Designing public policies to meet the needs of a diverse society is challenging, and the variety of necessary perspectives are often clouded by competing ideas about social responsibility, personal freedom, religious beliefs, and governmental intervention. Here, prominent Jewish scholars and commentators address various social issues and public policies from a Jewish perspective, using Jewish sources and documents to elucidate responses and propose solutions that are in keeping with Jewish law as set out by the major documents of the Jewish faith.

Abortion, stem cell research,...

"The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities," said Theodore Roosevelt. State of Emergency will demonstrate that this is exactly what is happening to America and may now be unstoppable.

The United States of 1960 was a First World nation, 90% of whose people traced their ancestry to Europe, 97% of whom spoke English. We studied the same history and literature in school, went to the same movies, read the same books,...

Press "ONE" for English examines how Americans form opinions on language policy issues such as declaring English the official language, printing documents in multiple languages, and bilingual education. Deborah Schildkraut shows that people's conceptions of American national identity play an integral role in shaping their views. Using insights from American political thought and intellectual history, she highlights several components of that identity and shows how they are brought to bear on debates about language. Her analysis expands the range of factors typically thought to...

The collective memories of Nazism that developed in postwar Germany have helped define a new paradigm of memory politics. From Europe to South Africa and from Latin America to Iraq, scholars have studied the German case to learn how to overcome internal division and regain international recognition.

In Pursuit of German Memory: History, Television, and Politics after Auschwitz examines three arenas of German memory politics--professional historiography, national politics, and national public television--that have played key roles in the reinvention of the Nazi past in...

George W. Bush had planned to swear his oath of office with his hand on the Masonic Bible used by both his father and George Washington, however, due to the inclement weather, a family Bible was substituted. Almost immediately on taking office, President Bush made passage of "faith-based initiatives"--the government funding of religious charitable groups--a legislative priority. However, "inclement" weather storm-tossed his hopes for faith-based initiatives as well.

What happened? Why did these initiatives, which began with such vigor and support from a popular president, fail? And...