Be Good: How to Navigate the Ethics of Everything By Randy Cohen Chronicle Books, 320 pages, $24.95 I’ve been assigned to write a review of “Be Good: How To Navigate the Ethics of Everything,” a compilation of columns by former New York Times “Ethicist” Randy Cohen. While I wouldn’t say I’m friends with Cohen —…
A series of writers answer the question: Do we still know how to atone? This might be the most beautiful sentence in the English language: “You were right; I was wrong.” Enjoy it now: You’ll seldom hear it again. And you’ll say it even less. Both lapses are unfortunate, but the latter is worse. Because…
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…
The leader of Judaism’s Conservative movement has publicly apologized to two prominent rabbis for his use of their words in his own writings without attribution. Rabbi Steven Wernick, CEO and executive vice president of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, apologized after the Forward inquired about two instances in which paragraphs written by the other…
“I recently met a good girl but there is a problem. She has a dimple in her chin and people say that if someone has this, their husband will die early. So I don’t know if I should keep on seeing this girl — please help me.” … “A pogrom took place in Bialystok, where…
Benjamin Ivry retrospects to the work of surrealist painter Felix Nussbaum. Philologos unpacks the reference to Cordoba in “Cordoba House.” Joel Schalit sends a letter from Berlin about living in “Eurabia.” Jerome A. Chanes reads Robert Alter’s reading of the King James Bible. Forward Editor Jane Eisner reviews Sharon Pomerantz’s debut novel “Rich Boy,” a…
Randy Cohen didn’t set out to lampoon Mel Gibson. But the concept behind his one man play “The Punishing Blow,” which opens August 13 starring Seth Duerr, might lead one to believe that he did. It’s the story of a bile-filled college professor, prone to incendiary Jew-baiting remarks who, arrested for drunk driving, is forced…
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