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That Blank Page

Comment of the week

by
Marc Tracy
April 22, 2011
(Ravi Joshi/Tablet Magazine)
(Ravi Joshi/Tablet Magazine)

Winner gets a free Nextbook Press book appropriate to his or her comment (provided he or she emails me at [email protected] with his or her mailing address).

This week’s winner is “L Weber.” I wrote a little diatribe in this week’s “Huppah Dreams”: “Kids,” I argued, “if it’s important to you to have your friend marry you and the religion is irrelevant, just get them licensed by the state, or just have a non-religious wedding. No reason to endorse this Universal Life stuff!” “L Weber” responded: “Love, and agree wholeheartedly, with the ‘Kids’ note! Thank you! An Anglican priest … .”

I love the ecumenicism! “L Weber” gets a copy of Adam Kirsch’s biography of British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, who was born a Jew but baptised into the Anglican Church as a boy, and who later told Queen Victoria, “Your Majesty, you know that in most editions of the Holy Bible there is the Old Testament and then there is the New Testament, and in between the two there is an empty, blank page. I am that blank page.” There can be plenitude in such blankness.

Related: Benjamin Disraeli [Nextbook Press]
Old School [Tablet Magazine]

Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.