First published in 2016, this article has been updated to reflect the current moment. In 1968, German-born political theorist Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) published a book called Men in Dark Times . It was a series of biographical essays, portraits of individuals who, in the midst of darkness, offered illumination. Borrowing the phrase from Bertolt Brecht, she described “dark times” as characterized by a particular kind of malaise:  If it is the function of the public realm to t

Welcome to the Aseret Yimei Teshuva, the Ten Days of Repentance, that lay between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. With the month of Elul...