Should revenge ever be a part of justice?

I think revenge may also be a way of dealing with grief.[...] Perhaps their strength of feeling was linked to a kind of survivor’s guilt, a sense they would be letting the victim down if they did not try to ensure the murderer suffered as much as possible. I suspect such feelings will only have made their bereavement worse – as the adage goes, hating someone else is like taking poison yourself and waiting for them to die. But as a response to trauma, it is not inevitable. For every vengeful family member of a homicide victim, another will choose not to be, feeling that retribution and hatred won’t do anything to replace their loss or assuage their pain. It seems a complex matter of conditioning, choice, and sometimes religious belief that sends individuals in either direction; I count myself fortunate that I’ve not had to stand at that junction myself, and don’t wish to judge anyone who has. Gwen Adshead, The Guardian

un articolo molto interessante, con una bibliografia altrettanto interessante.  Inoltre, dieci libri non mainstream su Israele:

What constitutes a literature of Israel? Is it the holy triumvirate of Amos Oz, AB Yehoshua and David Grossman? I don’t really think so. Is it the poetry of Chaim Nachman Bialik? Maybe. Or could it be the marginal pamphlets and pocket books of long-forgotten Zionist romance and pulp Hebrew detectives, where David Tidhar – no relation – reigned supreme? Is it the westerns, horror novels and softcore porn by such delightfully named authors as “Mike Longshott” and “Kim Rockman”, that one can still find on dusty shelves or in the Jaffa flea market from time to time? Lavie Tidhar, The Guardian

segnalo infine un articolo sul nostro Italo Svevo, "The Italian Proust," l'autore è Nathaniel Rich, ed è uscito sul The New York Review

The Draw of the Sea

It was a tragedy that sent novelist Wyl Menmuir to the “demi-island” of Cornwall, with its long and sinuous shoreline. In 2011, his first child was stillborn and he went with his wife down to the wild north coast of the county to escape. It was winter, and cold, and yet he walked into the ocean. “And for a few moments the grief wasn’t silenced so much as confronted by a wall of deafening white noise muting its constant scream. The sea’s great indifference was a comfort in a way I can’t easily explain and it continues to play its part.” Alex Preston, The Guardian

Syllabus: Myth in the Hebrew Bible

Myth in the Hebrew Bible is a complex and controversial topic, depending on how one defines myth and sometimes on one’s religious orientation. In everyday usage today, myth carries a meaning of something untrue, a fable, a fiction, or an illusion. That usage has a long history, traceable back to certain Greek philosophers. Anthropologists and historians of religion, however, use the term “myth” with a quite different meaning. For them myth refers to a traditional story, usually associated with the time of origins (e.g., creation or some important institution) that has paradigmatic significance for the society in which the story is operative. In this latter meaning, myth is characteristic of every traditional society; some would argue that myth continues to be operative even in modern, scientific society, camouflaged under other terms, including science itself (e.g., the big bang theory). Persons who hold that the Bible has been infallibly revealed by God and those who consider myth as something untrue may well find it offensive to posit that myth is present in the Bible. By contrast, those who see myth as one of the ways that a traditional society expresses it most profound truths may find inspiration in seeing biblical narratives as myth. Oxford Bibliographies