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The billionaire who revitalized Brooklyn’s waterfront went from working on a farm to building a real estate empire worth billions. These are lessons from his journey.

TheStreet aims to feature only the best products and services. If you buy something via one of our links, we may earn a commission.Why we love this dealWe runners are notorious for our fickle opinions on headphones. We’re also notorious for missing toenails and unabashed humblebragging, but that’s neither here nor there. Self-inflicted deformities and annoying habits aside, endurance athletes know what works for them. As such, they tend to offer their undying loyalty to the brands they like. Shokz enjoys this type of fealty from many runners thanks to their impressive active-lifestyle open-ear headphones. In fact, one of the brand’s most budget-friendly models is on sale at Amazon, and it’s worth a look (and a listen). The Shokz OpenMove Open-Ear Headphones are on sale for $55. That’s 31% off the original price of $80. However, if you don’t run right now to get them, you might miss out on this deal.Shokz OpenMove Open-Ear Headphones, $55 (was $80) at Amazon

Courtesy of Amazon

Shop at AmazonWhy do shoppers love it?There’s so much to love about these headphones, even for non-athletes. The Bluetooth connectivity allows you total freedom to listen to whatever you want without being tethered to any device. The open-ear design places the drivers just outside the ear canal, which allows you to still hear ambient sounds as needed. This is especially useful for road runners who might want to keep abreast of traffic and other potential hazards while still enjoying music on their run. Some users prefer individual earbud style headphones because they’re more lightweight, but the OpenMove’s connected design is comfortable and makes it less likely to lose them because the two sides are attached to one another.The sound quality on these headphones is certainly worth the price of admission. The drivers deliver premium pitch immersive stereo sound that offers deep bass along with crisp mids and highs. The bone conduction design means that you can literally feel the music in addition to hearing it. What’s more, you get a full six hours of listening and call time on a single charge of these headphones.Speaking of calls, there are two noise-canceling microphones built-in to the headphones. Whoever might be on the other end of your call will enjoy a clear-sounding voice without unnecessary environmental noise. The headphones are available in four color variants, making them great for multiple family members to use. While they do come with a small microfiber bag, it might have been nice if they had included a hard shell case. That said, it’s still an amazing deal at this price.Related: Amazon’s top-rated Skullcandy wireless headphones with ‘unique bass technology’ are 52% offPros and ConsProsConnectivity: Bluetooth connection allows you to be untethered from devices.Battery life: You can get a full six hours of listening time on a single charge.Safety: The open-ear design of the headphones allow you to still engage with your surroundings even while listening to music or podcasts.Colorways: Four color variants are available.ConsDesign: Some may not enjoy the single-body design of the headphones due to weight or lack of individual earbuds.Case: A hardshell case would go further to protect the headphones from damage than the microfiber bag that’s included.Amazon shoppers were understandably thrilled with these headphones. One called them “revolutionary headphones that changed how I experience music and workouts.” The same buyer also said “the functionality is incredible”.Shop more deals Skullcandy Dime Evo Wireless Earbuds, $35 (was $50) at AmazonMonster Persona 5th Hybrid Active Noise-Canceling Headphones, $50 (was $83) at AmazonBose QuietComfort Headphones, $249 (was $349) at AmazonThe Shokz OpenMove Open-Ear Headphones are an incredible buy at just $55. Not only will they help you get in shape, but they’ll keep your budget from getting too big at the same time. Put one in your cart sooner rather than later though, as you want to be sure to cross that finish line before it’s too late.

Authors SQuire Rushnell and Louise DuArt coined the word “Godwink” to describe the way the Lord works in mysterious ways, exemplified by this story for Easter Sunday. As they told Fox News Digital, “What mysterious force in the universe causes us to help someone in need — only to discover that we are the ones being led to life changes?”In New Orleans for Easter a few years ago, shop windows just recently decorated with sequined outfits, colorful boas and feathered headdresses for Mardi Gras were now trimmed in baskets of pink and green, chocolate bunnies and Lily of the Valley.Gerry Ponson, together with his then-girlfriend Shannon, strolled arm in arm through the French Quarter, laughing and stealing affectionate glances. PASTOR AND STRANGER LINKED BY GOSPEL SONG AS MIRACULOUS KIDNEY DONATION SAVES TWO LIVESPonson balanced an air of boyish curiosity with the commanding presence of a sea captain who could turn on a dime to bark orders at his crew. Meanwhile, the nurse in Shannon showed. She’d learned to tuck her patience into a delightful carefree spirit. What didn’t show was her worry — that if she pushed her rugged beau too close to marriage, he might bolt. Fortunately, Gerry’s younger sister, Penny Ponson, had become Shannon’s best ally. The women shared a strong faith, and during heart-to-heart talks, they’d agreed he would benefit from believing in “someone up there” bigger than himself.Penny told Shannon about a recent time she’d mentioned the subject of faith with her brother. “I told him, ‘Even if you reject Him, God loves you, and you can’t do a thing about it!’””What did he say to that?” Shannon asked.TEXAS COMMUNITY FOR SPECIAL-NEEDS ADULTS IS A MODEL FOR OTHERS: ‘A JOYFUL PLACE’”Get out of the house!” They both laughed. During that spring holiday period, Ponson had a tradition. Every year, he took his older friend, Mac, along with Mac’s championship golden retriever, Booga, duck hunting across the bay from New Orleans. This year, Mac had been hurting — he’d lost his wife of 45 years.As was their norm, the trio set out in Ponson’s 17-foot boat at 4:30 a.m. Booga took his post, standing at the bow while Gerry wrapped Mac in a heavy blanket and a wool watch cap. The temperature hovered in the 30s. For the first half-hour, Ponson felt excitement about the venture. Then, noticing changes in the wind and the rocking of the boat, an uneasiness crept over the veteran seaman.He always checked the weather — second nature for a fisherman. But the wind, rising quickly, brought higher waves that slammed the small boat with growing force.Ponson had heard the lore of fast-developing storms in the northern Gulf — systems that escaped the notice of meteorologists — before exploding into near-gale winds, towering waves and rare but deadly storms.Within moments, icy water began crashing over the gunwale, causing the boat to flip like a toy — and dumping the three occupants into the dark, shockingly cold water.Ponson grabbed his friend by the latter man’s life jacket, shouting, “Keep moving your arms and feet!” He knew his older friend could quickly suffer from hypothermia.BUS DRIVER HAILED AS HERO FOR SAVING YOUNG CHILD WANDERING ALONE ON BUSY STREETSomething bumped his arm — it was the boat’s 10-foot push pole. He seized it, driving it downward into the churning water. When it struck bottom, Ponson was thankful — at least they’d have something to hang onto.”Hold on, Mac,” said Ponson over the wind. “There’ll be a boat coming down the channel, I’m sure of it.”Booga paddled over, panting. For awhile, Ponson held him up by his collar.Over the next hour, as the waves battered the three of them in total darkness, Ponson fought to keep everyone alive — holding Mac upright for several minutes, then giving Booga a rest. “I’m cold, Gerry,” Mac said in a weak voice. Ponson felt helpless and frustrated. Finally, he made the hardest decision he could remember. “I can’t save you both, Mac,” he said sympathetically. “I’ve got to let Booga go.”He shooed the dog toward shore, knowing the chances of survival were nearly impossible in this weather.”Hold on, Mac. It’ll be light soon,” he said. “Somebody’ll come.”But an hour passed without another boat in sight. Moreover, believing in unseen things or miracles had never been Ponson’s strong suit.His thoughts drifted to Shannon. She was a believer — but she gave him his space.Another half hour crawled by. The sky slowly began to turn gray, and the waves began to ease. Yet a mist had surrounded them.”I can’t hold on much longer,” Mac croaked.For the first time, Gerry remembered what Penny had said: “God loves you, and you can’t do a thing about it!”CLICK HERE FOR MORE LIFESTYLE STORIESHe tilted his face toward the empty sky. “If you’re there — please send us a boat,” he whispered. Then, as an afterthought, he added, “Please, give me a second chance.”Less than a minute later, something moved in the fog. He squinted. A hole in the mist seemed to open.Was it a cross?Suddenly he saw the mast of a boat. He ripped off his shirt and waved it wildly.”Mac! It’s a boat! They see us!”A smaller boat soon ferried them to a larger vessel. As Ponson climbed the rope ladder, he noticed something that stopped him cold. The name painted on the hull of the boat was “Second Chance.” TEST YOURSELF WITH OUR LATEST LIFESTYLE QUIZSoon there was a churning sound overhead. He felt grateful as he watched his older friend lifted by a medivac helicopter, to be rushed to a hospital.A short while later, the Second Chance boat pulled up to the dock in New Orleans — where another surprise awaited.Dancing in circles on the pier was Booga — alive. Still, the best surprise was yet to come. Standing quietly on the dock, tears on her face, was Shannon. The couple embraced tightly. Ponson knew exactly what he was going to say. It had come to mind the moment he saw the name of that boat, right after he’d asked for a “second chance.”CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR OUR LIFESTYLE NEWSLETTER”God wants me to say this. Will you marry me?”Shannon’s face filled with joy, “Yes.””One condition,” he added breathlessly. “Let’s do it right away. Will you marry me on Easter Sunday?”Tears filled her eyes. “Yes and yes.”Days later at a New Orleans wedding chapel — with Mac, in a wheelchair, as best man — and Booga serving as “best dog” — the couple said their vows and began a brand-new chapter in their lives.Within weeks, Ponson augmented his tasks as a fishing boat captain with a part-time job at Celebration Church in New Orleans. To this day, as a street preacher, he shares his testimony.This story by SQuire Rushnell and Louise DuArt is published by special permission. Copyright ©SQuire Rushnell and Louise DuArt. Anyone can learn more about the Godwinks projects at www.godwinks.com. The Ponsons’ story was first published in the book “When God Winks at You” by SQuire Rushnell and Louise DuArt Rushnell.

As multiple agencies collect tips in the Nancy Guthrie case, the man funding a $100,000 reward says Crime Stoppers — not the sheriff — offers the safest path for witnesses to come forward and an enticing one for people who want to get paid for credible information without giving their name.”I believe that people will come forward if they’re anonymous and if they get a reward,” said Wisconsin attorney Michael Hupy, who is the president of Crime Stoppers Milwaukee.In Pima County, Arizona, the local Crime Stoppers affiliate is known as 88-CRIME, and the number is 520-882-7463.Hupy has paid out $75,000 in rewards and posted another $200,000 in an effort to solve crimes in his hometown. But he told Fox News Digital this week he put up six figures in the Guthrie case due to the alarming circumstances of her disappearance.NANCY GRACE SLAMS SHERIFF’S HANDLING OF GUTHRIE CASE: ‘THE FISH STINKS AT THE HEAD’She is believed to have been taken from her bedroom in northern Tucson around 2 a.m. on Sunday, Feb. 1. Responding officers found a thin trail of blood droplets from her front door to the edge of her driveway. Her back doors were propped open. Her Nest doorbell camera was missing. And the trail seemingly ended there, until the FBI and Google recovered home security video showing a masked man on her doorstep — who is still unidentified.”I was very sad that an 84-year-old woman in poor health was taken from her home, without her medication, her heart pacemaker stopped [synching], there’s blood at the crime scene, and I thought something had to be done quickly,” he told Fox News Digital. “And I thought this is a place I could step in, as I have in Milwaukee.”He also criticized the early handling of the investigation, saying the sheriff released the crime scene too quickly and made other missteps.LEAD NANCY GUTHRIE COP HAD NO HOMICIDE EXPERIENCE, SHERIFF BENCHED TOP DETECTIVES: SOURCES”I don’t think they secured the scene long enough to process it,” he said. “They went in, looked, opened it up, then they had to come back later.”Hupy said he believes that the anonymity guaranteed by Crime Stoppers can’t be matched by the county sheriff’s tip line or even the FBI, whose tip line the Guthrie family has promoted publicly.FOLLOW THE FOX TRUE CRIME TEAM ON XTipsters can avoid being labeled “snitches” or facing retaliation, he said.”That’s the point of it,” he added. “They get a reward anonymously, and they help society by getting criminals off the street.”SIGN UP TO GET TRUE CRIME NEWSLETTERAnd with the investigation entering its third month this week, Hupy said the chance that someone who knows something about Guthrie’s suspected abduction told someone else has only increased.”Somebody will learn something,” he said. “An ex-girlfriend will get mad and tell the authorities or Crime Stoppers that her boyfriend confessed to her. A bartender will say a drunk came in and spilled the beans on himself or someone else. So the longer it goes on, the more likely we are to get the criminal.”SEND US A TIP HERETipsters who use Crime Stoppers can also avoid getting in the middle as both the PCSD and FBI vie for information on the case independently, Hupy said.”Avoid the bickering and avoid the nonsense and call Crime Stoppers,” Hupy said. “We know how to handle this. We have solved thousands of cases, and we’re not in the middle of something.”LISTEN TO THE NEW ‘CRIME & JUSTICE WITH DONNA ROTUNNO’ PODCASTAnd because Crime Stoppers is not a government agency, Hupy said it is not subject to freedom of information laws and does not keep identifying records of the informants it pays.Tipsters are not asked for their names and receive a unique code number when they give information instead, he said. If there’s an arrest based on that information, they can collect by giving the code, not their name.LIKE WHAT YOU’RE READING? FIND MORE ON THE TRUE CRIME HUB”If your tip results in an arrest, you get a reward,” he said. “We don’t even know your name or your address or your phone number.”And there are no records kept of those details either, he added.The national crime fighting organization has given out tens of millions of dollars in reward money over the years, he said.The Crime Stoppers reward is $102,500 for information that leads to an arrest. The FBI is separately offering a $100,000 reward for information that leads to either Guthrie’s recovery or an arrest and conviction. And “Today” co-host Savannah Guthrie is offering $1 million for information that brings her mother home.”Come forward, you’ll be anonymous…and if you have the right information, you’ll get a reward,” Hupy said. “It’s that simple.”

Ukraine warns Russia is establishing long-range drone control stations in Belarus, intensifying the war and threatening NATO’s eastern flank.

The American Culture Quiz is a weekly test of our unique national traits, trends, history and people — including current events and the sights and sounds of the United States.This week’s quiz highlights Tidal Basin traditions, baseball benchmarks — and a whole lot more.Can you get all 8 questions right?Give it a try and see how you do!CLICK HERE FOR MORE LIFESTYLE STORIESTo try your hand at more quizzes from Fox News Digital, click here. Also, to take our latest News Quiz — published every Friday — click here.

In a move sure to spark more 2028 speculation, former Vice President Kamala Harris will appear next week at a major Democratic Party cattle call in this preseason for the next White House race.Harris will speak on Friday in New York City at the National Action Network’s 35th Anniversary Convention.The gathering, hosted by the civil rights organization’s founder, the Rev. Al Sharpton, will give the former vice president and other potential Democratic presidential contenders appearing at the confab an opportunity to speak directly to an influential gathering of Black leaders and activists who are key players among the party’s base.It’s the latest sign that where Harris is going, and what she’s saying and doing, is increasingly generating buzz that the Democratic Party’s 2024 presidential nominee is on a likely glidepath towards another White House bid in 2028.KAMALA HARRIS: OUT OF OFFICE BUT BACK ONLINE”Of course we are reading tea leaves,” a veteran strategist in the former vice president’s political orbit told Fox News Digital.The strategist, who asked to remain anonymous to speak more freely, emphasized that “the only signal that is very clear is that she is going to continue to be an incredibly important fighting force and voice for Democrats and for the country.”Harris was mostly out of the headlines for a couple of months after the end of former President Joe Biden’s administration early last year. But she started stepping back into the political spotlight last spring and summer, including headlining Democratic National Committee fundraisers.HARRIS, NEWSOM, STIR 2028 SPECULATION AT MAJOR DEMOCRATIC PARTY MEETINGHer strategic decision last summer to pass on launching a 2026 gubernatorial campaign in her home state of California was seen as a clearing of the runway for a 2028 presidential bid. And her nationwide book tour for her memoir on her abbreviated 2024 campaign, when she succeeded Biden as the Democrats’ standard-bearer, has helped keep her very visible while building up her email lists and boosting donor interest.With her six-month book tour coming to a close, Harris, who made history as the first female and first Black vice president in the nation’s history, is set to make a swing through the South later this month. Her stops to help state parties fundraise include South Carolina, a key early-voting primary state in the Democrats’ presidential nominating calendar, as well as the key general election battlegrounds of Georgia and North Carolina. Harris narrowly lost both states and the five other key battlegrounds to President Donald Trump in the 2024 election.”Kamala Harris continues to be an incredibly inspiring force within the Democratic Party, especially among women, among Black voters and voters of color,” the strategist in her political circle emphasized.Harris has also been getting more involved on the campaign trail, recording ads for the Democratic National Committee and for the Virginia Democrats with early voting underway in the state’s April 21 congressional redistricting referendum.After endorsing Rep. Jasmine Crockett in last month’s Democratic Senate primary in Texas, Harris reached out to the nomination winner, state Rep. James Talarico. She’s also talked to other winners in last month’s primaries.HARRIS RIPPED BY THE RIGHT OVER TRUMP IRAN WAR SPEECH PRE-BUTTALHarris has also been increasingly critical of Trump’s military strikes on Iran.”He brought America into a war that people don’t want, he has put American troops in harm’s way, costs are rising by the day, and, meanwhile, he has done nothing to address the needs of the people of America,” the former vice president argued in a social media video posted ahead of Trump’s primetime address to the nation last week.Harris’ comments quickly ignited a sharp rebuke from conservatives on social media.Among those responding was Rep. Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the House Republican majority leader.”It’s pretty disgraceful for you to claim President Trump has done nothing to meet the needs of the American people,” Emmer posted on X. “Here’s the truth: He’s cleaning up the chaos YOU caused here in the United States and across the globe, and is making America great again.”The reaction from Republicans is a sign that it’s not only Democrats who see Harris as a potential leading contender for the 2028 nomination.Looking ahead, the strategist stressed that “no one knows what she is planning to do for 2028, but until she tells us herself, she is going to continue to travel, speak up about the issues she cares about the most, and the tremendous damage that Trump and this administration are doing to this country and how Democrats are going to continue to fight back.”

The four astronauts on the Artemis II mission are more than halfway to the moon after launching Wednesday from Kennedy Space Center, but a familiar problem has surfaced.For the second time since launch, Orion’s toilet is malfunctioning.”During the night, we tried to vent the wastewater tank that’s attached to the toilet. We had problems with that, due to suspected blockage we think probably due to ice. So we directed the crew overnight to use their collapsible contingency urine devices,” Judd Frieling, the Artemis II flight director, explained during a news conference Saturday.The astronauts encountered a similar problem with the toilet on the first day of their mission. The ship’s lunar loo malfunctioned following liftoff and has remained a lingering issue.TRUMP HYPES MOON MISSION AS ARTEMIS II PREPARES TO LIFT OFF UNDER PRESSURE FROM PAST FAILURESDebbie Korth, NASA’s Orion program deputy manager, said the toilet is still operable.”You know, this is a test flight. We’re figuring out how these systems work together, but it is operable, and we have redundancy to get us through the mission,” she said.The toilet, NASA confirmed, is still available for astronauts to use for solid waste.ARTEMIS II LAUNCH STEALS THE SHOW AT COLLEGE SOFTBALL GAME AS PLAYERS STARE SKYWARD IN AMAZEMENT”Space toilets and bathrooms are something everybody can really understand .. it’s always a challenge,” Korth said.John Honeycutt, chair of the mission management team, said the public’s interest in the Orion toilet was “kind of human nature.”ARTEMIS II CREW DESCRIBES LIFE ABOARD ORION SPACECRAFT ON HISTORIC JOURNEY TO THE MOON AND BACK”I mean, everybody knows how important that is to us here on Earth and it’s harder to manage in space. I’m interested in it, you know? I mean, I know we’re in a good state right now, but I would really like for it to be in the best state that it can be for the crew’s sake,” he said. “It’s a little bit of camping in space already, but then it makes it camping a little bit tougher when you don’t have the full capability of the toilet.””But you know, they’re okay and they’re trying to manage through the situation,” Honeycutt added.NASA said the astronauts reported a smell coming from the bathroom, which is located in the floor of the capsule.”Regarding the smell, I just wanted to make sure you all were tracking the EGS notes of the kind of burning heater smell that was coming from toilet several times,” astronaut Christina Koch, who helped address the issue earlier this week, told mission control on Saturday, according to Space.com.Orion will orbit the moon on Monday before heading back to Earth.The Associated Press contributed to this report.

In this compact, highly readable book treating issues about which he has also written elsewhere, Carl Trueman examines how it is that, at least on his telling, our world has become one in which limits are no longer meaningful moral boundaries but, rather, obstacles to be overcome. What we have lost, he says, is the sense that every human being is made in the image of God. But it is not as if this belief has just slipped away gradually, no longer making sense in a disenchanted world. Trueman’s claim is stronger. Our culture now takes delight in surpassing and setting aside old limits that were thought to characterize our humanity. The problem is not disenchantment but desecration—the transgressing of older moral limits.
Although the book begins with several chapters that seek to explain how we have come to this point, it may be helpful to begin with later chapters that discuss some of the ways in which the image of God in humanity has been set aside. Unsurprisingly, near the top of the list is the sexual revolution. “The idea that all are made in the image of God places upon each person the obligation to treat others as persons, as those intrinsically worthy of acknowledgment as subjects, as ends in themselves.” And this, Trueman argues, is precisely what has been lost in the way many in our culture now think about sexual activity. It used to be thought, as Christian tradition had taught, that the sexual relation between a man and a woman was one in which each answered to deep human needs of the other—and that their mutual self-giving might, in the providence of God, also gives rise to the next generation. Thus, there was important human meaning in the sexual relation—meaning so central to human life that it needed to be embedded in and protected by the covenant of marriage.
When, however, sex becomes largely recreational, the satisfaction simply of individual desire, it turns out to undermine itself. Trueman unpacks several ways in which this has happened, first in the changing relation between men and women, and then more generally in our political life. The end result, he believes, is that what “promises to liberate us as individual agents … ends up creating a world where we are doomed to experience life as objects,” rather than as those who are “ends in themselves.”
Something similar happens to the children who are produced in a world that constantly seeks to overcome older moral limits. Although these children will generally be loved and prized, they nevertheless become “things that can be treated as commodities.” In a world where assisted reproduction has become increasingly common, what was once called and thought of as procreation has now become something rather different—reproduction, manufacture. Prior to the development of assisted reproduction technologies, conception of a child was always “somewhat beyond the control of the participants” and “could not be willed.” If the self-giving of a man and woman to each other in coitus resulted in the conception and birth of a child, that child was not a product they had planned but, rather, a blessing bestowed on their mutual self-giving. Assisted reproductive technologies change that.
Even more striking is the fact that, with the advent of in vitro fertilization, sexual intercourse between a man and a woman is no longer necessary for the creation of a child. And, increasingly, children can be made to order. Pre-implantation diagnosis of embryos can weed out and discard those that may carry inheritable, undesired defects. One might even argue that if the production of children is increasingly to take the form of manufacture, it would be irresponsible not to engage in a kind of quality control. “Things that are made can be made to order. And who wants to settle for second best?” This makes clear why Trueman believes the image of God in human beings has been desecrated. Assisted reproduction is a striking demonstration of human power over nature, shattering old limits that had once seemed fixed. But, conversely, the result is that these newly created human beings become “just one more commodity that can be produced on demand. We have desecrated ourselves.”
As at the beginning of life, so also at its ending. On the one hand, Trueman suggests, as have many others, that our society has sought to hide death, “shunting it from the home to hospice and the hospital.” (This is, I think, something of an overstatement. At least at its best, hospice is not an attempt to hide death but to enable us to face it and deal with it in a way that respects and honors our humanity.) On the other hand, and closer to Trueman’s central concern, death is “domesticated” when we treat assistance in dying as just another form of medical care for those who are disabled or depressed. The language of rights, so common now in our public discourse, is used to undergird appeals to both assisted suicide and euthanasia. We are on the verge of losing the sense that a funeral is a place “to acknowledge our weakness and our fragility and our common mortality.”
The opening chapters of the book, more philosophical in character, seek to explain how it is that our society has come to this point. Trueman’s account underscores two changes in what, following Charles Taylor, he calls “the social imaginary” (the untheoretical ways in which ordinary people imagine their everyday world). The first is that striking advances in technology have brought us to the point where the human body can be reshaped in accordance with our desires. The second is the expressive individualism that encourages us to liberate ourselves from natural “givens” or moral boundaries.
Trueman paints with a broad brush here, but his basic point is clear. In refusing to recognize traditional moral boundaries, in thinking of the body as raw material to be reshaped in accordance with our desires, we are turning against the idea that human beings are made in the image of God. The claim is not hard to understand, and there is surely something to it. Nevertheless, “image of God” language, though largely undefined by Trueman, is doing a lot of work here. When he does unpack the language, it often sounds at least as Kantian (human beings as “ends in themselves”) as biblical. Perhaps, though, he believes that these languages meet and concur in believing that our humanity has been degraded by some of the changes discussed above.
In the face of such desecration of our humanity, how should we respond? “Go to church and worship” is a very simple way to characterize Trueman’s recommendation. I do not say this to make light of it, for his is actually a very serious response. If desecration is our current condition and our problem, what we need is reconsecration. That is what the Church offers in its creed, cult, and code. The beliefs confessed in its ancient creeds, the communal life given shape in the Church’s liturgical worship, and the understanding of what it means to be human articulated in its moral code combine to tell a story that gives “a comprehensible shape to the world” and thereby, he suggests, may begin to reconsecrate the Christian understanding of what it means to be human.
The Desecration of Man: How the Rejection of God Degrades Our Humanity
by Carl Trueman
Sentinel, 256 pp., $29
Gilbert Meilaender is a senior research professor at Valparaiso University.
The post From Desecration to Consecration appeared first on .

It is the easiest of questions, it is the most difficult of questions: “Why are the Jews leaving the Soviet Union?” asks Emil Bezverkhny. He writes throughout the latter half of the 20th century, each chapter in his posthumously published The Penny is Gone a capsule preserving the maddening, almost otherworldly qualities of being a Jew, a scientist, just a man, in that time and place. It’s easy to see why Jews are leaving the Soviet Union. They are second-class citizens in the nation that promised such a concept was anathema to its very existence. They are kept out of jobs they deserve, left to destitution and dishonor, neither allowed to practice the Mosaic law nor the new secular religion of science and development of the rational faculties.
Yet it raises the most difficult of questions: Even here? Even now? “Why are they leaving behind a country with a constitution guaranteeing equal opportunity for all, irrespective of nationality or race?” Bezverkhny rephrases the question: How can it be that even the most enlightened people, consistently to their own detriment, drive away their Jewish neighbors? The Germans alienated Einstein; Einstein helped defeat the Germans. Bezverkhny would not claim to be an Einstein or von Neumann or Oppenheimer, but he was accomplished and dedicated. On merit, he should have risen to the top of the Soviet academy and helped further the aims of the revolution, even if he seemed lukewarm at best about their utility from the outset. Yet the Soviets fell prey to the same disease of self-sabotage. They killed, banished, or alienated their brightest Jewish minds. Thankfully, for us if not Bezverkhny, this led to the downfall of the Soviet empire and enormous contributions to American wealth, health, and power.
Bezverkhny’s reflections on the recurring historical tendency of nations to make life miserable for Jews for any reason or no reason at all are newly brought to light by his grandson and namesake, Emil Pitkin. An entrepreneur and data scientist, the younger Emil has translated his grandfather’s writings skillfully, preserving their literary (and distinctly Russian) qualities, while producing an eminently readable book despite the barrier between the two languages. What results is a memoir—even if Bezverkhny insists he has not written a memoir but an attempt to unearth “the roots of today’s tragedy”—which places readers in the restless mind of a man who did everything right, suffered enormously, and was in the end let down by those who promised him utopia.
The descriptions of poverty in Bezverkhny’s childhood are familiar yet still pack a punch. “We would bring home 375 grams of bread from the bakery” on Fridays, he recalls.
We carried it like a bowl filled with holy water. One time, Grandpa Yihiel came over. After the evening prayers, honoring custom, he dipped a morsel of bread in salt and ate it. I began to cry: it seemed to me that the piece was too big. Grandfather starved to death in March of ’42. Not long before him, Grandma Haika had perished from hunger too.
Such was life in Eastern Europe, indeed in nearly the whole world for all of time before the advent of capitalism. For Soviet Jews, grinding poverty, death, war, and oppression served as compounding indignities. The shadow of a long history of Jewish suffering, a history that would rear its head once again as the Soviets turned their backs on the Jews, was omnipresent. That sense of historical inescapability haunts Bezverkhny, and from it the book draws its title. Bezverkhny writes of his father’s “inexhaustible” stories, such as the one about the destitute boy who lost his penny. “Let’s cheer you up,” says a benevolent passerby, and gives him a new penny. “Suddenly, the boy starts crying again … ‘why are you crying again?’ ‘I’m sad about my penny. If I hadn’t lost it, I would have had two.'” The penny is gone, and cannot truly be replaced.
Each Jew lost to history, to senseless hatred and subjugation, “used to count at least as cogs in the system; now they don’t even count for a penny.” Their absence is palpable. Even small moments of accomplishment and hope are haunted by the ghosts of Jews who were not sustained until that day, and Bezverkhny’s sense that he would soon meet the same fate.
Indeed he would. His account of his unceremonious dismissal from an important post at a military research institute rivals Kafka’s descriptions of mindless bureaucracy coupled with mendacious hypocrisy. No one can admit that on merit, Bezverkhny ought to retire a national hero, but he is a Jew—yet that fact (and its perfect irrelevance to his job) cannot be stated lest the soaring principles of the Soviet Union come crashing down. “Do you have any idea what I’m accused of?” asks our protagonist, repeatedly. The reader waits in vain for Bezverkhny’s friends and colleagues to let their guard down and admit they know exactly that it’s all a show.
The difficult question with which Bezverkhny’s inquiry began has an answer. Why do nations expel their Jews as part of their decline and fall? They lose faith in the objective value of their enterprise. What good was Bezverkhny’s expertise when a critical mass of his fellow researchers recognized that the fight for perfect equality was a sham, that their empire was built on a lie its leaders never intended to treat as a truth?
There is a profoundly Jewish element to Bezverkhny’s story, but there is also something distinctly Soviet about the resilience of the lies that control everyone’s life. Yet even as everyone around Bezverkhny continues to lie with words, their actions tell the truth about what they see around them. A culture that has given up on being great and turned into a war of all against all; like a body falling septic, critical resources are diverted toward the most basic forms of self-preservation. High ideals like equality, or aspirations like scientific discovery, no longer receive oxygen.
Americans are losing confidence in our own nation’s worthiness, our own high ideals, and the importance of upholding republican virtues when it would be easier just to look out for oneself. Perhaps that is why (spurred on by some open Soviet sympathizers) Americans are turning against the Jews to a degree not seen for decades.
Thankfully, we have something the Soviets did not: a free market, and entrepreneurs like Pitkin free to take risks and build new goods and services within it. Such people need the best talent to succeed. They have skin in the game, and need others to cooperate. Freedom breaks down prejudices and ensures that objective merit triumphs. We were not lucky enough to welcome the elder Emil to our shores and allow him to become fabulously wealthy and free here. Surely he is smiling down on his grandson, encouraging him to share the cautionary tale of the Soviet Jewish experience with those who would demoralize the great American project, to live out a very different story—one of freedom, merit, and enterprise—and never to take it for granted.
The Penny is Gone: Meditations of a Soviet Jew
by Emil Bezverkhny, translated by Emil Pitkin
Ben Yehuda Press, 199 pp., $24.95
Tal Fortgang is a legal policy fellow and adviser to the president at the Manhattan Institute.
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