ethnically related tribes and clans that were just liberated from centuries of subjugation and servitude in a relatively sophisticated pagan environment. That...

"The Ten Commandments" is an exploration into the background, meaning, and implications of the Decalogue from a Judaic perspective. Although they have become a universal symbol of Judeo-Christian civilization, it is only within Judaism that the Ten Commandments have a juridical function that goes beyond the mere announcement of a set of key precepts for man and society. In Judaism, the Ten Commandments are considered an epitome of the vast body of biblical legislation, a concise statement of a mere 172 Hebrew words that was presented as a credo that could easily be memorized and serve as a...

Sicker examines the fundamental norms of civic conduct considered essential to the emergence and moral viability of the good society envisioned in the source documents and traditions of Judaism. The principles underlying the desired behavioral norms constitute the ethical underpinnings of the unique civilization envisioned by Mosaic teaching, a Judaic civilization characterized by instituted norms of civil conduct deemed necessary to ensure appropriate civil relations between persons, individually and collectively.The tensions in Judaic thought regarding the concept of democracy as a...

The saga of Abraham is presented in the book of Genesis in a...

Sicker presents a personal attempt to come to grips with the awesome question, Where was God at Auschwitz? and with it some of the related central issues of Jewish thought and belief. There is a tendency among many writers of contemporary work of theology to argue that the very fact of the Holocaust invalidates traditional Jewish theory and that its long-held ideas about God must therefore be revised radically. However, Jewish thinkers have long asked the equivalent of this troubling question, albeit in reference to other places and times in Israel's history and have offered possible...

In the view of Dr. Martin Sicker, it was with the emergence of Islam that the combination of geopolitics and religion reached its most volatile form and provided the ideological context for war and peace in the Middle East for more than a millennium. The conflation of geopolitics and religion in Islam is predicated on the concept of "jihad" (struggle), which may be understood as a "crescentade," in the same sense as the later Christian "crusade," which seeks to achieve a religious goal, the conversion of the world to Islam, by militant means. This equates to a concept of perpetual war with...

When Congress enacted Social Secuirty in 1935, with the age of retirement set at age 65, average life expectancy was 62 years. By the time Medicare was enacted 30 years later, life expectancy had risen to age 70. Since the enactment of Medicare, life expectancy has risen to age 76 today and may be expected to increase further in the decades to come. Clearly, the increase in post-retirement life expectancy has significant implications for the level of national expenditures attributable to an aging population. One of the approaches suggested as a solution to the so-called income transfer...

Sicker examines the role of the United States within the Western Hemisphere and the geopolitical and geostrategic factors that have helped shape its policies in the region. He demonstrates that such factors have contributed heavily to establishing the patterns of state development and interstate relations in the Western Hemisphere throughout its modern history. The prevailing geopolitical environment has been conditioned to a large extent by the emergence of the United States as the unquestionably dominant power in the extensive region. However, that status did not exist at the time it...