In what we tell ourselves is an age of reason, we are behaving increasingly irrationally. More and more people are signing up to weird and wacky cults, parapsychology, séances, paganism and witchcraft. There is widespread belief in ludicrous conspiracy theories, such as the 9/11 terrorist attack being an American plot.

The history of Judaism has for too long been dominated by the theme of anti-Semitism, reducing Judaism to the recurrent saga of persecution and the struggle for survival. The history of philosemitism provides a corrective to that abysmal view, a reminder of the venerable religion and people that have been an inspiration for non-Jews [...]

A profound malaise haunts Europe. On the one hand, everyone is aware that the continent is no longer in the forefront of anything, that it daily loses ground to other regions of the world, in economic growth, scientific research, influence and power; its population does not even reproduce itself; on the other it is seized [...]