Leon Wieseltier

Leon Wieseltier (b. June 14, 1952) is a American writer, critic, and magazine editor. Since 1983 he has been the literary editor of "The New Republic".

Wieseltier was born in Brooklyn, New York and attended the Yeshivah of Flatbush, Columbia University, Oxford University, and Harvard University, and was a member of Harvard's Society of Fellows from 1979-1982. [ [http://www.nyulawglobal.com/GrussLectureFall2005_000.htm The Annual Caroline and Joseph S. Gruss Lecture: Fall 2005: "Law and Patience: Unenthusiastic Reflections on Jewish Messianism"] , New York University. Accessed November 15, 2007. "Educated at the Yeshiva of Flatbush, Columbia College, Balliol College, Oxford, and Harvard University."]

Wieseltier has published several fictional and non-fictional books. "Kaddish", a National Book Award finalist in 2000, is a genre-blending meditation on the Jewish prayers of mourning. "Against Identity" is a collection of thoughts about the modern notion of identity.

Wieseltier also edited and introduced a volume of works by Lionel Trilling entitled "The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent" and wrote the foreword to Ann Weiss's "", a collection of personal photographs that serves as a paean to pre-Shoah innocence. Wieseltier's translations of the works of Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai have appeared in "The New Republic" and "The New Yorker".

During Wieseltier's tenure as literary editor of "The New Republic", many of his signed and unsigned writings have appeared in the magazine.

Joshua Muravchik calls Wieseltier a "liberal thinker," [ Exporting Democracy: Fulfilling America's Destiny,by Joshua Muravchik , 1992, p. 39 ] and George Packer calls him one of the "ideas men of the liberal intelligentsia." [ The Record of the Paper: How the New York Times Misreports Us Foreign Policy, by Howard Friel, Richard A. Falk, 2004, p. 68]

Wieseltier served on the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. "I am in no sense a neoconservative, as many of my neoconservative adversaries will attest," Wieseltier wrote in a May 2007 letter to Judge Reggie Walton, seeking leniency for his friend Scooter Libby. [http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2007/0605071libby23.html] Andrew Sullivan has said that 'Wieseltier is a connoisseur and cultivator of personal hatred' [http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/04/jew-baiting.html] .

References