Macho Macho Man

Abdul El-Sayed and the alpha-Muslim paradox
By Tazeen M. Ali

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Podcast

Arc: The Podcast

Every other week, Arc Magazine's editor-in-chief, Mark Oppenheimer, is joined by guests to talk religion, politics, et cetera.

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Podcast

Eminent Americans

Eminent Americans is a weekly podcast about the writers and public intellectuals who either are key players in the American intellectual scene or who typify an important aspect of it.

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Letters to the Editor

The Irresponsible Magid

 Shaul Magid’s essay “Kahane Nation?” (Sept. 10, 2026) moves quickly from Meir Kahane’s advocacy for violence in the late twentieth century to American Jews buying firearms in response to antisemitism in the past few years. Magid then reminds readers that Kahane’s movement provided security at synagogues and protested anti-Israel events. “Sound familiar?” he asks.  That rhetorical question is the problem with his “argument.” Yes, synagogue security sounds familiar. So do Jewish fears of antisemitism, doubts about institutional protection, protests against…

Forget Fetal Rights

By Max DuBoff
In Jewish law, life does not begin at conception; it begins at birth. So you might think abortion is easy in Jewish law: no life, no problem. But that’s not right either.  Jewish law requires a reason for abortion—a “justification framework,” in the terminology of the liberal Christian ethicist Rebecca Todd Peters. Jewish law is not “pro-life” in the current American sense. It recognizes plenty of valid reasons for abortion, including a risk of physical, mental, emotional, or even financial harm to the pregnant woman. In the wake of the Dobbs v. Jackson (2022) decision, many Jews have noted that…

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Blake Smith: How does Christianity help us mediate, as you suggest, between the worst sort of collectivism and the worst sort of individualism? Or perhaps mediate is the wrong word, since these two “worsts” do so often go together! Let’s say, transcend?
Julius Krein: I don’t think it’s anything more complicated than Christianity’s consciousness of the division between the City of God and the City of Man, “render unto Caesar,” and so on. But this distinguishes Christianity from the other monotheistic religions as well as ancient paganism and, I would argue, “rational” philosophy. This distance allows for another dimension or perspective from which to approach the relationship between the individual and the collective.