Michael Walzer is one of the world’s leading political philosophers. What has consistently given his work special interest for Jewish readers is the way he often uses biblical and rabbinic sources to illustrate and even formulate his arguments.
In Exodus and Revolution he showed how the story of Moses and the Israelites was often a key text in revolutionary politics, from the Puritans onward. In Interpretation and Social Criticism he had fascinating things to say about the role of prophets in society. More recently he was an editor of the impressive two-volume anthology, The Jewish Political Tradition. Now, with In God’s Shadow, he turns his attention to politics in the Hebrew Bible. Given the man and the subject, it could not be other than an important and thought-provoking work and Walzer does not disappoint.
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