The Art & Letters of Repentance — Satanic Verses and the Sound of the Shofar: The Source of Evil in the Eyes of Milton & Rabbi Levi

Abstract

Jewish tradition teaches that every single night we should identify Satan as an enemy and pray for his demise, and at the pinnacle of the New Year liturgy, we emit a surreptitious plea for his demolition. So we ask: Who is Satan? Where does he come from? What does he want? How do we defeat him? And though Satan has taken many forms over the course of human history—in myth, picture, and fiction—we will explore two specific schools of thought that address these questions, which invite us to consider who we are and how we should live.