Under a Spinozan Lens: Israel, Zionism and Bob Dylan’s ‘Neighborhood Bully’ [Article originally published on academia.edu for Holocaust Memorial Day / Yom HaShoah on 27th January 2024.] Thus this prejudice became a superstition, and fixed its roots deeply in the mind — Spinoza, Ethics [1] A little forty years ago — October 1983 — singer-songwriter Bob Dylan unveiled his Infidels album, which featured the ironically-titled ‘Neighborhood Bully’, a song depicting the trials of t

Academia-edu - Under a Spinozan Lens: Israel, Zionism and Bob Dylan's 'Neighborhood Bully' Published on Academia.edu (DOC) Under a Spinozan Lens: Israel, Zionism and Bob Dylan's 'Neighborhood Bully'

Oliver Cromwell: Statesman, soldier, Puritan, Lord Protector and friend of the Jews Our English Zion: Jews and Puritans in Cromwell's Era Contemporary accounts show that European Jewish intellectuals in the 1650s saw Cromwell’s philosemitism and his efforts to readmit Jews in England as proof that the great man was on a godly mission to save Jews and establish Zion – both in England and in the ancient boundaries of Israel. ‘Our English Zion’: Jews and Puritans in Cromwell’s E

Is Spinoza’s Pantheistic Ontology a Template for Authoritarianism? OVERVIEW: ● The pantheist ontology of Baruch Spinoza (b.1632 – d.1677) is an attempt to deny the accountability of political evil. ● Spinoza’s instinct for statist control and his distrust of the common man are displayed in Theological-Political Treatise (published 1670). His masterwork, Ethics (published posthumously in 1677), is a bold attempt (in the guise of ontology) to classify minds and bodies as attrib

Uncommitted You can hardly say that I abide by the rules of political commitment or that I affect the diction of the dispossessed. Just like you I can walk away from the on-the-dole youths and make it back home at the end of the day to bed and to sleep, unperturbed though quietly appalled by the ugly obscenities scribbled and sprayed on the underpass walls.