The link to the text of the annual lecture in memory of Sir Isaiah Berlin, given in Oxford in May. As I wrote in Adin Steinzalts as Martin Buber Impersonator, for whatever reason he would not take on the paganism and the evil of the world that surrounds him, where his voice and authority is badly needed. Its only fitting that Adin Steinsaltz is instead reduced to trite, unimaginative, banal pronouncement about the modernity. Standpoint – The Paganisation of Western Culture:
“Many years ago, Sir Isaiah Berlin and I started a correspondence that had to do with his ancestry. In Jewish terms, he came from a very distinguished ancestry. He was a direct descendant of the founder of the Chabad movement. In the course of the years, I had the honour and the joy of meeting Sir Isaiah several times, both in England and in Jerusalem. Isaiah Berlin was one of the last intellectuals in England. An intellectual is not necessarily a university professor: he can also be a shoemaker. An intellectual is a person of boundless curiosity, who has the desire and the ability to discuss everything and the spark that can make something new out of anything. There are very few people of this kind nowadays. Neither England nor the world seems to grow enough of this breed anymore.”
Here again Steinsaltz is reading from the old script. There are certainly as many curios people today, trying to understand and engage the world, as in any time in history. But for whatever reason Steinsaltz would not engage them and naturally this must be because all the interesting ones are gone with the utopian history. How convenient.