Although little remembered today, Hermann Cohen (1842–1918) was both one of Germany’s major philosophers and a leading Jewish intellectual in his own day. Such later thinkers as Leo Strauss and especially Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik engaged with his ideas in depth. Partially responsible for the revival of Kantian philosophy after it had gone out of fashion, Cohen first came to think and write seriously about Jewish ideas after an upsurge of academic anti-Semitism that sounds eerily familiar today. Shira Billet delves into his life and thought—and in particular his ideas about Judaism, revelation, and repentance—in conversation with J.J. Kimche. (Audio, 74 minutes.)

In October, a young Mauritanian national murdered an Orthodox Jewish man on his way to synagogue in Chicago. This alone should be sufficient sign of the rising dangers of anti-Semitism. Nathan Diament explains how the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act (AAA) can, if passed, make American Jews safer:

We were off to a promising start when the AAA sailed through the House of Representatives in the spring by a generous vote of 320 to 91, and 30 senators from both sides of the aisle jumped to sponsor the Senate version. Then the bill ground to a halt.

Fearful of antagonizing their left-wing activist base and putting vulnerable senators on the record, especially right before the November election, Democrats delayed bringing the AAA to the Senate floor for a vote. Now, the election is over, but the political games continue.

You can’t combat anti-Semitism if you can’t—or won’t—define it. Modern anti-Semites hide their hate behind virulent anti-Zionism. . . . The Anti-Semitism Awareness Act targets this loophole by codifying that the Department of Education must use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of anti-Semitism in its application of Title VI.