You Can't Take the Shul Out of the Boy

For 614 weeks over a 12-year period, Randy Cohen was a latter-day Dear Abby. As author of The Ethicist column in The New York Times Magazine, he provided a moral compass for readers facing quandaries large and small.

He collected many of those efforts in a just-published book, “Be Good: How to Navigate the Ethics of Everything.” Cohen spoke to The Arty Semite about how he got the gig, why he left it, and how to be “resolutely secular.”