Nov. 6, 2009 Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes) Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man Nov. 5, 2009 The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes) Nov. 4, 2009 Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered? JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes) Nov. 3, 2009 Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes) Nov. 2, 2009 Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes) Oct. 30, 2009 Rabbi David Aaron: Secret to Immortality Caroline B. Glick Silencing dissent in America Oct. 29, 2009 Lini S. Kadaba: Do tactics avert flu or reduce humanity? JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes) Oct. 28, 2009 Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Atheists in Bubbleland JWisdom.com Why what we wear impacts who we are With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes) Oct. 27, 2009 Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static JWisdom.com The Science of Love With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes) Oct. 26, 2009 The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Damaging disclosures with a twist JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes) Oct. 23, 2009 Rabbi David Aaron: Are you ready for the ultimate pleasure? JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes) Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us Oct. 22, 2009 Steven Emerson: Terror Cases Share Desire to Kill Americans JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really? By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes) Oct. 21, 2009 Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies' JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes) Oct. 20, 2009 Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes) Oct. 19, 2009 The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q. Is nepotism kosher? JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes) Oct. 16, 2009 Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Perfect Number JWisdom.com Hearing Voices By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes) Caroline B. Glick How Turkey was lost Oct. 15, 2009 Jeff Jacoby: Peace vs. the 'peace process' JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes) Oct. 29, 2003 Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Feb. 9, 2009 / 15 Shevat 5769 No arts czar, please, we're American By Jeff Jacoby http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | There is nothing new under the sun, says the Good Book, and the plea for a Cabinet-level secretary of arts and culture is no exception. That plea came recently from composer-producer Quincy Jones, who has long wanted the United States to establish a national ministry of culture akin to those in Italy, Germany, or France. "The next conversation I have with President Obama is to beg for a secretary of arts," he said in a radio interview shortly after the presidential election. Culture and the arts are "just as important as military defense," Jones argues, and a federal arts czar can ensure that American students learn something of their cultural roots. "Every country can be defined through their food, their music, and their language," he told NPR last month. "That's the soul of a country." Jones's call has been taken up by jazz musician Herbie Hancock, who has not only lobbied Obama on the need for a secretary of culture, but offered to fill the position, and by New York musicians Jaime Austria and Peter Weitzner, whose online petition endorsing the idea has been signed by more than 228,000 people. The president hasn't taken a stand, but supporters are expectant. In his campaign arts platform, after all, he and Joe Biden were described as "champions of arts and culture." Surely, they hope, a president who is a best-selling author — and who totes an iPod containing "a lot of Coltrane, a lot of Miles Davis, a lot of Charlie Parker" — will embrace the idea of a high-ranking arts czar. But the case for a national cultural overseer is no better today than it was 50 years ago, "in the early and artistically optimistic days of the Kennedy administration," as Harper's editor Russell Lynes wrote at the time, when "there was a good deal of enthusiastic talk about a Cabinet post for a minister of culture." The idea went nowhere then, just as it had gone nowhere a decade earlier, when the president of the American Federation of Musicians insisted that only a federal Department of the Arts could lift American culture from its "sad and declining estate." Or even earlier, when the muralist George Biddle, who headed the War Department's Art Advisory Committee during World War II, was urging fellow artists to support a strong federal role in the arts. One prominent artist, the realist painter John French Sloan, replied scornfully: "Sure, it would be fine to have a Ministry of the Fine Arts in this country. Then we'd know where the enemy is." That was putting it strongly, but Sloan had the right instinct. Culture and art at their best are potent wellsprings of meaning and insight. With their power to illuminate, motivate, or elucidate, the arts are indispensable to the nation's intellectual life. They mold our understanding of ourselves; they shape, at least in part, our perception of the world around us; they communicate — or they challenge — our deepest values. No sensible person could deny the importance of art and culture to the American experience. Which is exactly why they shouldn't be entangled with government. A ministry of culture has no place in a society committed to liberty of conscience and a robust marketplace of ideas. Like religion, the arts are best left government-free. The state should no more be entrusted with making artistic judgments than with making theological ones — there is no place in our system for a ministry of religion, either. Of course religion is profoundly important — the Framers repeatedly called it indispensable to the success of American democracy — but importance alone is no justification for government involvement. "I yield to no one in my belief that the arts need all the support they can get, but some kinds of support make trouble," wrote Lynes, who in addition to editing Harper's was a highly regarded art historian and Renaissance man. "The less the arts have to do with our political processes, I believe, the healthier they will be, the more respected, the more important to Americans, and the more productive." Quincy Jones may be right in pointing to food, music, and language as the essence of any nation's culture. But no food czar is charged with defining or promoting American cuisine, and there is no Secretary of Language to coordinate American idioms and grammar. In all their democratic splendor and variety, American gastronomy and American English flourish without centralized supervision from Washington. So do American arts and culture. The art world has its problems, but too little government isn't one of them. If the president truly wants to be a "champion of arts and culture," the best thing he can do for them is nothing at all. Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here. Jeff Jacoby is a Boston Globe columnist. Comment by clicking here. Jeff Jacoby Archives © 2006, Boston Globe

Arnold Ahlert  Mitch Albom  Michael Barone   Dave Barry  Tony Blankley  Andy Borowitz  David Broder  Stratfor Briefing  Mona Charen  Linda Chavez  Ann Coulter  Greg Crosby  Larry Elder  Suzanne Fields  John Fund  Frank J. Gaffney  Lloyd Garver  Jonah Goldberg  Julia Gorin  Jonathan Gurwitz  Paul Greenberg  Lewis Grossberger  Victor Davis Hanson  Betsy Hart  Nat Hentoff  David Horowitz  Laura Ingraham  Cheri Jacobus Jeff Jacoby  Paul Johnson  Jack Kelly  Ed Koch  Ch. Krauthammer  Michael Ledeen  John Leo  David Limbaugh  Kathryn Lopez  Rich Lowry  Michelle Malkin  Jackie Mason  Dick Morris  Bill O'Reilly  Jim Mullen  Clarence Page  Kathleen Parker  Dennis Prager  Wesley Pruden  Tom Purcell  Jonathan Rauch  Celia Rivenbark  Robert Robb  Cokie & Steve Roberts  Pat Sajak  Debra J. Saunders  Culture Shlock  Roger Simon  Michael Smerconish  Thomas Sowell  Mark Steyn  John Stossel  Cal Thomas  Bob Tyrrell  Diana West  Dave Weinbaum  George Will  Walter Williams  Byron York  Mort Zuckerman  Robert Arial  Chuck Asay  Baloo  Chip Bok  Dry Bones   Lisa Benson  John Branch  Gary Brookins  John Cole  J. D. Crowe  John Deering  Brian Duffy  Everything's Relative  Mallard Fillmore  Jake Fuller  Bob Gorrel  Joe Heller  David Hitch  Jerry Holber  Steve Kelley  Jeff Koterba  Dick Locher  Chan Lowe  Ranan R. Lurie  Jimmy Margulies  Rick McKee  Michael Ramirez  Kevin Siers  Jeff Stahler  Ed Stein  Danna Summers  John Trever  Gary Varvel  Kirk Walters  How 2  Lori Borgman  The Savvy Consumer  Elder matters  Fixit  Dr. Peter Gott  GET A JOB! by Marty Nemko  Richard Lederer  Tech Maven  Every Monday Matters  Nutrition Myths  Bookmark These  Bruce Williams  How Stuff Works