Monday, October 9, 2017

Government of the Lawyers, by the Lawyers, for the Lawyers

Government of the Lawyers, by the Lawyers, for the Lawyers

By Avraham Azrieli *

* Avraham Azrieli is the author of eleven books, most recently, the novel Deborah Calling (HarperCollins, 2017). He holds two law degrees and is a member of the New York State bar. www.AzrieliBooks.com

Here is an astonishing fact: One in twelve Washington D.C. residents is an active lawyer. Add lawyers who don’t actually live in the district but work there, and the total more than triples to nearly 120,000 lawyers. It is therefore likely that most adults working within ten miles of the White House are either lawyers or their clients – or both. (“Trump’s lawyer has hired his own lawyer in Russia probe.”)

Current news would make you think it is all President Trump’s fault. Who else but squadrons of competent lawyers could conduct, defend and manage multiple investigations by the FBI, a special prosecutor, and several congressional committees? Yet all those lawyers did not appear suddenly after the 2016 elections, but have dominated D.C. for a long time – both in and out of the government. While lawyers make up less than 0.4% of the US population, law school graduates have consistently made up over 40% of members of congress and about half of state governors. The federal government at large employs over 100,000 attorneys, not including the vast system of federal courts. 

The disproportionate abundance of lawyers and law firms in D.C. is driven in no small part by the unavoidable needs of financial and business organizations, as explained by legal recruiter Dan Binstock: “Federal regulations impact the business interests of not only those in the U.S. but internationally as well. A federal agency can have a dramatic impact on whether a business succeeds or fails. Clients feel comfortable knowing someone is at ground zero, so to speak, for regulations coming out of federal agencies.” Similarly, law firms that ventured beyond advising clients and into direct lobbying have found themselves feeding at an overflowing trough of riches.

In other words, who else but lawyers could draft, negotiate, and revise countless laws and regulations? Who else could effectively educate, manipulate and lubricate the multitudes of legislators, regulators and staffers who usher laws and regulations through the lengthy gestation and intricate drafting process, leading to enactment? Who else could figure out how to interpret circular language in the maze of longwinded laws and voluminous regulations in order to gain unintended legal advantages and slip through favorable loopholes? Who else could devise creative avoidance tactics for those who have a special interest in minimizing the costs of compliance with incomprehensibly complex tax, labor, safety, environmental, health, and financial rules? And who else but lawyers could keep a straight face while charging clients $1,400 per hour of office work?

The Founding Fathers earned their esteemed moniker not for winning a great war, conquering other nations, or muscling each other for power. Rather, they are admired for drafting a legal document: The United States Constitution. It is thus only natural that lawyers have played a central role in forming our resilient constitutional structure, amending it when cracks appear in its foundational principles, and resolving its age-related ambiguities to ensure our union’s continued success. In today’s America of partisan echo chambers and ideological polarization, the Constitution remains perhaps the last common ideal, the last unanimously cherished value, and the last widely respected political manifesto. As the Constitution’s most qualified defenders, lawyers are indispensible to the perpetual health of our national life.

Alas, with one lawyer for every 300 people nationwide, the United States leads all other countries in the number of lawyers per capita. For the average American, no personal, business, or even artistic endeavor may be achieved without hiring at least one lawyer to decipher and untangle knotty legalese. In some states, for example, purchasing a home involves paying for the services of five different lawyers, representing the buyer, the seller, the new lender, the retiring lender, and the trust company—and if either side is involved in a divorce, inheritance, or bankruptcy, more lawyers must be hired and remunerated. A cynic would ponder: Have lawyers drafted laws to be so complex, convoluted and confusing that nothing can be done without hiring a lawyer? Have lawyers intentionally placed themselves as gatekeepers at every junction, earning a fee for passage through every important milestone in the average person’s life?

Americans have grown resentful of the unbridled growth in laws and regulations, which have erected jagged barriers around people’s freedom of action and necessitated lawyers’ formidable involvement in every aspect of individual, family and business life. A Pew research survey found that Americans rate lawyers at the very bottom when asked which group contributes to society’s wellbeing, whereas teachers score consistently high (second only to military service). Contrast that with how society remunerates those who serve it: K-6 teachers’ average pay of $43,828 and US soldiers’ average pay of $33,624 are dwarfed by lawyers’ average pay: $136,260. (The average pay among all working Americans: $44,148). If anything, those numbers show that, however resentful, Americans have recognized the highly valuable services that lawyers provide in resolving family matters, facilitating asset transfers, defending individual rights, asserting consumer protections, suing for corporate malfeasance, negotiating business transactions, enabling the smooth functioning of the financial markets, and in myriad other ways while working in private practice at law firms, in the legal departments of companies, organizations, associations, advocacy groups, local and national government agencies, in prosecution and defense before courts and judicial tribunals, and as researchers and instructors in the academia. This immeasurable variety of essential services, without which modern society would cease to function, might be the reason why, in contrary to popularity ranking, when asked to rate the relative prestige level of over 800 occupations, respondents ranked lawyers almost at the top, second only to physicians or bankers.

While it should come as no surprise that a society founded on adherence to law, justice and due process rewards lawyers with fame and fortune, the outsized influence of legal professionals over the nation’s democratic institutions presents a crucial quandary: Are we in danger of turning the rule of law into the rule of lawyers, creating an American juristocracy? 

Over two centuries ago, in Marbury v. Madison (1803), the Supreme Court gave itself the power to invalidate legislative and executive acts it deemed to be in violation of the Constitution or unauthorized by it. Even though the Constitution includes no explicit language granting such powers to the judicial branch over the other two branches of government, the principles set forth in Marbury v. Madison have been accepted as logical and necessary as part of the system of checks and balances created by the Constitution. Since Marbury, the federal courts have developed extensive jurisprudence in countless well-reasoned decisions to support their authority to invalidate laws and regulations enacted by Congress and state legislatures. The courts’ intrusion on executive powers has been less frequent and more opaque. A study of 297 judicial opinions by the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and the Supreme Court dealing with executive orders demonstrated that the courts failed to develop “any coherent doctrine of presidential exceptionalism but instead [reached decisions based on] an under-theorized understanding of the role of executive orders and how they should function as part of our separation of powers.” The study concluded, therefore, that the courts have acted arbitrarily, failing to articulate a proper legal basis as they examined, reviewed and invalidated executive orders issued by democratically elected presidents.

Worse yet, in recent decades aggressive advocacy has pushed the federal courts to assume power beyond the legislative and executive branches, reaching deep into the process of democratic elections. The most glaring of those cases was Gore vs. Bush, the Supreme Court decision that snuffed out the state-level process of finalizing election results in Florida, handing the presidency to George W. Bush—a decision Prof. Bruce Ackerman of Yale Law School famously condemned as a “Constitutional coup” while his colleague George L. Priest wrote that the Supreme Court “abused the political process” and “improperly usurped power allocated by the Constitution to the citizenry.” Revealingly, the court wrote: “our consideration is limited to the present circumstances” – a sentence that legal experts have readily interpreted as an admission by the Supreme Court that its decision was based on neither law nor precedent, and may not therefore be cited for either purpose.

Most worrying, however, are the direct legal attacks on the presidents themselves. President Nixon, facing certain impeachment for “obstruction of justice,” resigned from the office he had won in two consecutive elections, even though a relentless investigation by a special prosecutor and his large teams of lawyers failed to prove Nixon’s involvement in the crime that served as impetus for the investigation—the burglary at the Democratic National Committee’s offices in June 1972. With eerie similarity, President Clinton, who had also won two consecutive elections, barely survived his impeachment in the Senate for “obstruction of justice” in a culmination of a lengthy investigation by a special prosecutor and his large teams of lawyers, who had also failed to prove any wrongdoing by Clinton in the “Whitewater” real estate venture that served as impetus for the investigation. And while President Obama’s clean ethical, financial and professional record deprived opponents of the usual fodder for legal attacks, he was subjected to more than 60 “birther” lawsuits in dozens of courts across the United States as countless lawyers challenged his very right to serve as president—an office he had also won in two consecutive elections—forcing him to spend a great deal of time, energy and legal fees to prove he was a “natural born citizen” of the United States and prevent his removal from office.

Which brings us to President Donald Trump, who won the 2016 elections and was quickly subjected to a Special Counsel investigation led by a former FBI director and reinforced with two grand jury panels and a growing army of lawyers, including “the top 14 financial crimes prosecutors in America,” all working hard to unseat a democratically elected president. And does anyone doubt that, had Hilary Clinton won the elections, a similar group of equally serious, industrious and zealous lawyers would be working hard to investigate her in a massive treasure hunt for impeachable crimes?

The power to impeach a president is limited by the Constitution to “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors,” which are “an historically well-defined category of offenses aimed specifically against the state,” not crimes that are non-treasonous in nature, having been committed in the private or public sphere. Impeachment was not intended as a political tool to be wielded promptly after an election by bands of lawyers on fishing expeditions for plausible “crimes” committed somewhere along the president’s complex history of personal, political and financial records, in order to kick-start an impeachment process and overturn the people’s vote. 

As tempting as it is for those who feel genuine outrage at the words and actions of a president from the opposite party, lowering the bar to allow impeachment for non-treasonous crimes will in time have a viral effect on our whole system of government, infecting it with ill-conceived, politically motivated investigations of every senior member of the administrative, legislative and judicial branches, eventually pitching the country into a destructive cycle of perpetual constitutional crises. Would any official come clean after all-powerful investigative teams dredged up decades’ worth of records, raided friends’ homes and associates’ offices, and cut state-witness deals with small fish in order to find a crime salient enough to justify impeachment proceedings? Doubters should consider this paraphrased parable: He that is without crime among office holders, let him cast the first impeachment vote.

No matter to which side one leans politically, post-elections efforts to invalidate voters’ valid choices through legal fiat should be recognized as sequential attacks on the essence of democracy. Members of the legal profession in particular should ponder the inherent conflict between the honorable unifying role as defenders of the Constitution and the murky partisan role of championing serial assaults on the democratic foundations of the United States. For the American people at large, the question is even more ominous: Have we lost our hard-fought national right, aptly defined by President Abraham Lincoln, attorney at law, to have a “government of the people, by the people, for the people,” and instead submitted to a government of the lawyers, by the lawyers, for the lawyers?

* Avraham Azrieli is the author of eleven books, most recently, the novel Deborah Calling (HarperCollins, 2017). He holds two law degrees and is a member of the New York State bar. www.AzrieliBooks.com

Sources:

 https://lawschooltuitionbubble.wordpress.com/original-research-updated/lawyers-per-capita-by-state/; See also: https://www.americanbar.org/resources_for_lawyers/profession_statistics.html
 “Thus, we can estimate that there are 68,839 to 89,427 Washington lawyers. The average of those estimates is 79,133. In other words, 80,000 is a good guess after all.” Erin Delmore, Marisa M. Kashino, The Washingtonian, December 1, 2009; https://www.washingtonian.com/2009/12/01/how-many-lawyers-are-there/
 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/31/dc-has-nations-highest-co_n_1067215.html
 https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/16/nbc-trumps-lawyer-has-hired-his-own-lawyer.html
 Bonica, Adam, Why Are There So Many Lawyers in Congress? (January 13, 2017). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2898140
 https://ballotpedia.org/Where_did_your_governor_go_to_school%3F
 http://abaforlawstudents.com/2011/10/01/working-for-uncle-sam-government-jobs-law-grads/
 https://www.law360.com/articles/635678/dc-legal-boom-set-to-continue-amid-regulatory-demand
 https://www.law360.com/articles/646212?scroll=1 and https://www.law360.com/articles/681090?scroll=1
 http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/top_partner_billing_rates_at_biglaw_firms_nudge_1500_per_hour
 https://www.clements.com/sites/default/files/resources/The-Most-Litigious-Countries-in-the-World.pdf
 “Americans See Too Many Unnecessary Laws,” Rasmussen Reports, July 5, 2017; http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/lifestyle/general_lifestyle/june_2017/americans_see_too_many_unnecessary_laws
 Borie-Holtz, Deborah and Shapiro, Stuart, Trying to Float in a Sea of Regulation: Perception and Reality About Regulatory Overload (September 15, 2014). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2496436 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2496436
 http://www.pewforum.org/2013/07/11/public-esteem-for-military-still-high/; see also: https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/migrated/marketresearch/PublicDocuments/public_perception_of_lawyers_2002.authcheckdam.pdf
 http://www.payscale.com/research/US/All_K-12_Teachers/Salary#by_Job
 http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Soldier/Salary
 https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/lawyer/salary
 https://www.thebalance.com/average-salary-information-for-us-workers-2060808
 http://www.nalp.org/what_do_lawyers_do; see also: Abrams, L. L., The Official Guide to Legal Specialties: An Insider's Guide to Every Major Practice Area (2000)
 National Opinion Research Center (NORC) as cited in "Norc Scores" - Colorado Adoption Project: Resources for Researchers. Institute for Behavioral Genetics, University of Colorado Boulder. http://ibgwww.colorado.edu/~agross/NNSD/prestige%20scores.html
 NORC at the University of Chicago, http://gss.norc.org/Documents/reports/methodological-reports/MR122%20Occupational%20Prestige.pdf
 Ran Hirschl, Towards Juristocracy: The Origins and Consequences of the New Constitutionalism, Harvard University Press, 2007
 5 U.S. 137 (1803)
 William E. Nelson (Author), N. E. H. Hull (Editor), Peter Charles Hoffer (Editor), Marbury v. Madison : The Origins and Legacy of Judicial Review (Univ Pr of Kansas, 2000)
 http://ylr.law.yale.edu/pdfs/2002/Coup.pdf
 http://www.yalelawjournal.org/forum/please-dona8217t-cite-this-case-the-precedential-value-of-bush-v-gore
 http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/nixon-40th-anniversary-order-the-watergate-break
 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/impeach021399.htm
 http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2010/01/whats-obamas-birther-legal-bill/
 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/05/robert-mueller-donald-trump-russia
 Isenbergh, Joseph. 1999. "Impeachment and Presidential Immunity from Judicial Process," Yale Law and Policy Review 53, pp. 63. http://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=9417&context=journal_articles

Monday, April 24, 2017

Today, Of All Days?

In an Op-Ed in The Guardian titled: "The Democrats delivered one thing in the past 100 days: disappointment,” Harvard professor Cornel West calls for a new Sanders-inspired Progressive party, and lists the top 5 issues for American progressives: "The crucial issues of a $15 minimum wage and saying no to fracking, no to TPP, no to Israeli occupation and yes to single-payer healthcare …"

In other words, to save America from corporate greed and xenophobic populism, we must fight growing poverty, environmental pollution, unfair international trade, lack of healthcare and … Israel. Forget all the other painful challenges facing millions of Americans, such as mass-incarcerations, drug addiction, urban decay, failing infrastructure, immigration, veterans, etc., as well as all the dictatorial regimes rising across the globe, all the mass-killings, preventable epidemics, and deadly famines. All these problems are secondary to fighting “Israeli occupation." Is this an example of an irrational hate of Israel, or what? 

Any astute student of the past 100 years’ struggle of Jews and Arabs to co-exist in the tiny strip of land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River knows the myriads historical animosities, social complexities and religious tensions underlying Israel’s inability to reach peace with its neighbors—and the Arabs’ inability to reach peace among themselves. Whatever one’s opinion about Israel’s presence in some of the territory it won in the 1967 war, it’s clear that, if it withdraws from the West Bank (as it withdrew from the Sinai in 1982 and Gaza in 2005), the level of violence in the Middle East will not diminish one iota. West’s choice to include this—the expulsion of Jews from land bursting with archeological remnants of ancient Jewish life—among the top 5 goals for American progressives is both laughable and scary. It’s especially jarring to hear this familiar theme ("Juden Raus!”) today of all days, on April 24, the annual Holocaust Remembrance Day.

It’s no wonder that progressive-minded supporters of Israel find themselves politically homeless in the U.S. It’s also no wonder that "The ‘hotbed of anti-Semitism’ isn’t a foreign country. It’s U.S. college campuses, a new report says.” (Kristine Phillips, The Washington Post, April 24, 2017)


Avraham Azrieli
www.AzrieliBooks.com

Saturday, April 1, 2017

Jewish Author Wins Christian Book Award

Jewish Author Wins Christian Book Award:
Avraham Azrieli's novel, DEBORAH RISING (HarperCollins 2016) won the 2017 Illumination Book Awards for fiction. The novel portrays the dramatic rise of the first woman to lead a nation in human history. A sequel, DEBORAH CALLING, will be released by HarperCollins on July 25, 2017.

Avraham Azrieli
www.AzrieliBooks.com

Friday, February 3, 2017

Film Review: The Matchmaker (2010) by Avi Nesher (Director)

Film Review: The Matchmaker (2010) by Avi Nesher (Director) (Hebrew with English Subtitles)

Reviewed by Avraham Azrieli*

This is a wonderful movie that recreates a time capsule–Haifa, Israel in the late sixties. Having grown up in Haifa during that time, I found the story and its setting incredibly authentic and moving. The plot is deep, sweet, and multi-layered. The characters are totally believable and captivating. The setting is not only historically accurate, but rich with the natural beauty of Haifa’s stunning bay, unique architecture, and long stone stairways that tie together the city’s staggered neighborhoods up and down the steep hills, dotted with apartment building that perch on gravity-defying slopes. The superb acting enriches the interweaving threads of colorful ethnic conflicts and tender social fragility in a society where almost everyone was an immigrant, and where many were scarred survivors of the Nazi horror. In summary, a film of high quality, broad perspective, and deep feelings – should not be missed! --Avraham Azrieli, The Columbia Review

www.TheColumbiaReview.com

* Avraham Azrieli's latest novel is "Deborah Rising" (HarperCollins 2016), the story of the first woman to lead a nation in human history. www.azrieibooks.com

Book Review: “Oracles” by Mario Brooks

Book Review: “Oracles” by Mario Brooks

Reviewed by Avraham Azrieli*

“Oracles” by Mario Brooks is a work that straddles the line connecting spirituality and philosophy. It is an interconnected collection of concise essays of reflection and insight, as well as poems and vignettes, arranged in an ideal assembly for the busy modern reader’s preference for succinct communications.

Perhaps fitting this prudent book’s direct approach to stimulating the reader’s mind and heart, the first piece in the collection, “The Heart’s Residence,” ends with the following words: “Our entrance door need not be adorned, only solid, sound, and hinged upon prudence, discernment, and kindness.”

A later piece, “Poetic Secrets,” utilizes prose in creating a very short story in which a poet encourages an admirer to try his hand in writing poetry. They converse intently, culminating in this frank and insightful exchange: “So poets are unhappy people?” he asked. [And the poet replies:] “No, quite the contrary. True poets have an inner peace saturated in love and regard sorrow as more of a distant relative.”

Touching on a related issue in “A Lesson in Creativity,” a student bemoaning her shortage of creativity is taught through the spinning of a coin. “Heads is the inspired thought. This you have.” But, says the teacher, “Your tail must be disciplined and sit long enough to nurture, develop, and bring your ideas into physical reality.”

The author’s creative approach to deep reflection in this volume includes not only words, but images that prompt contemplation of the elements of matter, life, and our world. Further explorations cover aspects of faith, trust, intelligence, good and evil, conformity (“kidnaps the soul and demands its silence”), and even death (“It is only the beginning of a new form, a new power, and a new beauty. It is a gateway to transformation.”)

In summary, “Oracles” by Mario Brooks is a wonderful journey through ideas and reflections. In the words of its concluding paragraph, as we read each short section of this book, “our bodies come into clearer form, our colors more vibrant, and the image beyond our reach, sharper.” This worthwhile transformative literary collection is highly recommended! --Avraham Azrieli, The Columbia Review

www.TheColumbiaReview.com

* Avraham Azrieli's latest novel is "Deborah Rising" (HarperCollins 2016), the story of the first woman to lead a nation in human history. www.azrieibooks.com

Book Review: Discovering Your Optimum “Happiness Index” (OHI)

Book Review: Discovering Your Optimum “Happiness Index” (OHI) by Errol A. Gibbs and Marjorie G. Gibbs

Reviewed by Avraham Azrieli*

Discovering Your Optimum “Happiness Index” (OHI) by Errol A. Gibbs and Marjorie G. Gibbs is a rare flash of brilliant originality in the overlapping genres of Self Help and Spirituality. Successfully fusing personal narratives, academic investigations, original creative concepts, therapeutic process and methodology, and practical ‘takeaways’ for the fortunate reader, this is a must-read not only for the happiness-seeking person, but for anyone interested in the betterment of human society. Perhaps risking an oxymoron, we dare to say that Discovering Your Optimum “Happiness Index” (OHI) is the most serious examination of happiness in recent times.

The desire for happiness seems to permeate modern life, but it is too often confused with the obsessive acquisition of material possessions and social status. Authors Errol A. Gibbs and Marjorie G. Gibbs set out to explore a basic yet multifaceted and complex question: What is happiness? Not only its origins, its secrets, and its enhancement, but on a personal as well as global level (in their words): “This book introduces a revolutionary new perspective on “Optimum Happiness” (OH), for human survival as a viable species, which is a “higher value” proposition than mere “Happiness.” In our opinion, the authors succeeded in delivering on that goal.

Discovering Your Optimum “Happiness Index” (OHI) investigates happiness on many levels, connecting it to major life events (the common milestones in a person’s life—childhood, schooling, marriage, family, career, as well as social interplay and social class), as well as examining the effects of wealth and status. But perhaps the ultimate contribution of this cardinal work is the development of the idea that each person has a unique, optimal bundle of happiness, collating the oddly shaped pieces of the puzzle that makes each person’s singular life—spiritual, moral, social, intellectual, financial, and physical—which together combine into a ‘full picture’ of happiness.

Notably, while Discovering Your Optimum “Happiness Index” (OHI) explores the most fundamental questions of human life, the text is highly readable and easily accessible to the everyday reader. The authors share relevant experiences from their lives and personal journeys, while also leading the reader on a journey of discovery and exploration. The work draws from rich and varied sources, and provides some of the most potent (and beautiful) quotes from history’s best thinkers. Our favorite: “The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.” ― Socrates (469-399 BCE).

Compounding the benefits of this book’s wonderful examination of happiness in all its stunning human colors, the authors do not shy away from providing the reader with well-founded pathways to self-improvement that would be unquestionably beneficial—truly a multi-tiered gift that can change one’s quality of existence with a healthier and happier life. There are personal examples of what makes the authors happy, self-assessment and improvement opportunities, and breathtakingly broad discussions, quotations, citations, and sources, as well as practical tools, questionnaires, lists and exercises. In summary, this is a brave, deep, and exemplary detailed work that investigates happiness in all its aspects, charts new grounds in understanding happiness, both individually and socially, and provides a wealth of solid resources for readers seeking real, substantive, and lasting personal happiness. Truly indispensable and highly recommended! --Avraham Azrieli, The Columbia Review

www.TheColumbiaReview.com

* Avraham Azrieli's latest novel is "Deborah Rising" (HarperCollins 2016), the story of the first woman to lead a nation in human history. www.azrieibooks.com

Book Review: WHO WAS THE BIBLICAL PROPHET SAMUEL? by Rabbi Israel Drazin, PhD.

Book Review: WHO WAS THE BIBLICAL PROPHET SAMUEL? by Rabbi Israel Drazin, PhD.

More than any other figure in Jewish history, the prophet Samuel singlehandedly changed the course of the nation’s governance from a loose tribal association, rife with bitter conflicts, to a centralized monarchy–and Samuel did it not once (with his instigation of the Saul’s kingdom, the first-ever Israelite monarchy) but twice (with his ‘unseating’ of Saul and anointing the shepherd-boy David). Considering the outsized impact of this religious leader on the political, national and religious events of his time, as well as his lasting impact on Jewish history and the longing for the restoration of the ‘House of David’ to its former glory, one has to wonder “Who Was the Biblical Prophet Samuel?” Prolific author Israel Drazin’s new book answers this question with penetrating insight, refreshing clarity, and the same erudite originality that runs through all of Dr. Drazin’s books. This is a must-read for readers interested in Jewish history and its fascinating mysteries! --Avraham Azrieli, The Columbia Review
www.TheColumbiaReview.com
*Avraham Azrieli's latest novel is "Deborah Rising" (HarperCollins 2016), the story of the first woman to lead a nation in human history. www.azrieibooks.com

Book Review: UNUSUAL BIBLE INTERPRETATIONS: HOSEA by Rabbi Israel Drazin, PhD.

Book Review: UNUSUAL BIBLE INTERPRETATIONS: HOSEA by Rabbi Israel Drazin, PhD.

Repentance – as the primary vehicle for restoring one’s standing in divine grace – has become the central tenet of Judaism, Christianity, Islam and their respective sub-denominations, but few remember today that Talmud gives the prophet Hosea credit for developing this fundamental idea of repentance. In that sense, Hosea serves as an under-appreciated forefather for countless religious philosophers and theologians, while his ideas continue to drive the way most of humanity worships God today in churches, mosques and synagogues. With this in mind, Dr. Israel Drazin’s new book, “Unusual Bible Interpretations: Hosea,” offers invaluable new insights–not only with respect to Hosea as a man and as a thinker, but also in helping us understand the book that bears Hosea’s name. As with his many other wonderful books, Dr. Drazin offers original interpretations while sharing his vast knowledge and deep understanding of the history and literary background of the Bible and its intriguing figures. Highly recommended! --Avraham Azrieli, The Columbia Review
www.TheColumbiaReview.com
*Avraham Azrieli's latest novel is "Deborah Rising" (HarperCollins 2016), the story of the first woman to lead a nation in human history. www.azrieibooks.com