Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast

Have the Jews anything to offer the world today in their capacity as Jews?  The remarkable plasticity and resilience of anti-semitism doesn’t answer my question about being a Jew: what the hell good is it?




Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita at Brooklyn College of The City University of New York. She is the author of Confessions of A Young Philosopher (forthcoming), which is a woman's "confes...

I like happy endings, where hopes long denied get fulfilled, where the apparent pointlessness of someone’s particular experience resolves itself into retrieved significance, where the lead character’s imperiled identity returns from his or her ordeal more solid than before. . .




Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita at Brooklyn College of The City University of New York. She is the author of Confessions ...

Occasionally something occurs that you or I might be tempted to call “a miracle.” But: what follows when you try to talk about a “miracle” that you think might have happened to you?


Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita at Brooklyn College of The City University of New York. She is the author of Confessions of A Young Philosopher (forthcoming), which is a woman's "confession" in the tradition of Au...

Of course, there are times when one needs to be alone, but not indefinitely. Even solitude has its touchstones of homecoming, of reunion – with memory, with aspiration, with nature and wild creatures.



Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita at Brooklyn College of The City University of New York. She is the author of Confessions of A Young Philosopher (forthcoming), which is a woman's "confession"...

If the Suffering Servant does not fit neatly into mainstream Jewish traditions about the messiah, who is he?



Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita at Brooklyn College of The City University of New York. She is the author of Confessions of A Young Philosopher (forthcoming), which is a woman's "confession" in the tradition of Augustine and Rousseau. She writes a weekly online column, "Dear A...

I found a book to read for the flight from Philadelphia to Ontario, California, this past week. It was about a woman named Sabina Spielrein. I’d never heard of her, but she’s an important figure in the recent history of our culture — a woman whose significance, influence and voice have been stifled by her colleagues, her detractors and even by her defenders...

Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita at Brooklyn College o...

I knew the miracles could be regarded as chance happenings. Onlookers would take them that way.  Academics don’t talk about miracles. But the string of personal history didn’t pull taut till I took them as God-sent.



Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita at Brooklyn College of The City University of New York. She is the author of Confessions of A Young Philosopher (forthcoming), which is a woman's "c...

When I watched Lisa Meyers’ NBC interview with Juanita Broaddrick, back when President Bill Clinton had just survived an impeachment vote in the Senate, I called myself a “Clinton Democrat.” Why then would I bother to watch a TV program where, as I’d heard, damaging accusations would be made against the very President I’d been fervently supporting for many months?


Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita at Brooklyn ...

My private concern is betrayal. I want to be myself, the one who – very precisely – I am. That identity, that authenticity, turns out to have a Jewish thread running through it. At the same time, it’s God I care about, it’s truth I care for, most of all. Need these conflict?




Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita at Brooklyn College of The City University of New York. She is the author of Confessions of A...

It did not fall out that way. I did not feel resentful of those who had put me through seven years of professional hell. I rather felt sorry for them. In my view, they’d picked the wrong parts to play in the movie we’d shared.



Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita at Brooklyn College of The City University of New York. She is the author of Confessions of A Young Philosopher (forthcoming), which is a woman&apo...

Today the talk turned to Jesus. In the politics of religion, that’s a sensitive subject. With us, it’s not. We’re interested in the question of how to relate to God. That’s very different from the question of whose religion is “best” or (what comes to the same thing) which one has the strongest battalions.



Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita at Brooklyn College of The City University of New York. She is the...

I’ve now reread A Good Look at Evil, the first edition. It was my first book. It talks about “narrative” before anyone else that I know of did, if the term is applied to an individual’s life experience. By now, “narrative” is much talked of, but in the sense of something made up, not in the sense of something true.



Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita at Brooklyn College of The City University of New York. S...

So here I am in this intermarriage and my man is having conversations with God that occur outside the Jewish project. So what do I do? Nothing. I do nothing. I keep the two worlds separate.




Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita at Brooklyn College of The City University of New York. She is the author of Confessions of A Young Philosopher (forthcoming), which is a woman's "confession" in th...

So fifty seconds with an airline dispatcher?

What are the odds?




Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita at Brooklyn College of The City University of New York. She is the author of Confessions of A Young Philosopher (forthcoming), which is a woman's "confession" in the tradition of Augustine and Rousseau. She writes a weekly online column, "Dear Abbie: The Non-Advice Column" along w...

In sum, it’s not true that everything has changed since the Shoah. Sadly, very little has changed. . .


Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita at Brooklyn College of The City University of New York. She is the author of Confessions of A Young Philosopher (forthcoming), which is a woman's "confession" in the tradition of Augustine and Rousseau. She writes a weekly online column, "Dear Abbie: The N...

The reason I have trouble with Moses is that his basic task seems to me different. God is not just asking him to bring himself into being. The Lord is asking Moses to bring a people into being!


Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita at Brooklyn College of The City University of New York. She is the author of Confessions of A Young Philosopher (forthcoming), which is a woman's "confession" in the trad...

Last night I watched a documentary about the “discovery” by Europeans of the Western Hemisphere – that vast tract of land between Europe and the India that the spice-hunters sought.

In my childhood, that discovery was chronicled without scare quotes, as the collected tales of intrepid adventurers and pioneers who stepped onto the shores of a virgin continent, and whose courage and future-directed hopes made it possible for my immedi...

So, if death is ordinarily not that bad – a big relief, even – why the dread of dying?




Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita at Brooklyn College of The City University of New York. She is the author of Confessions of A Young Philosopher (forthcoming), which is a woman's "confession" in the tradition of Augustine and Rousseau. She writes a weekly online column, "Dear Abbie: The Non-Adv...

This post, written the week after September 11, 2011, is dedicated to Frank De Martini and Pablo Ortiz. Starting at the 88th floor on the North Tower, they went from floor to floor calling out to people who crouched in debris and darkness, without a clue as to what to do or where to go. “Is anybody there?” they called, gathering and shepherding people to hold on to each other and make their way down the stairs to the street below b...