Shows / Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
I would like this podcast to start a conversation with women of all ages, convictions and styles of life – wherever situated on the gamut of experience. In principle, there is no bar to men joining in, since how one defines women has a lot to do with what it means to be a man. But it is women I invite to pull up a chair at this virtual café table and put their questions and views into the conversation. Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita of Philosophy, Brooklyn College of The City…
Episodes
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
I Dreamed I Saw Grandpa
Let me explain who and what he was, a little. He was tall, white-bearded when I knew him, and had the sad, seen-it-all-at-least-two-times-over Jewish eyes, as…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
What's With The Nothing?
Well, I always write about what most concerns me, and beggars can’t be choosers, so – nothing for it – I’d better plunge headfirst into The Nothing. Hey, what…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Before Feminism – and After!
Say what you will about the costs (and they were many and steep) women today are freer and happier than they were back then. You can see the change in the…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
“Evil? What Do You Mean, ‘Evil’”?
Aside from my personal encounters with it, and study of some of the cases that made history, what do I know about it? Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
How I Got to be a Person Whose Whole Life is Lived in Cliches
The Rabbis inveigh against gossip. Since a lost reputation is almost as hard to recover as a lost life, they deem it equivalent to a capital crime. Abigail L…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Therapy For The Jews
Have the Jews anything to offer the world today in their capacity as Jews? The remarkable plasticity and resilience of anti-semitism doesn’t answer my question…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
The Deep and the Shallow
I like happy endings, where hopes long denied get fulfilled, where the apparent pointlessness of someone’s particular experience resolves itself into retrieved…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Do Miracles Happen?
Occasionally something occurs that you or I might be tempted to call “a miracle.” But: what follows when you try to talk about a “miracle” that you think might…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Recognition
Of course, there are times when one needs to be alone, but not indefinitely. Even solitude has its touchstones of homecoming, of reunion – with memory, with…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Who is the Suffering Servant?
If the Suffering Servant does not fit neatly into mainstream Jewish traditions about the messiah, who is he? Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita at…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
A Misremembered Woman
I found a book to read for the flight from Philadelphia to Ontario, California, this past week. It was about a woman named Sabina Spielrein. I’d never heard of…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
How Can I Tell If It’s God?
I knew the miracles could be regarded as chance happenings. Onlookers would take them that way. Academics don’t talk about miracles. But the string of personal…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
I Believed Juanita Back When
When I watched Lisa Meyers’ NBC interview with Juanita Broaddrick, back when President Bill Clinton had just survived an impeachment vote in the Senate, I…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Betrayal
My private concern is betrayal. I want to be myself, the one who – very precisely – I am. That identity, that authenticity, turns out to have a Jewish thread…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Anger
It did not fall out that way. I did not feel resentful of those who had put me through seven years of professional hell. I rather felt sorry for them. In my…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Jesus
Today the talk turned to Jesus. In the politics of religion, that’s a sensitive subject. With us, it’s not. We’re interested in the question of how to relate…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
A Good Look at Evil
I’ve now reread A Good Look at Evil, the first edition. It was my first book. It talks about “narrative” before anyone else that I know of did, if the term is…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
A Steeper Cliff
So here I am in this intermarriage and my man is having conversations with God that occur outside the Jewish project. So what do I do? Nothing. I do nothing. I…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
The Most Complex Trip Imaginable
So fifty seconds with an airline dispatcher? What are the odds? Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita at Brooklyn College of The City University of New…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Rocky Mountain Lowdown
In sum, it’s not true that everything has changed since the Shoah. Sadly, very little has changed. . . Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita at Brooklyn…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Moses and Me
The reason I have trouble with Moses is that his basic task seems to me different. God is not just asking him to bring himself into being. The Lord is asking…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
World History and Me
Last night I watched a documentary about the “discovery” by Europeans of the Western Hemisphere – that vast tract of land between Europe and the India that the…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Death, Dying, and Heroes
So, if death is ordinarily not that bad – a big relief, even – why the dread of dying? Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita at Brooklyn College of The…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
September 11, A Week Later –
This post, written the week after September 11, 2011, is dedicated to Frank De Martini and Pablo Ortiz. Starting at the 88th floor on the North Tower, they…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Success in San Francisco
The trip wasn’t exactly a willing one on my part because my spouse had talked me into giving a paper at the conference where he was to chair a panel and…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Léo
Léo was Laurin’s philosophy of art teacher at Brandeis University. He was also my father’s closest friend and a sort of godfather to me, from my earliest days…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Zeitgeist
What is it about the Zeitgeist? It’s never quite feasible to pretend it’s not real or to dodge it completely – unless you’ve managed to carve out an existence…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Apologies to Kierkegaard
In a previous post or two of “Dear Abbie,” I found myself sharply critical – denunciatory even – of Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855). He is the Danish…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Frustrations and Epiphanies
Our quiet town, with its Victorian houses (many of them kept in good repair by the law firms that have taken them over), its charming signs of civic care and…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
A Funny Thing Happened to Philosophy (on its way to the deepest depths)
In the entire history of philosophy, we know of nothing like it. No betrayal on that scale of the loyalty owed by a philosopher to his teacher and his…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Why Women Are Mean to Other Women
Whew! This is a touchy subject. Almost taboo, since we are these days denominated the compassionate, caring, anti-violence sex. Abigail L. Rosenthal is…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
About Confessions of a Young Philosopher
Well, I am a person who, for most of her life, has carried a number of secrets. Possibly for that reason, or possibly because, temperamentally, I experience…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Wonder Woman
One of our back-to-back appointments here in California was cancelled, freeing the Saturday afternoon hours, so we decided to go see “Wonder Woman,” a great…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Memoirs, True or False?
Does this truth-behind-the-mask change anything for the philosophical reader? I can’t speak for anybody else, but I take philosophy very seriously. I’ll tell…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
The Woman on the Pedestal
In public, many feminists repudiate the whole structure: the pedestal and the woman trying to stand on it. I don’t. Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Is Virtue Rewarded?
Is a woman’s virtue rewarded? And, by the way, what do we mean by woman’s virtue nowadays? Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita at Brooklyn College of The…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
A Chosen People?
My explanation is simpler and covers all the cases. They are hated because God chose them. Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita at Brooklyn College of The…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Jews on the Brain
Hell, I like happy endings. Does this story contain one? Oh sure. When the messiah comes, or comes back if you prefer, we’re all gonna go to our happy place…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Believe You Me
Last Saturday, in Torah Study, we read Numbers 16, the chapter where there’s a rebellion against the leadership of Moses. Korah and his faction of 250 Levite…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Treachery and Transcendence
In my whole life, I have never been so angry. . . Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita at Brooklyn College of The City University of New York. She is the…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Yom HaShoah
I can’t “normalize” the past. Yet I’m aware of its insidious presence in our world. It’s true, many people have been persecuted and massacred, for all kinds of…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Microaggression: Woman on Woman
As anyone knows who knows me, I detest the very word “microaggression.” To me, it’s part of a newly weaponized jargon that allows any accuser to put on the…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
“I, A Happy Woman?”
So what message did I get this morning? What came to me was merely this: I am happy. Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita at Brooklyn College of The City…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
The Ex-Terrorist Comes To Town
Our temple sponsored a lecture by Kasim Hafeez, a Brit of Pakistani origin who had seriously resolved to give his life for jihad and then changed his mind…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Political Innocence
If each of us were sure we were right, we would never quarrel with anyone – much less break with friends – over politics. The politically-triggered quarrels…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
The Blame Game
We don’t start life with a clean slate. Childhood is the time we spend figuring out what kind of a hand of cards we’ve been dealt and how to start playing it…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Getting to Objectivity
Lately I’ve been reading a book titled What is Fiction For? The British philosopher Bernard Harrison wrote it to defend novels – defend writing them and…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Obsequies for Dennis Delcau
“Because you were here,” I said, “now when people speak of God, they speak as if He’s real. And, when they speak of Israel, they speak as if it’s important.”…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Are the Stories We Live True?
Good people try to live the sorts of stories that will solve the problems of their lives as reasonably and realistically as they can. Meanwhile, evil people…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Should the Dead Know Their Place?
What are the dead up to? Are they just nonexistent? Many philosophers believe that and most would rather be annihilated than wrong. Abigail L. Rosenthal is…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Paying Nostalgia Forward
When I met Jerry and we fell in love, I recognized the real thing and knew I had to reshape my life to give it breathing and growing room. We found a place to…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Freud and Fradulence
What’s it to me? Well, I have entered the lists to combat the Freud claims and their cultural influence in a number of books and articles. So this is something…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Is the Bible True?
Two questions: Why should any educated person care? Whaddya mean by “true”? Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita of Philosophy, Brooklyn College of The…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Getting a Grip
Our temple had the guest visit of a kabbalist over the weekend. It was very creative on the part of our leadership to invite him, so I hate to say this but –…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
My Interview on God An Autobiography - The Podcast - Shared Journeys: Marriage and Divine Encounters
Departing from our usual format for this week's podcast we have the interview with me by my husband Jerry L. Martin on his podcast God: An Autobiography. In…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Putting the Puzzle Pieces in Place
The philosophic issues haven’t gone away. Evil hasn’t gotten stale. It’s alive, well and prevalent as ever. Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita of…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
It Is No Secret
Years ago, when I was first in Jerusalem, I put a note in the Western Wall. “Did you pray at the Wall?” my Israeli cousins asked me, with their native-born…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Where's the Self?
So where’s the self? It’s found in the acts of living and defending one’s story. Is the self at risk? Yeah it is. Evil is absolutely out to get it. Abigail L…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Real Life and Philosophic Life
How does philosophy help the fight to live meaningfully? Does philosophy come into it at all? Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita of Philosophy, Brooklyn…
- Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
Hundreds of People
My private walled-in house is whirling through the high winds. We’re not in Kansas any more. . . Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita of Philosophy…