There is a strange kind of exhaustion that comes from living in an age where everyone is certain about everything.

Every day brings another prediction, another warning, another outrage, another person confidently explaining where the economy is headed, what democracy is becoming, whether civilization is collapsing, or why this latest development changes absolutely everything forever. By lunchtime, the world has supposedly ended three times and been reborn twice.

The modern pundit has become a permanent feature of our lives.

The word “pundit” originally comes from the Sanskrit pandit, meaning a wise or learned person. Which feels almost touching now. Today, a pundit is often someone paid to speak with certainty about events nobody fully understands. One famous observation about pundits is that they only correct half the time, and the people who are right are often right for the wrong reasons.

And yet, in anxious times, we cling to them.

Judaism has an older and more dangerous........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)